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  1. Hubble Solves Merger Mystery From Milky Way’s Early Years

    August 17, 2026Release ID: 2026-015 Missions: Hubble

    Astronomers find strong evidence for a massive merger 1.8 billion years earlier than the oldest previously known significant merger.

    An illustration of two galaxies in the midst of a collision against a dark, star-filled background. The collision takes up the middle third of the illustration. On the right, a larger galaxy is viewed at an angle from 11 o’clock to 4 o’clock, with a white-yellow core surrounded by mottled brown dust lanes and faint bluish spiral arms. To the left, a smaller, bright blue-white galaxy is stretched into a curved, hook-like shape as gravity distorts it. A broad, glowing bridge of pale blue gas and stars extends off the galaxy at the left, while wispy streams extend above and below the larger galaxy at the right. The words “Artist’s Concept” appear in the lower left corner.

  2. Lion Nebula Roars to Life With NASA’s Webb

    August 10, 2026Release ID: 2026-127 Missions: Webb

    It’s the circle of life and it moves us all — even stars.

    JWST’s Near Infrared Camera and Mid Infrared Instrument combined image of planetary nebula NGC 2392, the Lion Nebula, against the black background of space. The nebula is at center, circular in shape, and looks like a male lion’s head. In the center is a small, pinkish-white circle with eight-point diffraction spikes, a white dwarf star. Surrounding the star are purple-pink cavernous bubbles and shell-like rings. The bubbles and shells collectively form an oval with two small, wide arcs near the top, reminiscent of a lion’s face and its ears. What appears to be extended outward from the lion’s face is a thick ring of purple-blue material. The width of the ring is consistent throughout and resembles a mane. The area closest to the lion’s face looks cloudy, while the edges of the mane look like there are clumps of dust with comet-like tails. In the background are distant galaxies and stars. Some galaxies are yellow and orange points of light and others have spiral structures. Some stars have diffraction spikes.

  3. NASA Webb Explores Family Tree of Newly Discovered Distant Objects

    July 29, 2026Release ID: 2026-109 Missions: Webb, Hubble

    What do little red dots become as the universe ages?

    A rectangular image with thousands of galaxies of various shapes and colors on the black background of space. Some are noticeably spirals, either face-on or edge-on, while others are blobby ellipticals. Many are too small to discern any structure. One prominent foreground star at top center features Webb’s signature 8-point diffraction spikes. At upper right, a box shows a zoomed in portion of the image. The pullout features a spiral galaxy labeled “WISEA J123635.56+621424.2.” The galaxy has a bright yellow center and faint brown arms speckled with regions of blue that appear to wind clockwise around the galaxy’s core.

  4. NASA's Hubble Shows Star Formation in Andromeda Galaxy Winding Down

    July 27, 2026Release ID: 2026-019 Missions: Hubble

    Most of the decline is within a prominent star-forming ring 32,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center.

    The left half of the disk of the Andromeda galaxy, with a jagged outer edge at the top and bottom on a black background. At right, the galaxy’s center is a horizontal yellow oval extending across about a third of the image. Two crescent shaped clumpy, dark dust lanes with abundant stars throughout extend out from the center. The galaxy becomes bluer as you move outward. At top middle, the satellite galaxy M32 appears as a small, fuzzy yellow oval. Within the disk of Andromeda, two regions at upper right and lower middle are outlined in small white boxes labeled 1 and 2, respectively. At the left side of the image, those two regions are enlarged in pullouts. Both contain a dense, grainy-appearing field of thousands of stars. Region 1 is noticeably bluer than region 2 and contains blue star-forming clumps.

  5. NASA's Webb Discovers Hidden Planet in Famous Star System

    July 15, 2026Release ID: 2026-126 Missions: Webb

    Planet found through its atmospheric fingerprint opens new way to uncover worlds hidden in starlight

    Artist's concept of the Beta Pictoris planetary system. One edge of a smooth, dusty disk that looks like cloud wisps extends across the upper third of the image at an angle from 9 o’clock to 2 o’clock. Just below that, in the left third of the image, the star glows white and is small. Just to the left of the star there is a tiny white dot, planet Beta Pictoris c. To the right of the star, about twice the distance between Beta Pictoris c and the star is another bright dot, representing planet Beta Pictoris b. A third planet, Beta Pictoris d is larger than the other two, and appears in the right third of the illustration. The planet has subtle orange cloud bands, and the side facing the star is illuminated. Below this planet, the other wispy edge of the dusty disk that circles the star crosses the bottom right corner of the illustration below Beta Pictoris d from 4 o’clock to 7 o’clock. The black background of space is speckled with distant stars. The words "Artist's Concept" appears at the lower left corner.

  6. NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Spot Distant Black Holes That Shred Stars

    July 14, 2026Release ID: 2026-203 Missions: Roman

    Roman’s large tally will help illuminate the origins of supermassive black holes.

    An illustration. At upper right is an outline of a bright orange circle, with a mostly black interior. The interior represents a black hole. Bright orange lines swirl several times around the circle, with one narrow orange band crossing in front, representing light that is gravitationally lensed by the black hole. To the right, set off by an orange and red haze, are irregular streaks of orange gas that fan out, arcing toward the viewer and all the way to the left. The line becomes more continuous toward the left, ending in what looks like a bright orange teardrop. This teardrop represents a star being shredded as it approached a black hole. Text at the lower right reads, artist’s concept.

  7. NASA’s Hubble Discovers First of Star Cluster’s Missing Black Holes

    July 13, 2026Release ID: 2026-017 Missions: Hubble

    Call it the case of the missing black holes.

    A Hubble image of globular star cluster Omega Centauri, which looks like a dense field of stars. Some stars appear a bit larger and brighter than others; most appear blue, orange, or yellow. The colors appear uniformly distributed, like grains of sand. Stars toward the cluster’s center are packed closer together, creating a more luminous area at the globular cluster’s core. A small red square frame is superimposed on the cluster near the image’s center. It connects to a square pullout in the top-right corner, which shows the outlined area in greater detail. Among the blue- and orange-colored stars is small blue-white dot highlighted by a small red circle.

  8. First Completed Rocky Worlds Program Observations Open New Era in Exoplanet Studies

    July 09, 2026Release ID: 2026-406 Missions: STScI

    Learnings pave way for future, more challenging targets

    Artist’s concept of a star and planet. The star takes up the majority of the of the illustration. It is orange with many flares, the surface resembles lava. The planet appears as a small, dark grey silhouette passing in front of the star.

  9. NASA Webb Uncovers Unusual Galaxy Shaped by Cosmic Collision

    July 06, 2026Release ID: 2026-120 Missions: Webb

    Hidden structures of a galaxy shaped by past collision come into view in infrared light

    A horizontal image of the galaxy Centaurus A stretches across a black background filled with thousands of tiny purple, pink, and white points of light. The galaxy is brightest at its center, where a brilliant white and pale pink glow radiates outward. Eight diffraction spikes extend from the central glow. Delicate loops and wispy ribbons of pink and lavender arc above and below the center of the image in the shape of an ‘S’. A band of gray and white dust in the shape of a parallelogram cuts across the middle of the galaxy. Mottled patches and bright knots are scattered throughout the dusty band. The galaxy’s outer edges fade into soft, cloud-like plumes with feathery textures that stretch toward the left and right sides of the image. Against the surrounding darkness, a few bright foreground stars shine with Webb’s distinctive diffraction spikes, while countless fainter stars create a speckled backdrop.

  10. NASA’s Webb Reveals Stars Sparking to Life in Cosmic Celebration

    July 02, 2026Release ID: 2026-124 Missions: Webb

    Outflows reveal characteristics about the region’s protostars and how they influence their environment.

    FS Tau, a star-forming nebula. Clouds of transparent blue and purple gas and dust stretch from the center to the right. Several yellow and white protostars, some showing Webb’s eight-pronged diffraction pattern, are dispersed throughout the clouds. Orange wisps and filaments of gas extend from one of the protostars at the center toward the top left and bottom right corners. There are numerous, distant yellow and white galaxies strewn about the black background of space.

  11. NASA’s Webb Studies How Planet Survived Death of its Star

    July 01, 2026Release ID: 2026-121 Missions: Webb

    WD 1856 b likely migrated to its current location billions of years after its star became a white dwarf.

    An orange gas giant planet at left, taking up about one-third of the frame, facing a star, which appears at top right as a far smaller bright dot. The planet has subtle orange cloud bands. The star illuminates the right side of the planet like the crescent of a waxing moon. Both are on the black background of space. The words “artist’s concept” are in the bottom right corner.

  12. Hubble Details Early Galaxy Transforming Neighborhood

    June 23, 2026Release ID: 2026-014 Missions: Hubble

    Researchers show that a galaxy’s young, tightly packed stars converted nearby gas from opaque to clear only 1.4 billion years after the big bang.

    Thousands of galaxies appear across the black background of space. The galaxies range in size, from big blobs and larger face-on spirals to short lines and tiny dots. The galaxies appear in a variety of colors, including orange, white, pink, and blue. One prominent foreground star appears toward the lower right with several diffraction spikes. A white square highlights one tiny pinpoint of blue light in the top third, which is blown up in a box above it and labeled MXDFz4.4. The galaxy has a light blue core with some yellow and red blotches around its edges.

  13. NASA’s Webb Pinpoints Millions of Stars Within Cigar Galaxy

    June 23, 2026Release ID: 2026-115 Missions: Webb

    By piercing through thick dust, new details of galaxy M82 shine through.

    Composite image of edge-on spiral starburst galaxy Messier 82 as observed by NASA's James Webb and Hubble space telescopes. Hourglass-shaped plumes of gas are shooting outward from above and below a bright blue-white, disk-shaped center. The plumes are yellow near the galaxy’s bright center, denoting areas of ionized hydrogen gas as observed by Hubble, and gradually become redder as you move farther away. Messier 82 is set against the black background of space, which has many distant galaxies that appear as small white and orange spirals, ovals, and points of light. Toward the right of Messier 82 is a blue-white star with eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of Webb.

  14. NASA’s Webb Finds Clues to Ancient, Distant Origin of Comet 3I/ATLAS

    June 22, 2026Release ID: 2026-118 Missions: Webb

    The third identified interstellar comet in human history has a surprising chemical makeup, raising questions as to how common, or unusual, conditions in our own solar system may be. 

    Comparison of three telescope images side by side. They are roughly spherical but pixelated, with more intense color saturation in the center. From left to right: smallest sphere is blue and labeled H2O, orange is larger and labeled CO2, and red is largest and labeled CO. A scale bar at the lower left is labeled 1300 km/1 arcsecond and is about one fourth of each of the three images. A compass at the lower right shows north pointing up to 12 o’clock, east pointing left to 9 o’clock, and a fainter arrow labeled to Sun pointing down to 8 o’clock.

  15. NASA's Webb Catches Exoplanet Getting Roasted

    June 16, 2026Release ID: 2026-122 Missions: Webb

    Webb follows the path laid by the Spitzer Space Telescope to drill down on details of one of the most extreme exoplanets yet discovered.

    Illustration of a planet and a star, labeled artist’s concept at the bottom left. The planet fills more than a quarter of the image to the upper right, with the bright star to its lower left. The planet is white hot on the star side, fading to yellow that mixes with swirls of bright red across its middle, and eventually fading to black on the side most distant from the star. Distant stars dot the background of space, which is black near the edges of the frame.

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