Nebulae

News & Articles

Cassiopeia A, Then the Cosmos: 25 Years of Chandra X-ray Science

5 min read

By Rick Smith On Aug. 26, 1999, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory opened its powerful telescopic eye in orbit and captured its…

Article2 weeks ago
Glowing clouds of pink and red gas and dust fill the image, along with several stars – foreground stars shine with diffraction spikes, and more distant stars fill the background.

Hubble Spots Billowing Bubbles of Stellar Floss

2 min read

A bubbling region of stars both old and new lies some 160,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado. This complex…

Article3 weeks ago
Side-by-side images of the Pillars of Creation from Hubble (left) and Webb (right). In the visible view from Hubble, the pillars appear thick, dusty, and brown with yellow streamers along their edges. The background of this Hubble image is like a sunrise, beginning in yellows at the bottom, before transitioning to light green and deeper blues at the top. In Webb's near-infrared view, the pillars appear brighter in orange and yellowish tones, with fainter blue streamers along the edges. The background in Webb’s image appears in blue hues with a many more stars than can be seen in visible light.

AstroViz: Iconic Pillars of Creation Star in NASA’s New 3D Visualization

4 min read

NASA’s Universe of Learning – a partnership among the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Caltech/IPAC, the Center for Astrophysics |…

Article1 month ago

25 Images to Celebrate NASA’s Chandra 25th Anniversary

4 min read

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is releasing 25 never-before-seen views of a wide range of…

Article2 months ago
A growing protostar embedded within a molecular cloud. The center of the image shows a bright, red region, where the growing protostar resides, with a thin, gray lane of matter cutting through it horizontally, which is the protostar’s accretion disk. Above and below this region are blue triangular-shaped molecular clouds, which give the overall object an hourglass shape. The areas in the molecular clouds closest to the protostar have more pronounced plumes of blue gas. There are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green stars and galaxies scattered across the background.

NASA’s Webb Captures Celestial Fireworks Around Forming Star

4 min read

The colors within this mid-infrared image reveal details about the central protostar’s behavior. The cosmos seems to come alive with…

Article2 months ago
Mosaic of the Pillars of Creation visualization model, composed of 4 rectangular strips oriented 45 degrees clockwise from vertical. Strips alternate between Hubble and Webb views of the visualization model, with each strip labeled: “Hubble” at lower right corners of first and third strips; “Webb” at upper left corners of the second and fourth strips. Webb strips have drop shadows that make it look like they are overlaid on top of larger Hubble image. Mosaic shows 3 vertical structures (pillars) of thick smoke-like material. Pillar edges are glowing, with thin wisps of material moving away into space. In Hubble strips, pillars are dark brown and opaque, on greenish blue background. In Webb strips, pillars are bright orange to brown with a distinct area of bright red at the top of middle pillar. A red star appears at the tip of a peak in the left pillar and the background is deep blue.

Pillars of Creation Star in New Visualization from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes

6 min read

Made famous in 1995 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Pillars of Creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula…

Article2 months ago

Multimedia

Keep exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Latest STEM News and Features For Colleges and Universities

Big Idea 2.1 Advanced Level Guiding Question

Big Idea 2.1 Intermediate Level Guiding Question

Big Idea 2.1 Introductory Guiding Question