Citizen Science Highlights

NASA needs your help! You can collaborate with professional scientists, conduct cutting-edge science, and make real discoveries. A science degree is not required, just a passion for understanding the natural world. Here, you can read news about NASA-funded citizen science projects, new discoveries, and opportunities to get involved. For more information on current citizen science projects.

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An area in the Orion nebula filled with dark, puffy clouds. On the image’s right side is a large area of clouds crossed by a dark bar. The region glows in red and whitish colors lit by a protostar within. At the other side a large jet of material ejected by the protostar appears to be made of thin, wispy, blue, and pink clouds. A couple of foreground stars shine brightly in front of the nebula.

Hubble Captures Young Stars Changing Their Environments

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image peers into the dusty recesses of the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth, the Orion Nebula (Messier 42, M42). Just 1,500 light-years away, the Orion Nebula is visible to the unaided eye below the…

Article4 days ago
Photo mosaic of Andromeda galaxy and five regions of interest. A spiral galaxy spreads across the width. It’s tilted nearly edge-on to our line of sight, appearing as an extreme oval on its side. Its borders are jagged because the image is a mosaic of smaller, square images. The outer edges are blue, while the inner two-thirds are yellowish with a bright, central core. Dark, dusty clouds wrap around the outer half of the galaxy’s disk. At 10 o'clock, a smaller dwarf elliptical galaxy forms a fuzzy, yellow blob. There are about 200 million stars within the image. The background of space is black. There are what appears to be steps toward the bottom, mainly toward the middle, which indicates where no data were taken. Interesting regions: (a) Clusters of bright blue stars embedded within the galaxy; background galaxies seen much farther away; (b) NGC 206, a concentration of bright blue stars; (c) A young cluster of blue newborn stars; (d) The satellite galaxy M32; (e) Dark dust lanes across myriad yellow stars.

NASA’s Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

6 min read

In the years following the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way — the…

Article5 days ago

NASA Scientists Find New Human-Caused Shifts in Global Water Cycle

3 min read

In a recently published paper, NASA scientists use nearly 20 years of observations to show that the global water cycle is shifting in unprecedented ways. The majority of those shifts are driven by activities such as agriculture and could have…

Article5 days ago

Exoplanets Need to Be Prepared for Extreme Space Weather, Chandra Finds

5 min read

Planets around other stars need to be prepared for extreme weather conditions, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton that examined the effects of X-rays on potential planets around the most…

Article5 days ago
Artist's concept of Pandora viewing a transiting exoplanet

NASA’s Pandora Mission One Step Closer To Probing Alien Atmospheres

4 min read

Pandora, NASA’s newest exoplanet mission, is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems that will enable the mission to carry out its work. “This is a huge…

Article5 days ago
Ground-based image of the Andromeda Galaxy stretches from lower left to upper right. A white arrow points to the location of the Hubble observations. Above the galaxy are four boxes containing Hubble images of the variable star at different luminosities.

NASA Celebrates Edwin Hubble’s Discovery of a New Universe

7 min read

For humans, the most important star in the universe is our Sun. The second-most important star is nestled inside the Andromeda galaxy. Don’t go looking for it — the flickering star is 2.2 million light-years away, and is 1/100,000th the…

Article6 days ago
A few dozen white stars, some with Webb’s signature 8-point diffraction spikes, on the black background of space. Tightly packed, red-orange filaments extend horizontally from upper left to lower right, with a bulging upward curve on the right that is closer to the top. The filaments resemble wood grain.

NASA’s Webb Reveals Intricate Layers of Interstellar Dust, Gas

6 min read

Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star apart as it went. When the shockwave reached the star’s surface, it punched through, generating a brief, intense pulse of…

Article7 days ago
Six Webb images of little red dots are combined in a two-row mosaic. Each little red dot is centered within a square frame and lies against the black background of space. Each dot has a yellow-white circular core surrounded by a red, fuzzy ring. White text in the top left corner of each box lists the source’s name from the Webb surveys, and its redshift. From left to right, the top row reads CEERS 14448, z = 4.75; NGDEEP 4321, z = 8.92; and PRIMER-COS 10539, z = 7.48. The bottom row reads CEERS 20320, z = 5.27; JADES 9186, z = 4.99; and PRIMER-UDS 17818, z = 6.40.

Newfound Galaxy Class May Indicate Early Black Hole Growth, Webb Finds

6 min read

In December 2022, less than six months after commencing science operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed something never seen before: numerous red objects that appear small on the sky, which scientists soon called “little red dots” (LRDs). Though these…

Article7 days ago

New Simulated Universe Previews Panoramas From NASA’s Roman Telescope

6 min read

Astronomers have released a set of more than a million simulated images showcasing the cosmos as NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see it. This preview will help scientists explore a myriad of Roman’s science goals. “We used…

Article7 days ago
A large fiery orange star with a feeding line to another distant star.

NASA’s Hubble Tracks Down a ‘Blue Lurker’ Among Stars

4 min read

The name “blue lurker” might sound like a villainous character from a superhero movie. But it is a rare class of star that NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope explored by looking deeply into the open star cluster M67, roughly 2,800 light-years…

Article1 week ago
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