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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3 teachers at the GMRI summer institute look at a series of NDVI data on small individual maps. One of the teachers is pointing at the small maps, and another had Google Maps open on their nearby computer. In the background, another group of teachers looks at the same data.

Science Activation’s PLACES Team Facilitates Third Professional Learning Institute

5 min read

The NASA Science Activation program’s Place-Based Learning to Advance Connections, Education, and Stewardship (PLACES) project supports middle and high school educators to engage students in data-rich Earth science learning through the integration of NASA data sets, images, classroom lessons, and…

Article17 hours ago

An oval-shaped galaxy seen tilted at an angle. It glows brightly at its core and radiates outward, dimming toward the edge of the oval. Reddish-brown, patchy dust spreads out from the core and covers much of the galaxy’s top half, as well as the outer edge, obscuring some of its light. Stars are visible around and in front of the galaxy.

Hubble Observes a Peculiar Galaxy Shape

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the galaxy, NGC 4694. Most galaxies fall into one of two basic types. Spiral galaxies are young and energetic, filled with the gas needed to form new stars and sporting spiral arms that…

Article22 hours ago

GPM Celebrates Ten Years of Observing Precipitation for Science and Society

40 min read

Introduction On February 27, 2014, the four-ton Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory (CO) spacecraft launched aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. On that day, the GPM mission, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA…

Article2 days ago

Two lightning strikes are visible in the distance at night with city lights along the left of the image along the coastline of the bay that occupies the lower right and curves into the landscape on the lower left. The majority of the image is occupied by dark gray cloudcover.

Via NASA Plane, Scientists Find New Gamma-ray Emission in Storm Clouds

4 min read

There’s more to thunderclouds than rain and lightning. Thunderclouds can produce intense bursts of gamma rays.

Article3 days ago

Artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 as seen from the side against a dark, mostly starless swath of space. The rocky, bilobed nucleus is toward the right and resembles the simplified shape of a peanut. The left side of the centaur is partially illuminated by the Sun, which is off-screen, revealing the nucleus’ light brown surface. Four jets of gas, depicted as translucent cones of white, emanate from various points on the Centaur’s surface and extend beyond the frame: two emanate upward from the top, one jet spews from the bottom and extends downward, and one jet emanates from the left side of the nucleus and extends toward the left. A label in the bottom left corner reads “Artist’s Concept.”

NASA’s Webb Reveals Unusual Jets of Volatile Gas from Icy Centaur 29P

7 min read

Inspired by the half-human, half-horse creatures that are part of Ancient Greek mythology, the field of astronomy has its own kind of centaurs: distant objects orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the…

Article3 days ago

NASA’s TESS Spots Record-Breaking Stellar Triplets

6 min read

Professional and amateur astronomers teamed up with artificial intelligence to find an unmatched stellar trio called TIC 290061484, thanks to cosmic “strobe lights” captured by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). The system contains a set of twin stars orbiting…

Article3 days ago

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 Concludes Space Station Scientific Mission

6 min read

NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin are returning to Earth after months aboard the International Space Station conducting scientific experiments and technology demonstrations for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission. The four launched…

Article4 days ago

Summary of the 10th SWOT Applications Workshop

21 min read

Introduction The tenth Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) Applications Workshop took place December 7–8, 2023 at the California Institute of Technology Keck Institute for Space Studies. The meeting was organized to highlight the work and project status of the SWOT…

Article5 days ago

A spiral galaxy seen tilted diagonally. It has two large, curling arms that extend from the center and wrap around. Thick strands of dark reddish dust follow behind these arms. The galaxy’s arms and disk are speckled with glowing patches of gas — some are blue in color, others are pink — illuminated by new stars. A faint glow surrounds the galaxy, which lies on a dark, nearly empty background.

Hubble Captures Stellar Nurseries in a Majestic Spiral

2 min read

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy IC 1954, located 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium. It sports a glowing bar in its core, majestically winding spiral arms, and clouds of dark…

Article1 week ago

An artist's concept looks down into the core of the galaxy M87, which is just left of center and appears as a large blue dot. A bright blue-white, narrow and linear jet of plasma transects the illustration from center left to upper right. It begins at the source of the jet, the galaxy’s black hole, which is surrounded by a blue spiral of material. At lower right is a red giant star that is far from the black hole and close to the viewer. A bridge of glowing gas links the star to a smaller white dwarf star companion immediately to its left. Engorged with infalling hydrogen from the red giant star, the smaller star exploded in a blue-white flash, which looks like numerous diffraction spikes emitted in all directions. Thousands of stars are in the background.

NASA’s Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions

6 min read

In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called…

Article1 week ago

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James Webb Space Telescope

The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

Perseverance Rover

Parker Solar Probe

Juno