At the heart of our own galaxy, there is a dense thicket of stars with a supermassive black hole at the very center. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will provide the deepest-ever view of this zone, revealing stars, planets, and unique objects that resist definition.

Based on the input of astronomers from across the globe, the Roman Space Telescope will spend three-quarters of its five-year primary mission conducting three revolutionary surveys of unprecedented scale. Their combined results will transform all areas of astronomy and answer longstanding questions about dark matter, dark energy, and planets outside of our solar system, called exoplanets.

That last theme will be addressed by the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, which will peer into the center of our galaxy to study the stars and exoplanets that make up the densely populated region around the center of the Milky Way, known as the galactic bulge.

The survey will observe six patches of the galactic bulge, one pinpointing the center and five nearby, every 12 minutes during 438 days of total observing time. The observations will be separated into six “seasons” spread out over five years.

Spending so much time focusing on a relatively small area of the sky, the mission will be able to track changes in the motion and light of hundreds of millions of stars, and any planets that orbit them, over long periods — the “time-domain” aspect of the survey.

“This survey will be the highest precision, highest cadence, longest continuous observing baseline survey of our galactic bulge, where the highest density of stars in our galaxy reside,” said Jessie Christiansen of Caltech/IPAC, who served as co-chair of the committee that defined the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey.

Exoplanet microlensing

Roman will use a method called microlensing to search for exoplanets, a technique that has so far identified just over 200 exoplanets, compared to more than 4,000 discovered with the transit method, out of the greater than 6,000 currently confirmed.

With this survey, scientists expect to see over 1,000 new planets orbiting other stars just using microlensing alone. This would increase the number of exoplanets identified using this method by more than fivefold.

A microlensing event is when light from a distant star in the background is warped slightly by a foreground object, like a star and its planet. This warping of light is called gravitational lensing, with the gravity from the star and planet bending the fabric of space that light is traveling through and focusing it like a magnifying glass.

While the transit method is very good at identifying exoplanets that orbit close to their star, the microlensing method can discover exoplanets that orbit farther away from their star, and in planetary systems farther from Earth than ever studied before. Roman will be versatile enough to see exoplanets dwelling from the inner edge of the habitable zone out to great distances from their stars, with a wide range of masses from planets smaller than Mars to the size of gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. It may even discover “rogue planets” without host stars that either formed alone or were ejected from their host systems long ago.

“For the first time, we will have a big picture understanding of Earth and our solar system within the broader context of the exoplanet population of the Milky Way galaxy,” Christiansen said. “We still don’t know how common Earth-like planets are, and the Roman Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will provide us with this answer.”

This survey will create a census of exoplanets for scientists to draw statistical conclusions from, revealing common patterns found in exoplanets and furthering our understanding of planetary formation and habitability.

One survey; lots of science

Because of the immense amount of observing time and subsequent data produced, the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will advance not only the field of exoplanet microlensing, but other areas of astronomy, too.

“There is an incredibly rich diversity of science that can be done with a high-precision, high-cadence survey like this one,” said Dan Huber of the University of Hawaii, the other survey co-chair.

The core survey was optimized not only for microlensing, but also to observe changes in brightness from small, fast blips to long-term trends. This property allows astronomers to discover and characterize transiting planets, red giant stars, stellar-mass black holes and other stellar remnants, and eclipsing binaries, and can lead to a deeper understanding about the physics of star formation and evolution.

“The stars in the bulge and center of our galaxy are unique and not yet well understood,” Huber said. “The data from this survey will allow us to measure how old these stars are and how they fit into the formation history of our Milky Way galaxy.”

Roman’s observing strategy in the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, as well as the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey and the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, will allow astronomers to maximize scientific output, all with one telescope.

Abundance of data to explore

Roman will observe hundreds of millions of stars every 12 minutes during the survey period, providing an unprecedented volume of data for astronomers to parse through.

The Roman Science Support Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, will be responsible for the high-level science data processing for the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey, including exoplanet microlensing and general community outreach for Roman exoplanet science. The Science Support Center’s monitoring of these stars has been automated to detect microlensing and variable events within the data. This helps scientists understand features like how frequently a star’s brightness is changing, or if there are planets lurking near the lensed stars, or other sources of variability. The number of stars and frequency of the observations make the Roman data an ideal dataset for finding such sources.

All Roman observations will be made publicly available after a short processing period. The mission is scheduled to launch no later than May 2027, with the team on track for launch in fall 2026.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

By Isabel Swafford
Caltech/IPAC, Pasadena, Calif.

Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

Explore More

6 min read

NASA Roman Core Survey Will Trace Cosmic Expansion Over Time

Article 6 months ago

6 min read

NASA’s Roman Mission Shares Detailed Plans to Scour Skies

Article 9 months ago

7 min read

NASA Announces Plan to Map Milky Way With Roman Space Telescope

Article 1 month ago

Jan. 23, 2026

NASA’s TESS Returns to Science Observations

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) entered safe mode Jan. 15 and returned to normal science operations Jan. 18. 

The operations team determined the issue arose when TESS slewed to point at a target, but its solar panels did not rotate to remain pointed at the Sun relative to the spacecraft’s new direction. The off-Sun angle of the solar arrays resulted in a slow discharge of TESS’s batteries. As designed and planned for in situations of this kind, the satellite entered a safe mode after detecting the low-power condition.

At the time of the safe mode, TESS was conducting a week-long observation of comet 3I/ATLAS and resumed those observations Jan. 18. Data from TESS is publicly available through archives at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.

May 7, 2024

NASA’s TESS Returns to Science Operations

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) returned to science operations May 3 and is once again making observations. The satellite went into safe mode April 23 following a separate period of down time earlier that month.

The operations team determined this latest safe mode was triggered by a failure to properly unload momentum from the spacecraft’s reaction wheels, a routine activity needed to keep the satellite properly oriented when making observations. The propulsion system, which enables this momentum transfer, had not been successfully repressurized following a prior safe mode event April 8. The team has corrected this, allowing the mission to return to normal science operations. The cause of the April 8 safe mode event remains under investigation. 

The TESS mission is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Launched in 2018, TESS has been scanning almost the entire sky looking for planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets. The TESS mission has also uncovered other cosmic phenomena, including star-shredding black holes and stellar oscillations. Read more about TESS discoveries at nasa.gov/tess.

April 24, 2024

NASA’s Planet-Hunting Satellite Temporarily on Pause

During a routine activity April 23, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) entered safe mode, temporarily suspending science operations. The satellite scans the sky searching for planets beyond our solar system.

The team is working to restore the satellite to science operations while investigating the underlying cause. NASA also continues investigating the cause of a separate safe mode event that took place earlier this month, including whether the two events are connected. The spacecraft itself remains stable.

The TESS mission is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Launched in 2018, TESS recently celebrated its sixth anniversary in orbit. Visit nasa.gov/tess for updates.

April 17, 2024

NASA’s TESS Returns to Science Operations

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has returned to work after science observations were suspended on April 8, when the spacecraft entered into safe mode. All instruments are powered on and, following the successful download of previously collected science data stored in the mission’s recorder, are now making new science observations.

Analysis of what triggered the satellite to enter safe mode is ongoing.

The TESS mission is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Launched in 2018, TESS has been scanning almost the entire sky looking for planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets. The TESS mission has also uncovered other cosmic phenomena, including star-shredding black holes and stellar oscillations. Read more about TESS discoveries at nasa.gov/tess.

April 11, 2024

NASA’s TESS Temporarily Pauses Science Observations

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) entered into safe mode April 8, temporarily interrupting science observations. The team is investigating the root cause of the safe mode, which occurred during scheduled engineering activities. The satellite itself remains in good health.

The team will continue investigating the issue and is in the process of returning TESS to science observations in the coming days.

The TESS mission is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Launched in 2018, TESS has been scanning almost the entire sky looking for planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets. The TESS mission has also uncovered other cosmic phenomena, including star-shredding black holes and stellar oscillations. Read more about TESS discoveries at nasa.gov/tess.

Media Contacts

Claire Andreoli
(301) 286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Alise Fisher
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
NASA Headquarters, Washington

Ars readers of a certain age no doubt remember the 1980s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series (and its spinoff, She-Ra: Princess of Powers) and the many, many offshoots of this hugely popular Mattel franchise, including an extensive line of action figures. Amazon MGM Studios no doubt hopes to cash in on any lingering nostalgia with its forthcoming film, Masters of the Universe. Judging by the extended teaser trailer, we're getting an origin story for He-Man.

It's not the first time someone has turned He-Man into a feature film: Dolph Lundgren starred in 1987's Masters of the Universe, a critical and box office bomb that also featured Frank Langella as arch-villain Skeletor. Its poor reception might have stemmed from the 1987 film deviating significantly from the original cartoon, angering fans. But frankly, it was just a bad, cheesy movie, though it still has its share of cult fans today.

This latest big-screen live-action adaptation has been languishing in development hell for nearly two decades. There were rumors in 2007 that John Woo would direct a He-Man feature for Warner Bros., but the project never got the green light. Sony Pictures gained the rights in 2009, and there were multiple script rewrites and much shuffling of possible directors (with John Chu, McG, and David S. Goyer among the candidates).

Read full article

Comments

5 Min Read

NASA Webb Finds Young Sun-Like Star Forging, Spewing Common Crystals

Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require intense heat to form and these “dirty snowballs” spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible. The telescope clearly showed for the first time that the hot, inner part of the disk of gas and dust surrounding a very young, actively forming star is where crystalline silicates are forged. Webb also revealed a strong outflow that is capable of carrying the crystals to the outer edges of this disk. Compared to our own fully formed, mostly dust-cleared solar system, the crystals would be forming approximately between the Sun and Earth.

Webb’s sensitive mid-infrared observations of the protostar, cataloged EC 53, also show that the powerful winds from the star’s disk are likely catapulting these crystals into distant locales, like the incredibly cold edge of its protoplanetary disk where comets may eventually form.

“EC 53’s layered outflows may lift up these newly formed crystalline silicates and transfer them outward, like they’re on a cosmic highway,” said Jeong-Eun Lee, the lead author of a new paper in Nature and a professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. “Webb not only showed us exactly which types of silicates are in the dust near the star, but also where they are both before and during a burst.”

Image: Protostar EC 53 in the Serpens Nebula (NIRCam Image)

The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to collect two sets of highly detailed spectra to identify specific elements and molecules, and determine their structures. Next, they precisely mapped where everything is, both when EC 53 is “quiet” (but still gradually “nibbling” at its disk) and when it’s more active (what’s known as an outburst phase).

This star, which has been studied by this team and others for decades, is highly predictable. (Other young stars have erratic outbursts, or their outbursts last for hundreds of years.) About every 18 months, EC 53 begins a 100-day, bombastic burst phase, kicking up the pace and absolutely devouring nearby gas and dust, while ejecting some of its intake as powerful jets and outflows. These expulsions may fling some of the newly formed crystals into the outskirts of the star’s protoplanetary disk. 

“Even as a scientist, it is amazing to me that we can find specific silicates in space, including forsterite and enstatite near EC 53,” said Doug Johnstone, a co-author and a principal research officer at the National Research Council of Canada. “These are common minerals on Earth. The main ingredient of our planet is silicate.” For decades, research has also identified crystalline silicates not only on comets in our solar system, but also in distant protoplanetary disks around other, slightly older stars — but couldn’t pinpoint how they got there. With Webb’s new data, researchers now better understand how these conditions might be possible.

“It’s incredibly impressive that Webb can not only show us so much, but also where everything is,” said Joel Green, a co-author and an instrument scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “Our research team mapped how the crystals move throughout the system. We’ve effectively shown how the star creates and distributes these superfine particles, which are each significantly smaller than a grain of sand.”

Webb’s MIRI data also clearly shows the star’s narrow, high-velocity jets of hot gas near its poles, and the slightly cooler and slower outflows that stem from the innermost and hottest area of the disk that feeds the star. The image above, which was taken by another Webb instrument, NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows one set of winds and scattered light from EC 53’s disk as a white semi-circle angled toward the right. Its winds also flow in the opposite direction, roughly behind the star, but in near-infrared light, this region appears dark. Its jets are too tiny to pick out.

Image: Silicate Crystallization and Movement Near Protostar EC 53 (Illustration)

Look ahead

EC 53 is still “wrapped” in dust and may be for another 100,000 years. Over millions of years, while a young star’s disk is heavily populated with teeny grains of dust and pebbles, an untold number of collisions will occur that may slowly build up a range of larger rocks, eventually leading to the formation of terrestrial and gas giant planets. As the disk settles, both the star itself and any rocky planets will finish forming, the dust will largely clear (no longer obscuring the view), and a Sun-like star will remain at the center of a cleared planetary system, with crystalline silicates “littered” throughout.

EC 53 is part of the Serpens Nebula, which lies 1,300 light-years from Earth and is brimming with actively forming stars.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.

Related Images & Videos

Protostar EC 53 in the Serpens Nebula (NIRCam Image)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s 2024 NIRCam image shows protostar EC 53 circled. Researchers using new data from Webb’s MIRI proved that crystalline silicates form in the hottest part of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the star — and may be shot to the system’s edges.

Silicate Crystallization and Movement Near Protostar EC 53 (Illustration)

This illustration represents half the disk of gas and dust surrounding the protostar EC 53. Stellar outbursts periodically form crystalline silicates, which are launched up and out to the edges of the system, where comets and other icy rocky bodies may eventually form.

Protostar EC 53 in the Serpens Nebula (NIRCam Compass Image)

This image of protostar EC 53 in the Serpens Nebula, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

Related Links

Read more: Webb’s Star Formation Discoveries

Explore more: Image Tour: Herbig-Haro 46/47

Read more: First-of-Its-Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image

Read more: Infographic: Recipe for planet formation

Explore more: Star formation in the Eagle Nebula

Video: Exploring Star and Planet Formation

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page

Keep Exploring

Related Topics

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Stars

Stars Stories

Universe

4 Min Read

Intricacies of Helix Nebula Revealed With NASA’s Webb

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has zoomed into the Helix Nebula to give an up-close view of the possible eventual fate of our own Sun and planetary system. In Webb’s high-resolution look, the structure of the gas being shed off by a dying star comes into full focus. The image reveals how stars recycle their material back into the cosmos, seeding future generations of stars and planets, as NASA explores the secrets of the universe and our place in it.

Image: Helix Nebula (NIRCam)

In the image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), pillars that look like comets with extended tails trace the circumference of the inner region of an expanding shell of gas. Here, blistering winds of fast-moving hot gas from the dying star are crashing into slower moving colder shells of dust and gas that were shed earlier in its life, sculpting the nebula’s remarkable structure.

The iconic Helix Nebula has been imaged by many ground- and space-based observatories over the nearly two centuries since it was discovered. Webb’s near-infrared view of the target brings these knots to the forefront compared to the ethereal image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, while its increased resolution sharpens focus from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope’s snapshot. Additionally, the new near-infrared look shows the stark transition between the hottest gas to the coolest gas as the shell expands out from the central white dwarf.

Image: Helix Nebula Context (VISTA and Webb)

A blazing white dwarf, the leftover core of the dying star, lies right at the heart of the nebula, out of the frame of the Webb image. Its intense radiation lights up the surrounding gas, creating a rainbow of features: hot ionized gas closest to the white dwarf, cooler molecular hydrogen farther out, and protective pockets where more complex molecules can begin to form within dust clouds. This interaction is vital, as it’s the raw material from which new planets may one day form in other star systems.

In Webb’s image of the Helix Nebula, color represents the temperature and chemistry. A touch of a blue hue marks the hottest gas in this field, energized by intense ultraviolet light from the white dwarf. Farther out, the gas cools into the yellow regions where hydrogen atoms join into molecules. At the outer edges, the reddish tones trace the coolest material, where gas begins to thin and dust can take shape. Together, the colors show the star’s final breath transforming into the raw ingredients for new worlds, adding to the wealth of knowledge gained from Webb about the origin of planets. 

Spitzer’s studies of the Helix Nebula hinted at the formation of more complex molecules, but Webb’s resolution shows how they form in shielded zones of the scene. In the Webb image, look for dark pockets of space amid the glowing orange and red. 

Video: Observatory Comparison (Hubble/Spitzer/Webb)

The Helix Nebula is located 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. It remains a favorite among stargazers and professional astronomers alike due to its relative proximity to Earth, and its similar appearance to the “Eye of Sauron.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.

Related Images & Videos

Helix Nebula (NIRCam)

This new image of a portion of the Helix Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope highlights comet-like knots, fierce stellar winds, and layers of gas shed off by a dying star interacting with its surrounding environment.

Helix Nebula Context (VISTA and Webb)

This image of the Helix Nebula from the ground-based Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (left) shows the full view of the planetary nebula, with a box highlighting Webb’s field of view (right).

Helix Nebula (NIRCam Compass Image)

This image of the Helix Nebula, captured by the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on Webb, includes compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

Observatory Comparison (Hubble/Spitzer/Webb)

This video compares images of the Helix Nebula from three NASA observatories: Hubble’s image in visible light, Spitzer’s infrared view, and Webb’s high-resolution near-infrared look.

Related Links

Read more: NASA’s Webb Traces Details of Complex Planetary Nebula

Explore more: ViewSpace Star Death: Helix Nebula

Explore more: ViewSpace Celestial Tour: Planetary Nebulae—Sculptures in the Sky

Explore more: Stellar Evolution Flipbook Activity Guide

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page

Keep Exploring

Related Topics

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Stars

Cosmic Origins

Universe

Newly developing stars shrouded in thick dust get their first baby pictures in these images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble took these infant star snapshots in an effort to learn how massive stars form.

Protostars are shrouded in thick dust that blocks light, but Hubble can detect the near-infrared emission that shines through holes formed by the protostar’s jets of gas and dust. The radiating energy can provide information about these “outflow cavities,” like their structure, radiation fields, and dust content. Researchers look for connections between the properties of these young stars – like outflows, environment, mass, brightness – and their evolutionary stage to test massive star formation theories.

These images were taken as part of the SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey, which investigates how stars form, especially massive stars with more than eight times the mass of our Sun.

The high-mass star-forming region Cepheus A hosts a collection of baby stars, including one large and luminous protostar, which accounts for about half of the region’s brightness. While much of the region is shrouded in opaque dust, light from hidden stars breaks through outflow cavities to illuminate and energize areas of gas and dust, creating pink and white nebulae. The pink area is an HII region, where the intense ultraviolet radiation of the nearby stars has converted the surrounding clouds of gas into glowing, ionized hydrogen.
Cepheus A lies about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus.

Glittering much closer to home, this Hubble image depicts the star-forming region G033.91+0.11 in our Milky Way galaxy. The light patch in the center of the image is a reflection nebula, in which light from a hidden protostar bounces off gas and dust.

This Hubble image showcases the star-forming region GAL-305.20+00.21. The bright spot in the center-right of the image is an emission nebula, glowing gas that is ionized by a protostar buried within the larger complex of gas and dust clouds.

Shrouded in gas and dust, the massive protostar IRAS 20126+4104 lies within a high-mass star-forming region about 5,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This actively forming star is a B-type protostar, characterized by its high luminosity, bluish-white color, and very high temperature. The bright region of ionized hydrogen at the center of the image is energized by jets emerging from the poles of the protostar, which ground-based observatories previously observed.

New images added every day between January 12-17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news and see Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones for more images of young stellar objects.

Explore More

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones

Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge

Hubble’s 35th Anniversary

While this eerie NASA Hubble Space Telescope image may look ghostly, it’s actually full of new life. Lupus 3 is a star-forming cloud about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. 

White wisps of gas swirl throughout the region, and in the lower-left corner resides a dark dust cloud. Bright T Tauri stars shine at the left, bottom right, and upper center, while other young stellar objects dot the image.

T Tauri stars are actively forming stars in a specific stage of formation. In this stage, the enveloping gas and dust dissipates from radiation and stellar winds, or outflows of particles from the emerging star. T Tauri stars are typically less than 10 million years old and vary in brightness both randomly and periodically due to the environment and nature of a forming star. The random variations may be due to instabilities in the accretion disk of dust and gas around the star, material from that disk falling onto the star and being consumed, and flares on the star’s surface. The more regular, periodic changes may be caused by giant sunspots rotating in and out of view. 

T Tauri stars are in the process of contracting under the force of gravity as they become main sequence stars which fuse hydrogen to helium in their cores. Studying these stars can help astronomers better understand the star formation process.

New images added every day between January 12-17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news and see Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones for more images of young stellar objects.

Explore More

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones

Explore the Night Sky

Hubble News

This collection of new images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases protoplanetary disks, the swirling masses of gas and dust that surround forming stars, in both visible and infrared wavelengths. Through observations of young stellar objects like these, Hubble helps scientists better understand how stars form.

These visible-light images depict dark, planet-forming dust disks around a hidden, newly developing star, called a protostar. Bipolar jets of fast-moving gases, traveling at about 93 miles (150 km) per second, shoot from both ends of the protostar. The top two images are of protostars found about 450 light-years away in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, while the bottom two are almost 500 light-years away in the Chameleon I star-forming region.

Stars form out of collapsing clouds of gas and dust. As surrounding gas and dust falls toward the protostar, some of it forms a rotating disk around the star that continues to feed the growing object. Planets form from the remaining gas and dust orbiting the star. The bright yellow regions above and below the spinning disks are reflection nebulae, gas and dust lit up by the light of the star.

The jets that are released from the magnetic poles of the stars are an important part of their formation process. The jets, channeled by the protostar’s powerful magnetic fields, disperse angular momentum, which is due to rotational movement of the object. This allows the protostar to spin slowly enough for material to collect. In the images, some of the jets appear to broaden. This occurs when the fast jet collides with the surrounding gas and causes it to glow, an effect called a shock emission.

These edge-on views of protostars in infrared light also reveal thick, dusty protoplanetary disks. The dark areas may look like very large disks, but they are actually much wider shadows cast in the surrounding envelope by the central disks. The bright haze throughout the image comes from light scattering off of the surrounding cloud’s dust grains. The top right and bottom left stars reside in the Orion Molecular Cloud complex about 1,300 light-years away, and the top left and bottom right stars lie in the Perseus Molecular Cloud roughly 1,500 light-years away.

In its early stages, these disks draw from the dust that remains around the forming stars. Unlike visible light, infrared light can travel through this “protostellar envelope.” The protostars in the visible images above are further along in their evolution, so much of the dusty envelope has dissipated. Otherwise, they could not be seen in visible wavelengths.

Viewed in infrared light, the central star is visible through the thick dust of the protoplanetary disks. Bipolar jets are also present but not visible because the hot gas emission isn’t strong enough for Hubble to detect.

HOPS 150 in the top right is actually in a binary system, in orbit with another young protostar. HOPS 150’s companion, HOPS 153, is not pictured in this image.

From a wider Hubble survey of Orion protostars, including HOPS 150 and HOPS 367, astronomers found that regions with a higher density of stars tend to have more companion stars. They also found a similar number of companions between main-sequence (active, hydrogen-fusing stars) and their younger counterparts.

New images added every day between January 12-17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news and see Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones for more images of young stellar objects.

Explore More

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones

Explore the Night Sky

Hubble News

Just-forming stars, called protostars, dazzle a cloudy landscape in the Orion Molecular Cloud complex (OMC). These three new images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope were taken as part of an effort to learn more about the envelopes of gas and dust surrounding the protostars, as well as the outflow cavities where stellar winds and jets from the developing stars have carved away at the surrounding gas and dust.

Scientists used these Hubble observations as part of a broader survey to study protostellar envelopes, or the gas and dust around the developing star. Researchers found no evidence that the outflow cavities were growing as the protostar moved through the later stages of star formation. They also found that the decreasing accretion of mass onto the protostars over time and the low rate of star formation in the cool, molecular clouds cannot be explained by the progressive clearing out of the envelopes.

The OMC lies within the “sword” of the constellation Orion, roughly 1,300 light-years away.

This Hubble image shows a small group of young stars amidst molecular clouds of gas and dust. Near the center of the image, concealed behind the dusty clouds, lies the protostar HOPS 181. The long, curved arc in the top left of the image is shaped by the outflow of material coming from the protostar, likely from the jets of particles shot out at high speeds from the protostar’s magnetic poles. The light of nearby stars reflects off and is scattered by dust grains that fill the image, giving the region its soft glow.

The bright star in the lower right quadrant called CVSO 188 might seem like the diva in this image, but HOPS 310, located just to the left of center behind the dust, is the true hidden star. This protostar is responsible for the large cavity with bright walls that has been carved into the surrounding cloud of gas and dust by its jets and stellar winds. Running diagonally to the top right is one of the bipolar jets of the protostar. These jets consist of particles launched at high speeds from the protostar’s magnetic poles. Some background galaxies are visible in the upper right of the image.

The bright protostar to the left in this Hubble image is located within the Orion Molecular Clouds. Its stellar winds — ejected, fast-flowing particles that are spurred by the star’s magnetic field — have carved a large cavity in the surrounding cloud. In the top right, background stars speckle the image.

New images added every day between January 12-17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news and see Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones for more images of young stellar objects.

Explore More

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones

Explore the Night Sky

Hubble News

7 Min Read

NASA’s Webb Delivers Unprecedented Look Into Heart of Circinus Galaxy

The Circinus Galaxy, a galaxy about 13 million light-years away, contains an active supermassive black hole that continues to influence its evolution. The largest source of infrared light from the region closest to the black hole itself was thought to be outflows, or streams of superheated matter that fire outward. 

Image: Circinus Galaxy (Hubble and Webb)

Now, new observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, seen here with a new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, provide evidence that reverses this thinking, suggesting that most of the hot, dusty material is actually feeding the central black hole. The technique used to gather this data also has the potential to analyze the outflow and accretion components for other nearby black holes. 

The research, which includes the sharpest image of a black hole’s surroundings ever taken by Webb, published Tuesday in Nature.

Outflow question

Supermassive black holes like those in Circinus remain active by consuming surrounding matter. Infalling gas and dust accumulates into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole, known as a torus. As supermassive black holes gather matter from the torus’ inner walls, they form an accretion disk, similar to a whirlpool of water swirling around a drain. This disk grows hotter through friction, eventually becoming hot enough to emit light. 

This glowing matter can become so bright that resolving details within the galaxy’s center with ground-based telescopes is difficult. It’s made even harder due to the bright, concealing starlight within Circinus. Further, since the torus is incredibly dense, the inner region of the infalling material, heated by the black hole, is obscured from our point of view. For decades, astronomers contended with these difficulties, designing and improving models of Circinus with as much data as they could gather.

Image: Circinus Galaxy Center (Artist’s Concept)

“In order to study the supermassive black hole, despite being unable to resolve it, they had to obtain the total intensity of the inner region of the galaxy over a large wavelength range and then feed that data into models,” said lead author Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez of the University of South Carolina. 

Early models would fit the spectra from specific regions, such as the emissions from the torus, those of the accretion disk closest to the black hole, or those from the outflows, each detected at certain wavelengths of light. However, since the region could not be resolved in its entirety, these models left questions at several wavelengths. For example, some telescopes could detect an excess of infrared light, but lacked the resolution to determine where exactly it was coming from.

“Since the ‘90s, it has not been possible to explain excess infrared emissions that come from hot dust at the cores of active galaxies, meaning the models only take into account either the torus or the outflows, but cannot explain that excess,” said Lopez-Rodriguez.

Such models found that most of the emission (and, therefore, mass) close to the center came from outflows. To test this theory, then, astronomers needed two things: the ability to filter the starlight that previously prevented a deeper analysis, and the ability to distinguish the infrared emissions of the torus from those of the outflows. Webb, sensitive and technologically sophisticated enough to meet both challenges, was necessary to advance our understanding.

Webb’s innovative technique

To look into the center of Circinus, Webb needed the Aperture Masking Interferometer tool on its NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) instrument. 

On Earth, interferometers usually take the form of telescope arrays: mirrors or antennae that work together as if they were a single telescope. An interferometer does this by gathering and combining the light from whichever source it is pointed toward, causing the electromagnetic waves that make up light to “interfere” with each other (hence, “interfere-ometer”) and creating interference patterns. These patterns can be analyzed by astronomers to reconstruct the size, shape, and features of distant objects with much greater detail than non-interferometric techniques. 

The Aperture Masking Interferometer allows Webb to become an array of smaller telescopes working together as an interferometer, creating these interference patterns by itself. It does this by utilizing a special aperture made of seven small, hexagonal holes, which, like in photography, controls the amount and direction of light that enters the telescope’s detectors.

“These holes in the mask are transformed into small collectors of light that guide the light toward the detector of the camera and create an interference pattern,” said Joel Sanchez-Bermudez, co-author based at the National University of Mexico.

With new data in hand, the research team was able to construct an image from the central region’s interference patterns. To do so, they referenced data from previous observations to ensure their data from Webb was free of any artifacts. This resulted in the first extragalactic observation from an infrared interferometer in space.

“By using an advanced imaging mode of the camera, we can effectively double its resolution over a smaller area of the sky,” Sanchez-Bermudez said. “This allows us to see images twice as sharp. Instead of Webb’s 6.5-meter diameter, it’s like we are observing this region with a 13-meter space telescope.” 

The data showed that contrary to the models predicting that the infrared excess comes from the outflows, around 87% of the infrared emissions from hot dust in Circinus come from the areas closest to the black hole, while less than 1% of emissions come from hot dusty outflows. The remaining 12% comes from distances farther away that could not previously be told apart. 

“It is the first time a high-contrast mode of Webb has been used to look at an extragalactic source,” said Julien Girard, paper co-author and senior research scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “We hope our work inspires other astronomers to use the Aperture Masking Interferometer mode to study faint, but relatively small, dusty structures in the vicinity of any bright object.”

Video: Circinus Galaxy Zoom

Universe of black holes

While the mystery of Circinus’ excess emissions has been solved, there are billions of black holes in our universe. Those of different luminosities, the team notes, may have an influence on whether most of the emissions come from a black hole’s torus or their outflows.

“The intrinsic brightness of Circinus’ accretion disk is very moderate,” Lopez-Rodriguez said. “So it makes sense that the emissions are dominated by the torus. But maybe, for brighter black holes, the emissions are dominated by the outflow.” 

With this research, astronomers now have a tested technique to investigate whichever black holes they want, so long as they are bright enough for the Aperture Masking Interferometer to be useful. Studying additional targets will be essential to building a catalog of emission data to figure out if Circinus’ results were unique or characteristic of a pattern. 

“We need a statistical sample of black holes, perhaps a dozen or two dozen, to understand how mass in their accretion disks and their outflows relate to their power,” Lopez-Rodriguez said.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit: 

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and spanish translation links.

Related Images & Videos

Circinus Galaxy Center (Artist’s Concept)

This artist’s concept depicts the central engine of the Circinus galaxy, visualizing the supermassive black hole fed by a thick, dusty torus that glows in infrared light.

Circinus Galaxy (Hubble and Webb)

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows the Circinus galaxy. A close-up of its core from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the inner face of the hole of the donut-shaped disk of gas disk glowing in infrared light. The outer ring appears as dark spots.

Circinus Galaxy (Hubble and Webb Compass Image)

This image shows two views of the Circinus galaxy, one captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and the other by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph. It shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

Circinus Galaxy Zoom

This zoom-in video shows the location of the Circinus galaxy on the sky. It begins with a ground-based photo of the constellation Circinus by the late astrophotographer Akira Fujii. The video closes in on the Circinus galaxy, using views from the Digitized Sky Survey and the Dark…

Related Links

Read more: The Modes of Webb’s NIRISS

Explore more: Black Hole Resources from NASA’s Universe of Learning

Read more:  Webb’s Scientific Instruments

Video: NASA Animation Sizes Up the Universe’s Biggest Black Holes

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Webb

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Science Overview

Webb Observatory

Webb Image Galleries

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a jet of gas from a forming star shooting across the dark expanse. The bright pink and green patches running diagonally through the image are HH 80/81, a pair of Herbig-Haro (HH) objects previously observed by Hubble in 1995. The patch to the upper left is part of HH 81, and the bottom streak is part of HH 80.

Herbig-Haro objects are bright, glowing regions that occur when jets of ionized gas ejected by a newly forming star collide with slower, previously ejected outflows of gas from that star. HH 80/81’s outflow stretches over 32 light-years, making it the largest protostellar outflow known. 

Protostars are fed by infalling gas from the surrounding environment, some of which can be seen in residual “accretion disks” orbiting the forming star.  Ionized material within these disks can interact with the protostars’ strong magnetic fields, which channel some of the particles toward the pole and outward in the form of jets. 

As the jets eject material at high speeds, they can produce strong shock waves when the particles collide with previously ejected gas. These shocks heat the clouds of gas and excite the atoms, causing them to glow in what we see as HH objects.

HH 80/81 are the brightest HH objects known to exist. The source powering these luminous objects is the protostar IRAS 18162-2048. It’s roughly 20 times the mass of the Sun, and it’s the most massive protostar in the entire L291 molecular cloud. From Hubble data, astronomers measured the speed of parts of HH 80/81 to be over 1,000 km/s, the fastest recorded outflow in both radio and visual wavelengths from a young stellar object. Unusually, this is the only HH jet found that is driven by a young, very massive star, rather than a type of young, low-mass star. 

The sensitivity and resolution of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 was critical to astronomers, allowing them to study fine details, movements, and structural changes of these objects. The HH 80/81 pair lies 5,500 light-years away within the Sagittarius constellation.

New images added every day between January 12-17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news and see Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones for more images of young stellar objects.

Explore More

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Stellar Construction Zones

Explore the Night Sky

Hubble News

Editor’s Note, Jan. 11, 2026: NASA’s Pandora and the NASA-sponsored BlackCAT and SPARCS missions lifted off at 8:44 a.m. EST (5:44 a.m. PST) Sunday, Jan. 11.

A new NASA spacecraft called Pandora is awaiting launch ahead of its journey to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, and their stars.

Along for the ride are two shoebox-sized satellites called BlackCAT (Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope) and SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat), as NASA innovates with ambitious science missions that take low-cost, creative approaches to answering questions like, “How does the universe work?” and “Are we alone?”

All three missions are set to launch Jan. 11 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launch window opens at 8:19 a.m. EST (5:19 a.m. PST). SpaceX will livestream the event.

“Pandora’s goal is to disentangle the atmospheric signals of planets and stars using visible and near-infrared light,” said Elisa Quintana, Pandora’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This information can help astronomers determine if detected elements and compounds are coming from the star or the planet — an important step as we search for signs of life in the cosmos.”

BlackCAT and SPARCS are small satellites that will study the transient, high-energy universe and the activity of low-mass stars, respectively.

Pandora will observe planets as they pass in front of their stars as seen from our perspective, events called transits.

As starlight passes through a planet’s atmosphere, it interacts with substances like water and oxygen that absorb characteristic wavelengths, adding their chemical fingerprints to the signal.

But while only a small fraction of the star’s light grazes the planet, telescopes also collect the rest of the light emitted by the star’s facing side. Stellar surfaces can sport brighter and darker regions that grow, shrink, and change position over time, suppressing or magnifying signals from planetary atmospheres. Adding a further complication, some of these areas may contain the same chemicals that astronomers hope to find in the planet’s atmosphere, such as water vapor.

All these factors make it difficult to be certain that important detected molecules come from the planet alone.

Pandora will help address this problem by providing in-depth study of at least 20 exoplanets and their host stars during its initial year. The satellite will look at each planet and its star 10 times, with each observation lasting a total of 24 hours. Many of these worlds are among the over 6,000 discovered by missions like NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).

Pandora will collect visible and near-infrared light using a novel, all-aluminum 17-inch-wide (45-centimeter) telescope jointly developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Corning Incorporated in Keene, New Hampshire. Pandora’s near-infrared detector is a spare developed for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Each long observation period will capture a star’s light both before and during a transit and help determine how stellar surface features impact measurements.

“These intense studies of individual systems are difficult to schedule on high-demand missions, like Webb,” said engineer Jordan Karburn, Pandora’s deputy project manager at Livermore. “You also need the simultaneous multiwavelength measurements to pick out the star’s signal from the planet’s. The long stares with both detectors are critical for tracing the exact origins of elements and compounds scientists consider indicators of potential habitability.”

Pandora is the first satellite to launch in the agency’s Astrophysics Pioneers program, which seeks to do compelling astrophysics at a lower cost while training the next generation of leaders in space science.

After launching into low Earth orbit, Pandora will undergo a month of commissioning before embarking on its one-year prime mission. All the mission’s data will be publicly available.

“The Pandora mission is a bold new chapter in exoplanet exploration,” said Daniel Apai, an astronomy and planetary science professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson where the mission’s operations center resides. “It is the first space telescope built specifically to study, in detail, starlight filtered through exoplanet atmospheres. Pandora’s data will help scientists interpret observations from past and current missions like NASA’s Kepler and Webb space telescopes. And it will guide future projects in their search for habitable worlds.”

The BlackCAT and SPARCS missions will take off alongside Pandora through NASA’s Astrophysics CubeSat program, the latter supported by the Agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.

CubeSats are a class of nanosatellites that come in sizes that are multiples of a standard cube measuring 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) across. Both BlackCAT and SPARCS are 11.8 by 7.8 by 3.9 inches (30 by 20 by 10 centimeters). CubeSats are designed to provide cost-effective access to space to test new technologies and educate early career scientists and engineers while delivering compelling science.

The BlackCAT mission will use a wide-field telescope and a novel type of X-ray detector to study powerful cosmic explosions like gamma-ray bursts, particularly those from the early universe, and other fleeting cosmic events. It will join NASA’s network of missions that watch for these changes. Abe Falcone at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, where the satellite was designed and built, leads the mission with contributions from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Kongsberg NanoAvionics US provided the spacecraft bus.

The SPARCS CubeSat will monitor flares and other activity from low-mass stars using ultraviolet light to determine how they affect the space environment around orbiting planets. Evgenya Shkolnik at Arizona State University in Tempe leads the mission with participation from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. In addition to providing science support, JPL developed the ultraviolet detectors and the associated electronics. Blue Canyon Technologies fabricated the spacecraft bus.

Pandora is led by NASA Goddard. Livermore provides the mission’s project management and engineering. Pandora’s telescope was manufactured by Corning and developed collaboratively with Livermore, which also developed the imaging detector assemblies, the mission’s control electronics, and all supporting thermal and mechanical subsystems. The near-infrared sensor was provided by NASA Goddard. Blue Canyon Technologies provided the bus and performed spacecraft assembly, integration, and environmental testing. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley will perform the mission’s data processing. Pandora’s mission operations center is located at the University of Arizona, and a host of additional universities support the science team.

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

A new video shows the evolution of Kepler’s Supernova Remnant using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured over more than two and a half decades.

Kepler’s Supernova Remnant, named after the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, was first spotted in the night sky in 1604. Today, astronomers know that a white dwarf star exploded when it exceeded a critical mass, after pulling material from a companion star, or merging with another white dwarf. This kind of supernova is known as a Type Ia, and scientists use it to measure the expansion of the universe.

Supernova remnants, the debris fields left behind after a stellar explosion, often glow strongly in X-ray light because the material has been heated to millions of degrees from the blast. The remnant is located in our galaxy, about 17,000 light-years from Earth, allowing Chandra to make detailed  images of the debris and how it changes with time. This latest video includes its X-ray data from 2000, 2004, 2006, 2014, and 2025. This makes it the longest-spanning video that Chandra has ever released, enabled by Chandra’s longevity.

“The plot of Kepler’s story is just now beginning to unfold,” said Jessye Gassel, a graduate student at George Mason University in Virginia, who led the work. “It’s remarkable that we can watch as these remains from this shattered star crash into material already thrown out into space.” Gassel presented the new Chandra video and the associated research at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix.

The researchers used the video to show that the fastest parts of the remnant are traveling at about 13.8 million miles per hour (2% of the speed of light), moving toward the bottom of the image. Meanwhile, the slowest parts are traveling toward the top at about 4 million miles per hour (0.5% of the speed of light). This large difference in speed is because the gas that the remnant is plowing into toward the top of the image is denser than the gas toward the bottom. This gives scientists information about the environments into which this star exploded.

“Supernova explosions and the elements they hurl into space are the lifeblood of new stars and planets,” said Brian Williams of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and principal investigator of the new Chandra observations of Kepler. “Understanding exactly how they behave is crucial to knowing our cosmic history.”

The team also examined the widths of the rims forming the blast wave of the explosion. The blast wave is the leading edge of the explosion and the first to encounter material outside of the star. By measuring how wide it is and how fast it is traveling, astronomers glean more information about both the explosion of the star and its surroundings.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

To learn more about Chandra, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://www.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

Visual Description

This release features a ten second silent video of Kepler’s expanding Supernova Remnant, located in our own galaxy, about 17,000 light-years from Earth. The video was created using X-ray data gathered in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2014, and 2025. Those distinct datasets were turned into highly-detailed visuals, creating a 25-year timelapse-style video of the growing remnant.

Kepler’s Supernova Remnant was once a white dwarf star that exploded when it exceeded its critical mass. Here, in X-ray light, the remnant resembles a cloudy neon blue ring with a diagonal cross line stretching from our upper right down to our lower left. The ring appears thinner and wispier at the bottom, with a band of white arching across the top.

As the video plays, cycling through the 5 datasets, the ring subtly, but clearly, expands, like a slowly inflating balloon. In the video, this sequence is replayed several times with dates included at our lower right, to give sighted learners time to absorb the visual information. Upon close inspection, researchers have determined that the bottom of the remnant is expanding fastest; about 13.8 million miles per hour, or 2% of the speed of light. The top of the ring appears to be expanding the slowest; about 4 million miles per hour, or 0.5% of the speed of light. The large difference in speed is because the gas that the remnant is plowing into towards the top of the image is denser than the gas towards the bottom.

Collecting and interpreting this data over decades has provided information about the environment into which the white dwarf star exploded, and has helped scientists understand how remnants change with time.

Explore More

4 min read

25 Years in Orbit: Science, Innovation, and the Future of Exploration 

Article 2 days ago

6 min read

NASA Marshall Prepares for Demolition of Historic Test, Simulation Facilities

Article 3 days ago

5 min read

Scientists Identify ‘Astronomy’s Platypus’ with NASA’s Webb Telescope

After combing through NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s archive of sweeping extragalactic cosmic fields, a…

Article 3 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Chandra

Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space, the ultimate mountaintop. Above the distortion…

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Spitzer Space Telescope

Spitzer uses an ultra-sensitive infrared telescope to study asteroids, comets, planets and distant galaxies.

5 Min Read

Scientists Identify ‘Astronomy’s Platypus’ with NASA’s Webb Telescope

After combing through NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s archive of sweeping extragalactic cosmic fields, a small team of astronomers at the University of Missouri says they have identified a sample of galaxies that have a previously unseen combination of features. Principal investigator Haojing Yan compares the discovery to an infamous oddball in another branch of science: biology’s taxonomy-defying platypus.

“It seems that we’ve identified a population of galaxies that we can’t categorize, they are so odd. On the one hand they are extremely tiny and compact, like a point source, yet we do not see the characteristics of a quasar, an active supermassive black hole, which is what most distant point sources are,” said Yan.

The research was presented in a press conference at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix. 

Image A: Galaxies in CEERS Field (NIRCam image)

“I looked at these characteristics and thought, this is like looking at a platypus. You think that these things should not exist together, but there it is right in front of you, and it’s undeniable,” Yan said.

The team whittled down a sample of 2,000 sources across several Webb surveys to identify nine point-like sources that existed 12 to 12.6 billion years ago (compared to the universe’s age of 13.8 billion years). Spectral data gives astronomers more information than they can get from an image alone, and for these nine sources it doesn’t fit existing definitions. They are too far away to be stars in our own galaxy, and too faint to be quasars, which are so brilliant that they outshine their host galaxies. Though the spectra resemble the less distant “green pea” galaxies discovered in 2009, the galaxies in this sample are much more compact.

“Like spectra, the detailed genetic code of a platypus provides additional information that shows just how unusual the animal is, sharing genetic features with birds, reptiles, and mammals,” said Yan. “Together, Webb’s imaging and spectra are telling us that these galaxies have an unexpected combination of features.”

Yan explained that for typical quasars, the peaks in their characteristic spectral emission lines look like hills, with a broad base, indicating the high velocity of gas swirling around their supermassive black hole. Instead, the peaks for the “platypus population” are narrow and sharp, indicating slower gas movement. 

While there are narrow-line galaxies that host active supermassive black holes, they do not have the point-like feature of the sample Yan’s team has identified.

Image B: Galaxy CEERS 4233-42232: Comparison With Quasar Spectrum

Has Yan’s team discovered a missing link in the cosmos? Once the team determined that the objects didn’t fit the definition of a quasar, graduate student researcher Bangzheng Sun analyzed the data to see if there were signatures of star-forming galaxies.

“From the low-resolution spectra we have, we can’t rule out the possibility that these nine objects are star-forming galaxies. That data fits,” said Sun. “The strange thing in that case is that the galaxies are so tiny and compact, even though Webb has the resolving power to show us a lot of detail at this distance.”

One proposal the team suggests is that Webb, as promised, is revealing earlier stages of galaxy formation and evolution than we have ever been able to see before. It is generally accepted across the astronomy community that large, massive galaxies like our own Milky Way grew by many smaller galaxies merging together. But, Yan asks, what comes before small galaxies? 

“I think this new research is presenting us with the question, how does the process of galaxy formation first begin? Can such small, building-block galaxies be formed in a quiet way, before chaotic mergers begin, as their point-like appearance suggests?” Yan said.

To begin answering that question, as well as to determine more about the nature of their odd platypuses, the team says they need a much larger sample than nine to analyze, and with higher-resolution spectra. 

“We cast a wide net, and we found a few examples of something incredible. These nine objects weren’t the focus; they were just in the background of broad Webb surveys,” said Yan. “Now it’s time to think about the implications of that, and how we can use Webb’s capabilities to learn more.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and spanish translation links.

Related Images & Videos

Galaxies in CEERS Field (NIRCam image)

Four of the nine galaxies in the newly identified “platypus” sample were discovered in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey” (CEERS). One key feature that makes them distinct is their point-like appearance.

Galaxy CEERS 4233-42232: Comparison With Quasar Spectrum

This graphic illustrates the pronounced narrow peak of the spectra that caught researchers’ attention in a small sample of galaxies, represented here by galaxy CEERS 4233-42232. Typically, distant point-like light sources are quasars, but quasar spectra have a much broader shape.

Related Links

Read more: Webb Science: Galaxies Through Time

Explore more: ViewSpace Seeing Farther: Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Explore more: JWST’s Tiny Red Sources and the Big Questions They Raise

Read more: Webb Shows Many Early Galaxies Looked Like Pool Noodles, Surfboards

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page

Related for Kids

What is the Webb Telescope?

SpacePlace for Kids

Keep Exploring

Related Topics

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Galaxies

Galaxies Stories

Universe

6 Min Read

NASA Webb Finds Early-Universe Analog’s Unexpected Talent for Making Dust

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted two rare kinds of dust in the dwarf galaxy Sextans A, one of the most chemically primitive galaxies near the Milky Way. The finding of metallic iron dust and silicon carbide (SiC) produced by aging stars, along with tiny clumps of carbon-based molecules, shows that even when the universe had only a fraction of today’s heavy elements, stars and the interstellar medium could still forge solid dust grains. This research with Webb is reshaping ideas about how early galaxies evolved and developed the building blocks for planets, as NASA explores the secrets of the universe and our place in it.

Sextans A lies about 4 million light-years away and contains only 3 to 7 percent of the Sun’s metal content, or metallicity, the astrophysical term for elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Because the galaxy is so small, unlike other nearby galaxies, its gravitational pull is too weak to retain the heavy elements like iron and oxygen created by supernovae and aging stars.

Galaxies like it resemble those that filled the early universe just after the big bang, when the universe was made of mostly hydrogen and helium, before stars had time to enrich space with ‘metals.’ Because it is relatively close, Sextans A gives astronomers a rare chance to study individual stars and interstellar clouds under conditions similar to those shortly after the big bang.

“Sextans A is giving us a blueprint for the first dusty galaxies,” said Elizabeth Tarantino, postdoctoral researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute and lead author of the results in one of the two studies presented at a press conference at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix. “These results help us interpret the most distant galaxies imaged by Webb and understand what the universe was building with its earliest ingredients.”

Image A: Sextans A PAHs Pull-out (NIRCam and MIRI Image)

Forging dust without usual ingredients

One of those studies, published in the Astrophysical Journal, honed in on a half a dozen stars with the low-resolution spectrometer aboard Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The data collected shows the chemical fingerprints of the bloated stars very late in their evolution, called asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. Stars with masses between one and eight times that of the Sun pass through this phase.

“One of these stars is on the high-mass end of the AGB range, and stars like this usually produce silicate dust. However, at such low metallicity, we expect these stars to be nearly dust-free,” said Martha Boyer, associate astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and lead author in that second companion study. “Instead, Webb revealed a star forging dust grains made almost entirely of iron. This is something we’ve never seen in stars that are analogs of stars in the early universe.”

Silicates, the usual dust formed by oxygen-rich stars, require elements like silicon and magnesium that are almost nonexistent in Sextans A. It would be like trying to bake cookies in a kitchen without flour, sugar, and butter. 

A normal cosmic kitchen, like the Milky Way, has those crucial ingredients in the form of silicon, carbon, and iron. In a primitive kitchen, like Sextans A, where almost all of those ingredients are missing, you barely have any proverbial flour or sugar. Therefore, astronomers expected that without those key ingredients, stars in Sextans A couldn’t “bake” much dust at all. 

However, not only did they find dust, but Webb showed that one of these stars used an entirely different recipe than usual to make that dust. 

The iron-only dust, as well as silicon carbide produced by the less massive AGB stars despite the galaxy’s low silicon abundance, proves that evolved stars can still build solid material even when the typical ingredients are missing. 

“Dust in the early universe may have looked very different from the silicate grains we see today,” Boyer said. “These iron grains absorb light efficiently but leave no sharp spectral fingerprints and can contribute to the large dust reservoirs seen in far-away galaxies detected by Webb.”

Image B: Sextans A Context Image (Webb and KPNO)

Tiny clumps of organic molecules

In the companion study, currently under peer review, Webb imaged Sextans A’s interstellar medium and discovered polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are complex, carbon-based molecules and the smallest dust grains that glow in infrared light. The discovery means Sextans A is now the lowest-metallicity galaxy ever found to contain PAHs.

But, unlike the broad, sweeping PAH emission seen in metal-rich galaxies, Webb revealed PAHs in tiny, dense pockets only a few light-years across.

“Webb shows that PAHs can form and survive even in the most metal-starved galaxies, but only in small, protected islands of dense gas,” said Tarantino. 

The clumps likely represent regions where dust shielding and gas density reach just high enough to allow PAHs to form and grow, solving a decades-long mystery about why PAHs seem to vanish in metal-poor galaxies.

The team has an approved Webb Cycle 4 program to use high-resolution spectroscopy to study the detailed chemistry of Sextans A’s PAH clumps further. 

Image C: Giant Star in Dwarf Galaxy Sextans A (Spectrum)

Connecting two discoveries

Together, the results show that the early universe had more diverse dust production pathways than the more established and proven methods, like supernova explosions. Additionally, researchers now know there’s more dust than predicted at extremely low metallicities. 

“Every discovery in Sextans A reminds us that the early universe was more inventive than we imagined,” said Boyer. “Clearly stars found a way to make the building blocks of planets long before galaxies like our own existed.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and spanish translation links.

Related Images & Videos

Sextans A PAHs Pull-out (NIRCam and MIRI Image)

Images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope of the dwarf galaxy Sextans A reveal polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), large carbon-based molecules that can be a signifier of star formation. The inset at the top right zooms in on those PAHs, which are represented in green.

Sextans A Context Image (Webb and KPNO)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s image of a portion of the nearby Sextans A galaxy is put into context using a ground-based image from the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

Sextans A PAHs Pull-out (Compass Image)

This image of dwarf galaxy Sextans A, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

Giant Star in Dwarf Galaxy Sextans A (Spectrum)

This graph shows a spectrum of an Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) star in the Sextans A galaxy. It compares data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with models of mostly silicate-free dust and dust containing at least 5% silicates.

Related Links

Read more: Webb Science: Galaxies Through Time

Explore more: Massive stars: Engines of Creation

Explore more: Wolf-Rayet Apep Visualization

Read more: Spectroscopy 101

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page

Related for Kids

What is the Webb Telescope?

SpacePlace for Kids

Keep Exploring

Related Topics

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Galaxies

Galaxies Stories

Universe

4 Min Read

NASA Hubble Helps Detect ‘Wake’ of Betelgeuse’s Elusive Companion Star

Using new observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, astronomers tracked the influence of a recently discovered companion star, Siwarha, on the gas around Betelgeuse. The research, from scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), reveals a trail of dense gas swirling through Betelgeuse’s vast, extended atmosphere, shedding light on why the giant star’s brightness and atmosphere have changed in strange and unusual ways.

The results of the new study were presented Monday at a news conference at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix and are accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The team detected Siwarha’s wake by carefully tracking changes in the star’s light over nearly eight years. These changes show the effects of the previously unconfirmed companion as it plows through the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse. This discovery resolves one of the biggest mysteries about the giant star, helping scientists to explain how it behaves and evolves while opening new doors to understanding other massive stars nearing the end of their lives.

Located roughly 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star so large that more than 400 million Suns could fit inside. Because of its enormous size and proximity, Betelgeuse is one of the few stars whose surface and surrounding atmosphere can be directly observed by astronomers, making it an important and accessible laboratory for studying how giant stars age, lose mass, and eventually explode as supernovae.

Using NASA’s Hubble and ground-based telescopes at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, the team was able to see a pattern of changes in Betelgeuse, which provided clear evidence of a long-suspected companion star and its impact on the red supergiant’s outer atmosphere. Those include changes in the star’s spectrum, or the specific colors of light given off by different elements, and the speed and direction of gases in the outer atmosphere due to a trail of denser material, or wake. This trail appears just after the companion crosses in front of Betelgeuse every six years, or about 2,100 days, confirming theoretical models.

“It’s a bit like a boat moving through water. The companion star creates a ripple effect in Betelgeuse’s atmosphere that we can actually see in the data,” said Andrea Dupree, an astronomer at the CfA, and the lead study author. “For the first time, we’re seeing direct signs of this wake, or trail of gas, confirming that Betelgeuse really does have a hidden companion shaping its appearance and behavior.”

For decades, astronomers have tracked changes in Betelgeuse’s brightness and surface features in hopes of figuring out why the star behaves the way it does. Curiosity intensified after the giant star appeared to “sneeze” and became unexpectedly faint in 2020. Two distinct periods of variation in the star were especially puzzling for scientists: a short 400-day cycle, recently attributed to pulsations within the star itself, and the long, 2,100-day secondary period.

Until now, scientists have considered everything from large convection cells and clouds of dust to magnetic activity, and the possibility of a hidden companion star. Recent studies concluded that the long secondary period was best explained by the presence of a low-mass companion orbiting deep within Betelgeuse’s atmosphere, and another team of scientists reported a possible detection, but until now, astronomers lacked the evidence to prove what they believed was happening. Now, for the first time, they have firm evidence that a companion is disrupting the atmosphere of this supergiant star.

“The idea that Betelgeuse had an undetected companion has been gaining in popularity for the past several years, but without direct evidence, it was an unproven theory,” said Dupree. “With this new direct evidence, Betelgeuse gives us a front-row seat to watch how a giant star changes over time. Finding the wake from its companion means we can now understand how stars like this evolve, shed material, and eventually explode as supernovae.”

With Betelgeuse now eclipsing its companion from our point of view, astronomers are planning new observations for its next emergence in 2027. This breakthrough may also help explain similar mysteries in other giant and supergiant stars.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

Related Images & Videos

Betelgeuse and Wake of its Companion Star (Artist’s Concept)

This artist’s concept shows the red supergiant star Betelgeuse and an orbiting companion star. The companion, which is orbiting clockwise from this point of view, generates a dusty wake that expands outward.

Betelgeuse: Effect of Companion Star Wake

Scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to look for evidence of a wake being generated by a companion star orbiting Betelgeuse. The team found a noticeable difference in light shown in the lefthand peak when the companion star was at different points in its orbit.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble Science Highlights

Hubble Images

Hubble News

Celebrate the New Year with the “Champagne Cluster,” a galaxy cluster seen in this new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes.

Astronomers discovered this galaxy cluster Dec. 31, 2020. The date, combined with the bubble-like appearance of the galaxies and the superheated gas seen with Chandra observations (represented in purple), inspired the scientists to nickname the galaxy cluster the Champagne Cluster, a much easier-to-remember name than its official designation of RM J130558.9+263048.4.

The new composite image shows that the Champagne Cluster is actually two galaxy clusters in the process of merging to form an even larger cluster. Multimillion-degree gas in galaxy clusters usually takes on an approximately circular or moderately oval shape in images, but in the Champagne Cluster it is more widely spread from top to bottom, revealing the presence of the two colliding clusters. Two clumps of individual galaxies making up the colliding clusters can be seen toward the top and bottom of center. (The image has been rotated clockwise by 90 degrees so that North points to the right.)

The hot gas outweighs the combined mass in all of the hundred-plus individual galaxies in the newly forming cluster. The clusters also contain even larger amounts of unseen dark matter, the mysterious substance that pervades the universe.

In addition to the Chandra data, this new image contains optical data from the Legacy Surveys (red, green, and blue), which consists of three individual and complementary surveys from various telescopes in Arizona and Chile.

The Champagne Cluster is a member of a rare class of merging clusters, which includes the well-known Bullet Cluster, where the hot gas in each cluster has collided and slowed down, and there is a clear separation between the hot gas and the most massive galaxy in each cluster.

By comparing the data with computer simulations, astronomers came up with two possibilities for the history of the Champagne Cluster. One is that the two clusters already collided with each other over two billion years ago. After the collision the two clusters traveled outward and then were pulled back toward each other by gravity, and are now heading into a second collision. The other idea is that a single collision occurred about 400 million years ago, and the two clusters are now traveling away from each other after that collision. Researchers think further studies of the Champagne Cluster can potentially teach them how dark matter reacts to a high-speed collision.

A paper describing these results recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The authors of the paper are Faik Bouhrik, Rodrigo Stancioli, and David Wittman, all from the University of California, Davis.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://www.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of a galaxy cluster discovered on New Year’s Eve day, 2020.

The cluster appears here as a large collection of brilliant white lights, each a distinct galaxy. A neon purple cloud stretches across the cluster’s crowded core. Many of the hundred-plus galaxies in the cluster are in two clumps of galaxies towards the top and bottom of center. Some are encircled by a faint glowing haze, while a few foreground stars gleam with diffraction spikes. Some of the smaller galaxies are tinted blue, orange, or red, and some appear more oblong than round, suggesting spiral shapes viewed edge-on.

The neon purple cloud sits at the heart of the image, surrounding the most densely-packed part of the cluster. This cloud, which spreads vertically across the cluster, is multimillion-degree gas observed by Chandra. The two clumps of observable galaxies, and the spread of superheated gas, reveal that the Champagne Cluster is in fact two clusters in the process of colliding.

With the two clusters of sparkling light clinking together, and the auspicious discovery date, astronomers have dubbed the merged cosmic structure “The Champagne Cluster”.

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

Explore More

5 min read

NASA’s Chandra Finds Small Galaxies May Buck the Black Hole Trend

Article 4 weeks ago

5 min read

Painting Galaxy Clusters by Numbers (and Physics)

Article 4 weeks ago

11 min read

Black Hole Eats Star: NASA Missions Discover Record-Setting Blast

Editor’s note, Dec. 11, 2025: This story was updated to include an additional partner’s research…

Article 4 weeks ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Chandra

Space Telescope

Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a space observatory built to discover the secrets of some of the most…

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

4 Min Read

NASA’s Hubble Reveals Largest Found Chaotic Birthplace of Planets

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have imaged the largest protoplanetary disk ever observed circling a young star. For the first time in visible light, Hubble has revealed the disk is unexpectedly chaotic and turbulent, with wisps of material stretching much farther above and below the disk than astronomers have seen in any similar system. Strangely, more extended filaments are only visible on one side of the disk. The findings, which published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal, mark a new milestone for Hubble and shed light on how planets may form in extreme environments, as NASA’s missions lead humanity’s exploration of the universe and our place in it.

Located roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth, IRAS 23077+6707, nicknamed “Dracula’s Chivito,” spans nearly 400 billion miles — 40 times the diameter of our solar system to the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt of cometary bodies. The disk obscures the young star within it, which scientists believe may be either a hot, massive star, or a pair of stars. And the enormous disk is not only the largest known planet-forming disk; it’s also shaping up to be one of the most unusual.

“The level of detail we’re seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging, and these new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,” said lead author Kristina Monsch of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). “We’re seeing this disk nearly edge-on and its wispy upper layers and asymmetric features are especially striking. Both Hubble and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have glimpsed similar structures in other disks, but IRAS 23077+6707 provides us with an exceptional perspective — allowing us to trace its substructures in visible light at an unprecedented level of detail. This makes the system a unique, new laboratory for studying planet formation and the environments where it happens.”

The nickname “Dracula’s Chivito” playfully reflects the heritage of its researchers—one from Transylvania and another from Uruguay, where the national dish is a sandwich called a chivito. The edge-on disk resembles a hamburger, with a dark central lane flanked by glowing top and bottom layers of dust and gas.

Puzzling asymmetry

The impressive height of these features wasn’t the only thing that captured the attention of scientists. The new images revealed that vertically imposing filament-like features appear on just one side of the disk, while the other side appears to have a sharp edge and no visible filaments. This peculiar, lopsided structure suggests that dynamic processes, like the recent infall of dust and gas, or interactions with its surroundings, are shaping the disk.

“We were stunned to see how asymmetric this disk is,” said co-investigator Joshua Bennett Lovell, also an astronomer at the CfA. “Hubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets — processes that we don’t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way.”

All planetary systems form from disks of gas and dust encircling young stars. Over time, the gas accretes onto the star, and planets emerge from the remaining material. IRAS 23077+6707 may represent a scaled-up version of our early solar system, with a disk mass estimated at 10 to 30 times that of Jupiter — ample material for forming multiple gas giants. This, plus the new findings, makes it an exceptional case for studying the birth of planetary systems.

“In theory, IRAS 23077+6707 could host a vast planetary system,” said Monsch. “While planet formation may differ in such massive environments, the underlying processes are likely similar. Right now, we have more questions than answers, but these new images are a starting point for understanding how planets form over time and in different environments.”

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

Related Images & Videos

Dracula’s Chivito (IRAS 23077+6707)

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the largest planet-forming disk ever observed around a young star. It spans nearly 400 billion miles — 40 times the diameter of our solar system.

Dracula’s Chivito (IRAS 23077+6707) Compass Image

Image of Dracula’s Chivito captured by Hubble’s WFC3 instrument, with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

Hubble Spots Giant Vampire Sandwich? Video

Dracula’s Chivito isn’t just the largest protoplanetary disk ever imaged, it’s also a window into how planets are born and how systems like our solar system may have formed.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble Science Highlights

Hubble Images

Hubble News

A sideways spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. Located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo (the Maiden), NGC 4388 is a resident of the Virgo galaxy cluster. This enormous cluster of galaxies contains more than a thousand members and is the nearest large galaxy cluster to the Milky Way.

NGC 4388 appears to tilt at an extreme angle relative to our point of view, giving us a nearly edge-on prospect of the galaxy. This perspective reveals a curious feature that wasn’t visible in a previous Hubble image of this galaxy released in 2016: a plume of gas from the galaxy’s nucleus, here seen billowing out from the galaxy’s disk toward the lower-right corner of the image. But where did this outflow come from, and why does it glow?

The answer likely lies in the vast stretches of space that separate the galaxies of the Virgo cluster. Though the space between galaxies appears empty, this space is occupied by hot wisps of gas called the intracluster medium. As NGC 4388 moves within the Virgo cluster, it plunges through the intracluster medium. Pressure from hot intracluster gas whisks away gas from within NGC 4388’s disk, causing it to trail behind as NGC 4388 moves.

The source of the ionizing energy that causes this gas cloud to glow is more uncertain. Researchers suspect that some of the energy comes from the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole spins gas around it into a superheated disk. The blazing radiation from this disk might ionize the gas closest to the galaxy, while shock waves might be responsible for ionizing filaments of gas farther out.

This image incorporates new data, including several additional wavelengths of light, that bring the ionized gas cloud into view. The image holds data from several observing programs that aim to illuminate galaxies with active black holes at their centers.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Explore the Night Sky

Hubble & Citizen Science

Hubble Science Operations

Launched in March, NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope has completed its first infrared map of the entire sky in 102 colors. While not visible to the human eye, these 102 infrared wavelengths of light are prevalent in the cosmos, and observing the entire sky this way enables scientists to answer big questions, including how a dramatic event that occurred in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang influenced the 3D distribution of hundreds of millions of galaxies in our universe. In addition, scientists will use the data to study how galaxies have changed over the universe’s nearly 14 billion-year history and learn about the distribution of key ingredients for life in our own galaxy.  

“It’s incredible how much information SPHEREx has collected in just six months — information that will be especially valuable when used alongside our other missions’ data to better understand our universe,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We essentially have 102 new maps of the entire sky, each one in a different wavelength and containing unique information about the objects it sees. I think every astronomer is going to find something of value here, as NASA’s missions enable the world to answer fundamental questions about how the universe got its start, and how it changed to eventually create a home for us in it.” 

Circling Earth about 14½ times a day, SPHEREx (which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) travels from north to south, passing over the poles. Each day it takes about 3,600 images along one circular strip of the sky, and as the days pass and the planet moves around the Sun, SPHEREx’s field of view shifts as well. After six months, the observatory has looked out into space in every direction, capturing the entire sky in 360 degrees. 

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission began mapping the sky in May and completed its first all-sky mosaic in December. It will complete three additional all-sky scans during its two-year primary mission, and merging those maps together will increase the sensitivity of the measurements. The entire dataset is freely available to scientists and the public.  

“SPHEREx is a mid-sized astrophysics mission delivering big science,” said JPL Director Dave Gallagher. “It’s a phenomenal example of how we turn bold ideas into reality, and in doing so, unlock enormous potential for discovery.”  

Superpowered telescope 

Each of the 102 colors detected by SPHEREx represents a wavelength of infrared light, and each wavelength provides unique information about the galaxies, stars, planet-forming regions, and other cosmic features therein. For example, dense clouds of dust in our galaxy where stars and planets form radiate brightly in certain wavelengths but emit no light (and are therefore totally invisible) in others. The process of separating the light from a source into its component wavelengths is called spectroscopy.  

And while a handful of previous missions has also mapped the entire sky, such as NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, none have done so in nearly as many colors as SPHEREx. By contrast, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can do spectroscopy with significantly more wavelengths of light than SPHEREx, but with a field of view thousands of times smaller. The combination of colors and such a wide field of view is why SPHEREx is so powerful. 

“The superpower of SPHEREx is that it captures the whole sky in 102 colors about every six months. That’s an amazing amount of information to gather in a short amount of time,” said Beth Fabinsky, the SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think this makes us the mantis shrimp of telescopes, because we have an amazing multicolor visual detection system and we can also see a very wide swath of our surroundings.” 

To accomplish this feat, SPHEREx uses six detectors, each paired with a specially designed filter that contains a gradient of 17 colors. That means every image taken with those six detectors contains 102 colors (six times 17). It also means that every all-sky map that SPHEREx produces is really 102 maps, each in a different color.  

The observatory will use those colors to measure the distance to hundreds of millions of galaxies. Though the positions of most of those galaxies have already been mapped in two dimensions by other observatories, SPHEREx’s map will be in 3D, enabling scientists to measure subtle variations in the way galaxies are clustered and distributed across the universe.  

Those measurements will offer insights into an event that took place in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang. In this moment, called inflation, the universe expanded by a trillion-trillionfold. Nothing like it has occurred in the universe since, and scientists want to understand it better. The SPHEREx mission’s approach is one way to help in that effort. 

More about SPHEREx 

The SPHEREx mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The telescope and the spacecraft bus were built by BAE Systems. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data is being conducted by a team of scientists at 10 institutions across the U.S., and in South Korea and Taiwan. Data is processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset is publicly available. 

For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit: 

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

News Media Contacts

Calla Cofield 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
626-808-2469 
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov 

2025-144

Explore More

2 min read

Hubble Glimpses Galactic Gas Making a Getaway

A sideways spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. Located about 60…

Article 5 hours ago

5 min read

NASA’s Hubble Sees Asteroids Colliding at Nearby Star for First Time

Like a game of cosmic bumper cars, scientists think the early days of our solar…

Article 22 hours ago

4 min read

NASA’s Fermi Spots Young Star Cluster Blowing Gamma-Ray Bubbles

For the first time, astronomers using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have traced a budding…

Article 1 day ago

Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

SPHEREx

Big Bang and the Evolution of the Universe

Precisely measure the cosmological parameters governing the evolution of the universe and test the inflation hypothesis of the Big Bang…

Galaxies

Galaxies consist of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust, all bound together by gravity. The largest contain…

Astrobiology