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New Glenn Rocket Launch Tests Jared Isaacman’s Commercial Space Vision for NASA
NASA’s presumptive next leader wants to outsource more of the space agency’s interplanetary science. The newly launched ESCAPADE mission to Mars offers a sanity check for those plans
Oldest ever RNA sample recovered from woolly mammoth
Oldest ever RNA sample recovered from woolly mammoth
Woolly Mammoth Unlocks Reveals the World’s Oldest RNA
RNA has been extracted from an ancient woolly mammoth, providing insight into its last moments on Earth
Stranded Chinese Astronauts Return to Earth, but Space Junk Threats Remain
The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft was too damaged to bring its crew home from China’s Tiangong space station. Those astronauts have now returned via the Shenzhou 21 craft, leaving its crew without a return ride until the nation sends a new spacecraft to the station
Mystery deepens as isolated galaxy forms stars with no obvious fuel
Mystery deepens as isolated galaxy forms stars with no obvious fuel
Have Astronomers Discovered the First Generation of Stars?
With the help of an intervening galaxy cluster, astronomers have found what might be the first generation of stars — but the jury's still out.
The post Have Astronomers Discovered the First Generation of Stars? appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
A solar prominence hovers over the Sun
The Sun is always mesmerising to watch, but Solar Orbiter captured a special treat on camera: a dark ‘prominence’ sticking out from the side of the Sun.
The dark-looking material is dense plasma (charged gas) trapped by the Sun's complex magnetic field. It looks dark because it is cooler than its surroundings, being around 10 000 °C compared to the surrounding million-degree plasma.
When viewed against the background of space, the hovering plasma is referred to as a prominence. When viewed against the Sun's surface, it is called a filament. (In this image you can see examples of both.)
Solar prominences and filaments extend for tens of thousands of kilometres, several times the diameter of Earth. They can last days or even months. This video shows one hour of footage, sped up to make movement more clearly visible.
Solar Orbiter recorded this video with its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on 17 March 2025. At the time, the spacecraft was around 63 million km from the Sun, similar to planet Mercury.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. The EUI instrument is led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB).
[Video description: Close-up video of the Sun, filling the left half of the view, its surface covered what looks like moving, glowing hairs accompanied by some short-lived bright arcs. Protruding to the right, in the centre of the video, is dark material that looks almost feathery, with thin streaks flowing both away from and towards the Sun.]
Miniature Binary Star System Hosts Three Earth-sized Exoplanets
A new discovery adds to the growing menagerie of exoplanets. These days, word of a new exoplanet discovery raises nary an eyebrow. To date, the current number of known exoplanets beyond our solar system stands at confirmed 6,148 worlds and counting. But a recent study out of the University of Liège in Belgium titled Two Warm Earth-sized Planets and an Earth-sized Candidate in the Binary System TOI-2267 shows just how strange these worlds can be.
Week in images: 10-14 November 2025
Week in images: 10-14 November 2025
Discover our week through the lens
Hubble Studies Star Ages in Colorful Galaxy
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2 min read
Hubble Studies Star Ages in Colorful Galaxy This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy called NGC 6000. ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko; Acknowledgment: M. H. Özsaraç
Stars of all ages are on display in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the sparkling spiral galaxy called NGC 6000, located 102 million light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
NGC 6000 has a glowing yellow center and glittering blue outskirts. These colors reflect differences in the average ages, masses, and temperatures of the galaxy’s stars. At the heart of the galaxy, the stars tend to be older and smaller. Less massive stars are cooler than more massive stars, and somewhat counterintuitively, cooler stars are redder, while hotter stars are bluer. Farther out along NGC 6000’s spiral arms, brilliant star clusters host young, massive stars that appear distinctly blue.
Hubble collected the data for this image while surveying the sites of recent supernova explosions in nearby galaxies. NGC 6000 hosted two recent supernovae: SN 2007ch in 2007 and SN 2010as in 2010. Using Hubble’s sensitive detectors, researchers can discern the faint glow of supernovae years after the initial explosion. These observations help constrain the masses of supernovae progenitor stars and can indicate if they had any stellar companions.
By zooming in to the right side of the galaxy’s disk in this image, you can see a set of four thin yellow and blue lines. These lines are an asteroid in our solar system that was drifting across Hubble’s field of view as it gazed at NGC 6000. The four lines are due to four different exposures recorded one after another with slight pauses in between. Image processors combined these four exposures to create the final image. The lines appear dashed with alternating colors because each exposure used a filter to collect very specific wavelengths of light, in this case around red and blue. Having these separate exposures of particular wavelengths is important to study and compare stars by their colors — but it also makes asteroid interlopers very obvious!
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubbleMedia Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble News
Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble Online Activities
Hubble Studies Star Ages in Colorful Galaxy
- Hubble Home
- Overview
- Impact & Benefits
- Science
- Observatory
- Team
- Multimedia
- News
- More
2 min read
Hubble Studies Star Ages in Colorful Galaxy This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy called NGC 6000. ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko; Acknowledgment: M. H. ÖzsaraçStars of all ages are on display in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the sparkling spiral galaxy called NGC 6000, located 102 million light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
NGC 6000 has a glowing yellow center and glittering blue outskirts. These colors reflect differences in the average ages, masses, and temperatures of the galaxy’s stars. At the heart of the galaxy, the stars tend to be older and smaller. Less massive stars are cooler than more massive stars, and somewhat counterintuitively, cooler stars are redder, while hotter stars are bluer. Farther out along NGC 6000’s spiral arms, brilliant star clusters host young, massive stars that appear distinctly blue.
Hubble collected the data for this image while surveying the sites of recent supernova explosions in nearby galaxies. NGC 6000 hosted two recent supernovae: SN 2007ch in 2007 and SN 2010as in 2010. Using Hubble’s sensitive detectors, researchers can discern the faint glow of supernovae years after the initial explosion. These observations help constrain the masses of supernovae progenitor stars and can indicate if they had any stellar companions.
By zooming in to the right side of the galaxy’s disk in this image, you can see a set of four thin yellow and blue lines. These lines are an asteroid in our solar system that was drifting across Hubble’s field of view as it gazed at NGC 6000. The four lines are due to four different exposures recorded one after another with slight pauses in between. Image processors combined these four exposures to create the final image. The lines appear dashed with alternating colors because each exposure used a filter to collect very specific wavelengths of light, in this case around red and blue. Having these separate exposures of particular wavelengths is important to study and compare stars by their colors — but it also makes asteroid interlopers very obvious!
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubbleMedia Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble News
Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble Online Activities
Raccoons Are Showing Early Signs of Domestication
City-dwelling raccoons seem to be evolving a shorter snout—a telltale feature of our pets and other domesticated animals
Demand for JWST's Observational Time Hits A New Peak
Getting time on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the dream of many astronomers. The most powerful space telescope currently in our arsenal, the JWST has been in operation for almost four years at this point, after a long and tumultuous development time. Now, going into its fifth year of operation, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the organization that operates the science and mission operations centers for the JWST has received its highest number ever of submission for observational programs. Now a team of volunteer judges and the institute's scientists just have to pick which ones will actually get telescope time.
The 19 best Christmas gifts for science lovers (and nerds)
The 19 best Christmas gifts for science lovers (and nerds)
These are the World's Best Cities for Walking and Cycling
Data from 11,587 cities show that, rain or shine, some places are just better for bikes and pedestrians
We Had a Name for ‘Galaxies’ before We Knew They Existed
Centuries before other galaxies were known to exist, astronomers called them “spiral nebulas.” Today the defunct term still sparks confusion