by The ring-like shell of the first recorded supernova was captured by the Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The glowing debris marks where a white dwarf star exploded more than 1,800 years ago and was recorded by Chinese astronomers in the year 185.
This artist’s illustration shows the large, inflated star Gaia17bpp being partially eclipsed by a cloud of dust surrounding its mysterious smaller companion star.
An image of the Sh2-54 nebula was taken in infrared light using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The Gemini North telescope captured a pair of galaxies, NGC 4567 (top) and NGC 4568 (bottom), as they collided. Nicknamed the Butterfly Galaxies, they will eventually merge as a single galaxy in 500 million years.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a spectacular head-on view of the large design spiral galaxy NGC 3631, located approximately 53 million light-years away.
This collection of 37 Hubble Space Telescope images, taken between 2003 and 2021, includes galaxies that all host both Cepheid variables and supernovae. They act as cosmic tools to measure astronomical distance and refine the rate of expansion of the universe.
This is the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope project.
Two galaxies, NGC 1512 and NGC 1510, appear to be dancing in this image from the Dark Energy Camera. The galaxies have been merging for 400 million years, igniting waves of star formation and distorting both galaxies.
This illustration shows the Exocometer orbiting the nearby star Beta Pictoris. Astronomers have discovered at least 30 exocomets in the system, which also hosts two exoplanets.
This artist’s impression shows a two-star system, with a white dwarf (foreground) and a companion star (background), where a micronova explosion could occur. Although these stellar explosions are smaller than supernovae, they can be intensely powerful.
This sequence of images shows how the solid core (or “dirty snowball” heart) of Comet C/2014 UN271 was isolated from a huge shell of dust and gas to measure it. Scientists believe that the core may be 85 miles across.
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken an image of the most distant star to date: Earendel, which is almost 13 billion light-years away.
Astronomers have imaged a space phenomenon called strange radio circles using Australia’s SKA Pathfinder telescope. These rings of space are so massive that they measure about a million light-years across — 16 times larger than our Milky Way.
This illustration shows what happens when two large celestial bodies collide in space and create a debris cloud. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope saw a cloud of debris blocking the light from the star HD 166191.
About 4.4 million space objects billions of light years away have been mapped by astronomers, including 1 million space objects that had not been discovered before. The observations were made by the sensitive Low Frequency Array telescope, known as LOFAR.
An unusual triangular shape formed by two galaxies crashing together in a cosmic tug of war has been captured in a new image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The head-on collision between the two galaxies led to a star-forming frenzy, creating “the strange triangle of newly minted stars.”
This image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A combines some of the first X-ray data collected by NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, shown in magenta, with high-energy X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, in blue.
This image shows the Milky Way seen from Earth. The star icon shows the position of a mysterious repeating transient. The spinning space object emitted radiation three times an hour and became the brightest source of radio waves visible from Earth, acting as a celestial beacon.
This Hubble Space Telescope shows the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, which is filled with young stars. The bright center, surrounded by pink clouds, indicates the location of the black hole and regions of star birth.
This image shows the Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves.
This artist’s impression shows a red supergiant star in the last year of its life emitting a bloated cloud of gas, undergoing significant internal changes before exploding in a supernova.
