Few photos make me stop and ponder as much as those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. And the latest of these, published by NASA, shows a majestic spiral galaxy that the space agency describes as “glittering with star clusters” and humongous clouds of cosmic gas.

NGC 3137 is a spiral galaxy which, in cosmic terms, is located down the road from Earth, just 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump). NASA says that the latest image, crafted from observations across six different color bands, reveals the nearby galaxy in “fantastic detail.”

The center of the galaxy is home to an enormous black hole some 60 million times more massive than our Sun, says NASA, and this is encircled by a network of fine, dusty clouds. However, what caught astronomers’ eye were the dense clusters of bright blue stars and glowing red gas clouds “peppering” the galaxy, and which NASA says “signal the presence of hot, young stars still encased in their birth nebulae.”

NGC 3137 is especially interesting to astronomers because it travels through space within a group of galaxies thought to be similar to the Local Group, the galaxy group that contains the Milky Way. Similar to the Local Group, the NGC 3175 group contains two large spiral galaxies: NGC 3137 and NGC 3175, which Hubble has also observed.

NASA says that NGC 3137 is highly inclined from our point of view, giving a “unique perspective on its loose, feathery spiral structure.” Combined with its close proximity to Earth, this makes the galaxy an ideal target for astronomers studying the cycle of stellar birth and death, as well as for shedding light on a galactic system similar to our own.

Hubble's new image is just one of the ways the telescope, which has been in orbit since 1999 is still impressing today.

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If you want to view the images from the NASA telescope designed to replace the longstanding Hubble Telescope at full resolution, you’d better start stocking up on 4K TVs. Images from the 300MP Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are so large that viewing one image at full resolution would take more than 500,000 4K TVs.

NASA has now finished building, assembling, and testing the new Roman telescope, which means the new tech could launch several months earlier than the original May 2027 target date. NASA now projects that the telescope could launch as early as September 2026.

NASA announced that the testing for the telescope was completed earlier this week. Now, NASA needs to get the telescope, which at 42 feet high, is the largest ever built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, from where it was built, north of Washington DC, to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the telescope will launch on a SpaceX rocket.

The Roman has big shoes to fill, as the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, has led to a number of discoveries and is still in operation, despite being originally predicted to only have a 15-year lifespan.

But, where the Hubble has two 2,048x4096 pixel sensors on the Wide Field Camera, Roman has 18 square 4K sensors. That resolution boost is designed to see more of the sky. NASA says the Roman will capture a patch of sky that’s 100 times larger than the Hubble’s field of view. That, mixed with faster processing, means that NASA expects the Roman telescope to do in about a year what would have taken Hubble 2,000 years.

Roman can also see more infrared light than Hubble, which could potentially help researchers detect fainter stars and systems. NASA says the Roman is expected to create one of the deepest views into our galaxy, leading to the study of stars numbering in the “hundreds of millions.”

While Roman is expected to lead to many firsts once launched, the assembly is already breaking records. To celebrate the largest ever telescope built at Goddard, NASA allowed a drone into the clean room for the first time to help capture a sense of how large the Roman really is.

The Roman Telescope – named after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy and first female executive, Nancy Grace Roman – could launch as early as September 2026.

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It’s almost 36 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched and NASA continues to blow minds with the unbelievable and often iconic images captured by the device.

The latest of these to be shared by the space agency is of IC 486, a barred spiral galaxy that sits at the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), roughly 380 million light-years from Earth, far beyond any distance the human mind can imagine.

To try to put this into context, it would take a spaceship travelling at the speed of light close to 5 million human lifetimes to reach the galaxy.

NASA has classified IC 486 as a barred spiral galaxy due to the central bar-shaped structure from which its spiral arms stem. Within the centre of the bar lies IC 486’s active galactic nucleus (AGN), which emits a glowing white light NASA has described as “ethereal”.

As if IC 486 wasn’t already mind-boggling enough, powering its AGN is a supermassive black hole more than 100 million times the mass of our Sun.

An accretion disk – a swirling mass of cosmic gas and dust – revolves around the black hole and generates, what NASA describes as “intense radiation”, including X-rays, responsible for the “ethereal” light that outshines the rest of the galaxy.

This latest Hubble image was pieced together using data from two separate observations that survey nearby galaxies to record high-quality images of their central black holes and the stars near their cores.

NASA combined Hubble’s imaging capabilities with the survey data to create “detailed comparisons” of how stars, gas, dust, and black holes interact in galaxy centers.

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Discover how, during its 34th year of operation, Hubble uncovered an “unusual” spiral galaxy that didn’t quite fit scientific descriptions. Or, take a look at the best cameras for astrophotography.

New tech often dominates the headlines, but a recent photo series shared by NASA is only possible because of the tech’s age. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has re-shot a photo of the colorful Crab Nebula 25 years later, creating a series of images that illustrate how rapidly the night sky can change.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit since 1999, making it the oldest space telescope still in service. That longevity allows the telescope to make direct comparisons over time.

In 1999, Hubble photographed the Crab Nebula, a remnant of a supernova that humans first took note of in 1054 as a star that was so bright it was temporarily visible during the day.

But, the Hubble photographed the Crab Nebula again in 2024, and the newly released comparison images are giving scientists insights into how the nebula has changed over time. “Hubble is the only telescope with the combination of longevity and resolution capable of capturing these detailed changes,” NASA wrote.

Comparing the two images shows how the Crab Nebula has expanded outward – at a rate of 3.4 million miles per hour. But, to scientists, changes in color speak to changes in temperature and the composition of the gases

“We tend to think of the sky as being unchanging, immutable,” said William Blair, an astronomer with Johns Hopkins University and the study’s lead author. “However, with the longevity of the Hubble Space Telescope, even an object like the Crab Nebula is revealed to be in motion, still expanding from the explosion nearly a millennium ago."

Video credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, William Blair (JHU) / Video: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

While the Hubble Space Telescope is now 35 years old, the telescope's cameras have been updated over the years by astronauts, the last one being the Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009. That means the comparison images are also giving researchers a reminder of how the tech and camera resolution have changed from the 1999 photograph to the one shot in 2024.

That’s pretty good considering NASA originally expected the Hubble to have a 15-year lifespan! Researchers are continuing to study the data, including comparing the images to the infrared light images of the same nebula shot with the James Webb Space Telescope.

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The Hubble Space Telescope may be more than 30 years old, but the orbiting telescope continues to outdo its old self. Case in point: the Hubble Space Telescope just captured its sharpest view yet of the Egg Nebula, a dying star located about 1,000 light-years away.

NASA shared the photo this week, showing the star surrounded by a freshly ejected cloud of stardust that is both artistic and scientific.

The Egg Nebula gets its name from the central star – which resembles a yolk – and its cloud of surrounding dust that looks like egg white. The star is highlighted both by rings of dust and two beams of light, creating an X shape.

While that light and dust creates an artistic shape, the image is also giving researchers clues to what’s happening to the pre-planetary nebula. The shape of the dust, NASA explains, hints at gravity from a hidden companion star (or perhaps stars plural) that are buried in the dust.

The Egg Nebula is not just in the pre-planetary stage – a transitional stage of gas and dust formed from a dying star – but is also the first, closest, and youngest of its kind. While the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the Egg Nebula before, the latest photo uses data from a 2012 image from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera to get an even clearer image.

“The symmetrical patterns captured by Hubble are too orderly to result from a violent explosion like a supernova,” NASA writes. “Instead, the arcs, lobes, and central dust cloud likely stem from a coordinated series of poorly understood sputtering events in the carbon-enriched core of the dying star.

“Aged stars like these forged and released the dust that eventually seeded future star systems, such as our own solar system, which coalesced into Earth and other rocky planets 4.5 billion years ago.”

The latest image, captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows both science and art in its structure.

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The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 35th birthday this month - and to celebrate, it has released a stunning new image taken of a section of one of the largest of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies.

Hubble has taken photos of NGC 346 before - a young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. But the new image includes new data and is the first to combine Hubble observations made at infrared, optical, and ultraviolet wavelengths into an intricately detailed view of this "vibrant star-forming factory" that lies some 200,000 light-years away.

"NGC 346 is home to more than 2500 newborn stars", we are told. "The cluster’s most massive stars, which are many times more massive than our Sun, blaze with an intense blue light in this image. The glowing pink nebula and snakelike dark clouds are sculpted by the luminous stars in the cluster"

"Hubble’s exquisite sensitivity and resolution were instrumental in uncovering the secrets of NGC 346’s star formation. Using two sets of observations taken 11 years apart, researchers traced the motions of NGC 346’s stars, revealing them to be spiraling in toward the centre of the cluster. This spiralling motion arises from a stream of gas from the outside of the cluster that fuels star formation in the centre of the turbulent cloud".

A joint venture between US and European space agencies NASA and ESA, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

• See other Hubble anniversary photos

In its 34 years orbiting the Earth, NASA’s mighty Hubble Space Telescope has discovered trillions of galaxies within the universe. One, however, stands stars and nebulae above the rest.

The magnificent Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31), stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way, and can be seen with the naked eye on a clear autumn night as “a faint cigar-shaped object roughly the apparent angular diameter of our Moon” according to NASA.

The telescope's namesake, American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889 - 1953), first discovered that this spiral nebula existed miles outside of our own Milky Way galaxy – 2.5 million light years to be precise.

A light year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles, or 9 trillion kilometers.

Prior to Hubble’s realization (the man not the telescope), astronomers had thought that the Milky Way had encompassed the entire universe. “Overnight, Hubble’s discovery turned cosmology upside down by unveiling an indefinitely grander universe,” says NASA.

Over the period of time since Andromeda's discovery, the Hubble Space Telescope has accomplished the most comprehensive survey of this incredible empire of stars, creating the largest photomosaic ever assembled from the telescope. It took ten years, 1,000 Hubble orbits, and required over 600 Hubble overlapping snapshots made up of at least 2.5 billion pixels.

“With Hubble we can get into enormous detail about what’s happening on a holistic scale across the entire disk of the galaxy. You can’t do that with any other large galaxy,” said principal investigator Ben Williams of the University of Washington.

"Without Andromeda as a proxy for spiral galaxies in the universe at large, astronomers would know much less about the structure and evolution of our own Milky Way. That’s because we are embedded inside the Milky Way. This is like trying to understand the layout of New York City by standing in the middle of Central Park," said NASA.

Hubble’s sharp imaging capabilities can resolve more than 200 million stars in the Andromeda galaxy, detecting only stars brighter than our Sun. They look like grains of sand across the beach. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Andromeda’s total population is estimated to be 1 trillion stars, with many less massive stars falling below Hubble’s sensitivity limit.

Photographing Andromeda was a “herculean task” according to NASA, because “the galaxy is a much bigger target on the sky than the galaxies Hubble routinely observes, which are often billions of light-years away.”

Calling Andromeda a “train wreck,” Daniel Weisz at the University of California, Berkely, says “Andromeda’s a train wreck. It looks like it has been through some kind of event that caused it to form a lot of stars and then just shut down.

“This detailed look at the resolved stars will help us to piece together the galaxy’s past merger and interaction history,” added Williams.

NASA said: “Hubble’s new findings will support future observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Essentially a wide-angle version of Hubble (with the same sized mirror), Roman will capture the equivalent of at least 100 high-resolution Hubble images in a single exposure. These observations will complement and extend Hubble’s huge dataset.”

Why not take a look at our guides to the best telescopes for astrophotography, the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best lenses for astrophotography.

The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) has captured one of the most prominent spiral galaxies in the night sky in incredible detail in a new image.

Messier 83, also known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M83, NGC 5236, LEDA 48082 and UGCA 366, is approximately 15 million light years away in the constellation borders of Hydra and Centaurus. It has a diameter of roughly 50,000 light years.

It is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies in the sky, and is orientated so that it is almost entirely face-on as seen from Earth, meaning that it can be seen in fantastic detail, even using binoculars.

It was discovered in 1752 by French astronomer Nicola Louis de Lacaille, during his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. However, it wasn’t until the work of Edwin Hubble (for which the famous telescope is named) that astronomers realized objects like Messier 83 are actually other galaxies outside the Milky Way.

This incredibly detailed new image was captured on the DECam, which is mounted on the National Science Foundation (NSF) Víctor M Blanco 4-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

It boasts 62 science CCDs (charged-couple device – a solid electrical device that is capable of converting light input into an electrical signal) and 12 CCDs for guiding and focus, with a resolution of 570MP and a 2.2° field of view.

It was designed specifically for the Dark Energy Survey, a space mapping project started in 2013, and has been used to catalog nearly one billion objects.

As reported by Sci News, Astronomers at the NSF said: “DECam’s high sensitivity captures Messier 83’s extended halo, and myriad more distant galaxies in the background.

“The image shows Messier 83’s well-defined spiral arms, filled with pink clouds of hydrogen gas where new stars are forming.

“Interspersed amongst these pink regions are bright blue clusters of hot, young stars whose ultraviolet radiation has blown away the surrounding gas.”

In 2006, researchers noticed a mysterious feature in the center of Messier 83.

“At the heart of this galaxy, they discovered a previously unseen concentration of mass resembling a second nucleus, likely the remnant of another galaxy that is being consumed by Messier 83 in an ongoing collision – possibly the same collision responsible for the starburst activity.

“The two nuclei, which likely contain black holes, are expected to merge to form a single nucleus in another 60 million years.”

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Dr Edwin Powell Hubble, who lends his name to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, was one of the leading astronomers of the twentieth century.

Born 135 years ago today on 20 November 1889, his discoveries in the 1920s, including that countless galaxies exist beyond our own Milky Way, revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and our small place within it. He died in 1959, aged 63.

According to NASA, Hubble was a tall athletic man “who excelled at sports and even coached high school basketball for a short while, and started his professional science career during one of the most exciting eras of astronomy.

“It was 1919, just a few years after Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, and bold, new ideas about the universe were fermenting. Hubble was offered a staff position at the Mount Wilson Observatory, which housed the newly commissioned 100-inch Hooker telescope, then the largest telescope in the world. Hubble, it seemed, had the universe placed in his lap.”

When Hubble came on the scene, most astronomers believed that our galaxy was the entire universe.

In 1923, Hubble trained the pioneering Hooker Telescope on a hazy patch of sky known as the Andromeda Nebula. He found that in it were stars just like those within the Milky Way, only dimmer.

One such star was a Cepheid variable, a type of star with a known varying brightness, that can be used to measure distances. From this Hubble deduced that the Andromeda Nebula was not a nearby star cluster, but an entire other galaxy, now called the Andromeda Galaxy.

By the end of the 1920s Hubble had discovered more evidence that convinced most astronomers that the Milky Way galaxy was one of millions of others within the universe, changing our understanding of the universe in the same way Darwin changed our understanding of evolution.

Hubble’s most astonishing discovery however, was made while studying the spectra of 45 galaxies, and in particular of the Doppler velocities of those galaxies relative to our own Milky Way galaxy.

He found that the farther apart galaxies were from each other, the faster they moved away from each other, which told Hubble that the universe expands uniformly in all directions.

Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has continued to transform our understanding of the universe, building on the work of its great namesake and carrying on his incredible legacy.

One of the Hubble Space Telescope's most incredible discoveries were the Pillars of Creation in 1995. More recently it discovered a new unusual galaxy, and captured incredible images of the transformation process of a nebula under the influence of baby stars

Take a look at our guides to the best telescopes for astrophotography, the best telescopes for beginners, and the best telescopes for kids.

Proving its worth despite its age yet again, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a peculiar galaxy in space. 

Most galaxies fall into two categories based on their shape according to NASA:

"Spiral galaxies are young and energetic, filled with the gas needed to form new stars and sporting spiral arms that host these hot, bright youths. Elliptical galaxies have a much more pedestrian look, and their light comes from a uniform population of older and redder stars."

Some galaxies, however, require the Hubble’s powerful lens to help classify their identity. 

One such galaxy is NGC 4694, located 54 million light-years away from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster. 

NGC 4694 has a smooth-looking, armless disk, which is similar to an elliptical galaxy in that it is nearly devoid of star formation. 

Although elliptical galaxies usually host significant quantities of dust, they generally do not hold the fuel needed to form new stars. The stellar population of NGC 4694 is still relatively young, and new stars are actively forming in its core, powering its bright center and making it markedly different to a classic elliptical galaxy. 

NGC 4694 is filled with the hydrogen gas and dust normally seen in a young spiral, and a huge cloud of invisible hydrogen gas surrounds the galaxy.

The Hubble image reveals that the dust inside the mysterious galaxy forms a chaotic structure which according to NASA, indicates a kind of disturbance.

NASA revealed that using the ultra high quality images taken through the Hubble:

"It turns out that the cloud of hydrogen gas around NGC 4694 forms a long bridge to a nearby, faint dwarf galaxy named VCC 2062. The two galaxies have undergone a violent collision, and the larger NGC 4694 is accreting gas from the smaller galaxy.

"This collision helped give NGC 4694 its peculiar shape and star-forming activity that classify it as a lenticular galaxy."

Lenticular galaxies don’t have the characteristic arms of a spiral galaxy, but still have a central disk, and they also hold more star forming gas than an elliptical galaxy.

NASA said:

"Some galaxies, like NGC 4694, aren’t as easy to categorize as one type or the other. It takes a bit more digging to reveal their true nature, and thanks to Hubble, we have the ability to uncover their secrets."

Take a look at our guides to the best telescopes for astrophotography, the best telescopes for beginners, and the best telescopes for kids. 

Also known as M31, Andromeda is the Milky Way’s closest major galaxy, measuring roughly 152,000 light years across, with almost the same mass as our home galaxy. 

The younger James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) often gets all the glory, however, the 34 year old Hubble Space Telescope is still making incredible discoveries, changing our understanding of space.

As a spiral galaxy, Andromeda’s long tendril-like winding arms are one of its most remarkable features, and at 2.5 million light years away from Earth, it’s the most distant object that can be seen with the naked eye.

To get a clear view of the Andromeda galaxy you’ll need the best telescope for astrophotography, or take your own images with the best camera for astrophotography.  

August and September are the best months to see it, as the galaxy is highest in the sky during these months. 

Now, using the Hubble Telescope, scientists have probed one of its tendrils in the northeast, revealing swathes of ionized gas. 

According to NASA:

“These regions — which are common in spiral and irregular galaxies — often indicate the presence of recent star formation. The combination of stellar nurseries and supernovae create a dynamic environment that excites the surrounding hydrogen gas, flourishing it into a garden of star-studded roses.”

The stunning crimson bouquets were visible in such beautiful clarity due to the Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wild Field Camera 3 (WFC3), allowing scientists to analyze the collection of stars buried within the cosmic bunches.

With ACS and WFC3’s wide spectral coverage, Hubble is able to peer through the hedges of gas and take a look at a huge sample of stars, providing not just a clear view of Andromeda’s stellar history and diversity.

The images all offer a deeper insight into stellar formation and evolution, and NASA adds:

“By examining these stars in our local cosmic neighborhood, scientists can better understand those within galaxies in the distant universe.”

Check out our guide to the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best lenses to capture the night sky.

We've also got all the information you need about what to the what what there is to see in the sky this month in our guide to astrophotography in September 2024

NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in March as commander of the SpaceX Crew-8 Mission, and some of you might have seen his stunning images from both inside and outside the ISS on X, formerly Twitter.

Today, he’ll be joined by fellow astronaut and renowned space photographer Don Pettit for a live chat via X, at 4:05 pm ET, 09:05 pm BST, and both astronauts will be taking questions at the end.

Developments in astrophotography have brought us not only stunning photographs of space, but also incredible advancements in the understanding of our solar system from the likes of NASA’s James Webb Space, and the Hubble Space Telescope.

At 69, Pettit is NASA’s oldest active astronaut. He’s also a chemical engineer and is known for his orbital astrophotography as well as his in-space inventions, such as the Capillary Cup, a zero-gravity coffee cup he designed on the International Space Station in 2008. The cup received the first-ever patent for an object invented in space.

He has lived a total of 369 days in space, and spends his spare time while among the stars, taking photos of the cosmos from inside the International Space Station’s cupola, the small glass dome consisting of seven windows where astronauts observe space and the Earth from orbit.

One of his images that proved incredibly popular with viewers was of Star Trails taken from his mission to the ISS, Expedition 30 entitled Lightening Bugs, snapped in 2012. Pettit posted the image to Reddit, causing a stir when he commented:

“My name is Donald Pettit, and I am an active NASA astronaut and astrophotographer. New to Reddit, I wanted to share some of my work here, and hope you enjoy!”

I captured something most astrophotographers can only dream about: I captured Star Trails from space. More details in comments. from r/space

The post was liked by over 70,000 people, with one user commenting “Everyone get in here we got a real astronaut posting!!”

Petit explained that the photo was captured with a Nikon D3s, ISO 800, 24 mm lens at f/5.6.

“In the photo, stars make arcing trails in deep space, while a huge thunderstorm pounds Earth below as seen from the time history of lightning flashes. The atmosphere between them glows green with what scientists call airglow, which has a different excitation mechanism than auroras.”

The master class will be a chance to listen, and talk to real live astronauts about anything from deep space, to their favorite cameras.

Take a look at our guide to the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best star tracker mounts for astrophotography. 

The James Webb Space Telescope has been stealing all the thunder from the poor old Hubble in recent weeks. 

However, now, using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the closest black hole to Earth ever witnessed.

It was spotted using the telescope after scientists noticed stars whizzing around as if they were being pulled by a gravitational force. 

Previously, scientists have only been able to locate stellar black holes, about the mass of a single star, and supermassive black holes, which can have masses of billions of suns, but they have struggled to locate anything in the middle, until now. 

This exciting discovery has been hailed as the “missing link” in our understanding of black holes. 

The newly–found intermediate black hole sits in a spectacular collection of about ten million stars known as Omega Centauri, about 18,000 light years from Earth. 

Through even the best telescope for astrophotography you’d struggle to tell the difference between this black hole and other so–called globular clusters, but a new study by Maxililan Häberle (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy), confirms what astronomers had been suspecting for some time: Omega Centauri contains a central black hole.

It appears to be stuck in an intermediate stage of evolution, and is considerably less massive than typical black holes in the centres of galaxies. The Omega Centauri seems to be the center of a small galaxy, separate from the Milky Way, whose evolution was cut short when the Milky Way engulfed it.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, and has made over 1.6 million observations including the Eagle Nebula, and the Hubble Deep Field, which revolutionized the way we understand the universe.

To achieve this discovery, Maximilian Häberle, a Ph.D. student at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, studied 1.4 million stars in Omega Centauri by pouring over 500 images from the Hubble Telescope. Most of these images were intended to be used to calibrate the Hubble's instruments, rather than for scientific use, but they turned out to be the ideal data for the task.

Take a look at our guides to the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best telescopes for astrophotography.

The Pillars of Creation is a world-famous photograph captured in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope of Elephant Trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula.

Sitting in the Serpens constellation about 6,500 to 7,000 light years away from Earth, these Elephant Trunks are phenomenons that stand light years tall, made of interstellar matter found in molecular clouds. 

The stunning celestial formations captured the attention of the world in 1995 and, now, NASA has released a new 3D visualization of the towering space structures using imaging data from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes. 

“This is the most comprehensive and detailed multiwavelength movie yet of these star-birthing clouds,” explained NASA. 

"By flying past and amongst the pillars, viewers experience their three-dimensional structure and see how they look different in the Hubble visible-light view versus the Webb infrared-light view," explained principal visualization scientist Frank Summers of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, who led the movie development team for NASA's Universe of Learning.

"The contrast helps them understand why we have more than one space telescope to observe different aspects of the same object."

The film takes viewers right into the heart of the three-dimensional structures of the pillars. The footage is not an artistic interpretation, but based on actual observational data from a science paper led by Anna McLeod, an associate professor at the University of Durham in the UK.

The team at NASA combined observations from the two telescopes across different wavelengths of light, “to broaden our understanding of the universe,” said Mark Clampin, Astrophysics Division director at NASA headquarters in Washington.

“The Pillars of Creation region continues to offer us new insights that hone our understanding of how stars form. Now, with this new visualization, everyone can experience this rich, captivating landscape in a new way."

If you want to take your own images of the stars, why not check out our guide to the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best lenses for astrophotography.

We've also got a guide to the best star tracker mounts for astrophotography.

The Hubble Telescope has had many big successes. It’s helped us pin down the real age of the Universe, roughly 13.9 billion years, and discovered two moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra.

Now, it has captured incredible images of the transformation process of a nebula under the influence of baby stars. 

This fascinating image is not only visually stunning but also provides an important glimpse into the planetary mechanics of our universe. 

This particular nebula is called RCW 7, and is located around 5,300 light years away from Earth, in the constellation called Puppis. 

Nebulas are gigantic clouds of dust and gas in space, rich in raw materials needed to serve as nurseries for new stars, also known as protostars. 

In this nebula, the formation of new stars is causing it to transform. The intense radiation and stellar winds caused by the forming stars are responsible for the changes occurring within the nebula. 

The vibrant colors are due to the different gases present. The blue hues indicate oxygen, and the red and pink tones mean that nitrogen and hydrogen are also there. As the young stars form, they emit radiation which heats up the surrounding gases, producing the beautiful colors seen in this NASA photo. 

Many of the larger-looking stars in this image are foreground stars are not part of the nebula. Instead, they sit between the nebula and our solar system.

The images were taken with the Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in near-infrared light, beautifully showcasing the swirls of gas and curling clouds surrounding the protostars. 

The Hubble Telescope has been in operation for over 34 years, and continues to be an invaluable tool for collecting data and images that are not only useful to astronomers, but also provide us laypeople with fascinating space news.

According to NASA:

“Within only a few million years, radiation and winds from the massive stars will gradually disperse the nebula’s gas — even more so as the most massive stars come to the end of their lives in supernova explosions.”

The image of the transforming nebula serves as another reminder of the ever-changing nature of the universe, and the fact that our cosmos is constantly being altered by the life cycle of the stars. 

Check out our guide to the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best lenses to capture the night sky.

We've also got all the information you need about the best low light cameras.  

Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has beaten its own record for detecting and photographing the most distant known galaxy.

The newly-discovered galaxy is called JADES-GS-z14-0, and is the earliest ever seen collection of stars in the universe. 

The telescope, which makes even the best cameras for astrophotography look like children's toys, captured the galaxy as it was 290 million years after the Big Bang, meaning that if the universe is 13.8 billion years old, we’re observing the galaxy when the cosmos was only 2 percent of its current age.  

This is not only an incredible scientific and technological achievement, but it could also unlock the mysteries of how the universe began. 

The James Webb Space Telescope, named after James E. Webb, the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968, uses its huge 6.5m wide primary mirror and high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments to view objects too old, distant or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. 

According to scientists at NASA, the JADES-GS-z14-0 appears to be surprisingly bright and 1,600 light years across.

A light-year is the distance light travels in one year - and that's a big big distance. Light whizzes through interstellar space at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometres) per second, and therefore a 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometres) per year.

Scientists use the unit to measure light because it allows astronomers to determine how far back they are viewing. Because light takes time to travel to our eyes, what we are viewing in the night sky has already happened. When you are observing something one light year away, you’re seeing it exactly as it appeared one year ago.

The galaxy is so bright it is believed to be several hundreds of million times the mass of our Sun, and scientists are perplexed as to how nature could have created it in less than 300 million years. The telescope also detected a significant amount of oxygen, suggesting that the galaxy is quite mature.

Drs Stefano Carniani and Kevin Hainline, authors of the report said:

“The presence of oxygen so early in the life of this galaxy is a surprise and suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars had already lived their lives before we observed the galaxy.”

Over the last couple of years, scientists have used the telescope to explore what astronomers mysteriously call Cosmic Dawn - the period of the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang, where the first galaxies were born.

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The poor Hubble telescope has become a bit of a geriatric since the younger, higher-res James Webb Space Telescope started its mission. In its heyday it delivered images of space in never-before-seen quality, offering scientists and researchers wisdom than ever before on how the universe came to be. 

Almost 30 years after its launch, the Hubble telescope orbits much closer to Earth but it’s still delivering photos from Space - albeit lower res than the mighty JWST. 

In the latest image, the NGC 3384 galaxy is visible and although the slightly blurred image isn’t as jaw-dropping as other images from space, it still holds importance. The so-called elliptical galaxy is rounded in shape, shows few visible features and rarely shows recent start formations. These galaxies are dominated by old, aging red-hued stars unlike the Milky Way (a spiral galaxy) which is bursting with populations of young blue stars that create the spiral arms around its bright core. 

What’s interesting about this image is that at its center there appears to be a disc-like structure you would normally expect to see in a spiral galaxy, such as the Milky Way.   A central bar is thought to funnel material through and around a galaxy’s core helping to maintain and fuel activities and processes that occur.

In recent years, the Hubble Telescope has had to undergo maintenance so it's kept in a low orbit close to Earth so that it is safe and accessible for astronauts to repair and upgrade its components. To this day, the Hubble orbits the Earth at 17,000mph/27,000 kph, sees 15 sunrises every day and in its lifetime has traveled over 4 billion miles. The Hubble telescope may have been superseded by the JWST but its contribution to our understanding of space has been monumental. 

As the Hubble Telescope edges closer to retirement, it will continue to photograph space, informing astronomers and researchers of the secrets of the universe. 

Check out the best telescopes for astrophotography, and see our guide to all the best lenses for astrophotography

Late last month NASA announced that the Hubble Space Telescope had switched itself to 'safe mode' because of a problem with one of its last remaining functional gyroscopes. In the past, the agency has mounted spectacular missions to save the legendary optical device using the versatile Space Shuttle. However, with the fleet now retired NASA is looking to other options, and it seems SpaceX is interested.

Astrophotography lovers have enjoyed the thousands of stunning images the Hubble telescope has caught since its launch in 1990, especially since the daring 1993 STS-61, a ten-day servicing mission that had over 35 hours of spacewalks. That mission, and four subsequent servicing missions that kept the Hubble in operation far longer than expected, all relied on the Shuttle and its airlock, but it's now out of action. What can SpaceX offer?

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk and Tom Mueller, has grabbed a lot of media attention recently for their 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' (what everyone else calls an explosion) of their biggest experimental rocket, Starship. However, the company has also more-or-less perfected a smaller rocket, the Falcon, and developed a crew capsule, called Dragon, which has been used to send crews to the ISS 38 times, making a pretty strong case for private companies handling NASA missions.

Let's face it the management of some of these enterprises is not short of ego, either, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Jared Isaacman, Astronaut and CEO of a space enterprise called @Shift4, suggested that NASA "Put us in coach" on Twitter(X).

Realistically things are not as simple as the money men immediately suggest. The Shuttle had an airlock and arm to manipulate the Hubble in need of repair, while the Dragon capsule was not designed to be home to a crew for such a long period.

On the plus side, times have changed since the original Hubble gyros and computer modules were installed; systems the size of a refrigerator are considerably smaller these days.

It is also possible that – since the Hubble can limp on with its remaining two (of the original six) gyros, a robotic mission could somehow latch on and push it back into a good orbit (it is gradually decaying toward Earth). 

Just as the 1993 mission revitalized interest in the manned space program after the Challenger disaster, showing the need for humans in space, there is the worry whether success – however unlikely – for robotics here might be a shot across the bows for any future Mars mission, and we do eventually want to see pictures of Mars taken by humans (and we want to know what camera they choose).

In the meantime read more about Nasa's new moon camera, and which is the best action camera for use in difficult environments (if not, perhaps, space)

Another awe-inspiring magical image of deep space has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Released on August 29, the latest high-resolution photo shows us a glimpse of a spiral galaxy that is found 27 million light years away from Earth in the Canes Venatici constellation.

Known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, or Messier 51a, it has been a central focal point for astronomers and astrophotographers for years (it was first discovered in 1773) but has never before has it been viewed in such fine detail. 

The most recent image shows a red whirlpool galaxy with protruding spirals and a bright bluish-white core. While you might not be able to get such a high resolution even with the best cameras for astrophotography, this bedazzling galaxy is sometimes visible from Earth.

• Check out the best telescopes for astrophotography so you can capture stunning photos of the night sky from your back garden

Taken using the JWST main near-infrared camera (NIRcam) and a mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), the two separate photos have been combined into a composite to create a truly out-of-this-world galactic portrait. These incredibly advanced camera systems capture the infrared light that the eye cannot see and decode the data to create images scientists can study to unlock the secrets of our universe. It’s thought that the shape of M51 is due to its close proximity to the nearby dwarf galaxy NGC 5195 and its spiraling arms are formed through its strong gravitational influence. 

Up until now, the clearest image we had of the M51 galaxy was taken by the Hubble Telescope in 2011 but it was nowhere near as in-depth and detailed as the JWST offering. The actual image has been colorized so we can distinguish areas of ionized gas created by recently formed star clusters (the orange and yellow buts) while the darker areas represent empty cavities necessary for the galaxy to maintain its spiral shape. 

This latest image is part of a body of research known as Feedback in Emerteging Extragalactic Star Clusters or for east, FEAST. Since the James Webb telescope is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Telescope, it enables scientists and astronomers to discover even more about deep space. The European Space Agency commented, “Webb is opening a new window into the early stages of star formation and stellar light as well as the energy of reprocessing gas and dust”.

Not only do these images enable us to develop a deeper understanding, but they are signs that the instruments onboard the JWST are still fully functional following some concern there have been some technical issues. While the NIRcam image and the MIRI image offer two different perspectives of the same galaxy, the combined composite offers exaggerates the remarkable wonders of this “grand spiral staircase sweeping through space” - a term that NASA has used to describe it. 

Also check out the best telescopes for kids or the best telescopes for beginners

NASA is kind enough to share plenty of updates, facts, interviews, diagrams, and imagery with the world on its latest astronomical findings in the great unknown. These include images captured by The Hubble Space Telescope, as well as bi-weekly data and images delivered directly from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Both of these galactic telescopes are equipped with several Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instruments to offer the best possible details and glimpses into our solar system. While these images are pretty groundbreaking, NASA also runs a blog with a fun Image of the Day segment to look back on how we got to this point in science. 

• Take a look at the best cameras for astrophotography!

Astronomers and scientists have been making some revolutionary discoveries lately about our solar system and potential life that could survive in the distant galaxies that surround it. For example, the process of exploding stars and supernovae tell us about our own universal origin stories, and the JWST can detect exoplanets that have carbon monoxide and other element ratios supportive of external life. 

But – it's also important not to forget the smaller steps that it took to get us to the advanced level of science and astronomy that we have in 2023. NASA's Image of the Day blog post published on June 6 shares the image titled 'A Bloom in Space' and is a little different from the content that the association usually shares.

The photo features a beautiful blooming zinnia flower that was said to be grown aboard the International Space Station as part of the VEG-01 experiment, also known as the veggie hardware validation test, and the image was originally captured by astronaut Scott Kelly on January 22, 2016. 

Astronaut Kelly nursed dying space zinnias back to health, and photographed a bouquet of the flowers against the backdrop of Earth from the space station, which he shared to his Instagram for Valentine's Day (and again in March for the Spring Equinox).

The project experiment was designed to assess the growth and development of plant seedlings situated in the spaceflight environment, while testing the on-orbit functions and performances of the Veggie facility, also with a distinct focus on the composition of microbial flora. 

According to NASA, zinnias were grown for 60 days during this space station experiment, and the VEG-01 experiment was born with the aim to demonstrate proof-of-concept for the Veggie plant growth chamber on the International Space Station, using romaine red lettuce as a starting test species. 

For more updates on what's happening in the universe, and if you want to keep up with the latest image releases, head over to the James Webb Space Telescope gallery, where you can see all of Webb's first images and learn more about what they depict. NASA will be launching new images at least every other week.

• You might also be interested in the best lenses for astrophotography, as well as the best astrophotography software, and not forgetting the best CCD cameras for astrophotography and the best light pollution filters for night photography.

Capturing photographic evidence and gathering visual data relative to other planets, galaxies, dark matter, and star formations is a crucial part of helping scientists to understand the unknown and decipher the mysteries of our solar system.

It's been a while since we delved into the beauty of the cosmos through NASA's advanced imaging telescopes and Near-InfraRed Cameras. So let's have a little catch-up and check in on the latest assets and composites that have been released from NASA and the work produced by these amazing space instruments in 2023. 

• Take a look at the best lenses for astrophotography!

Since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been gifting us regularly with the most astounding astro imagery, including the breathtakingly beautiful pillars of creation image, with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, and not forgetting the fiery space hourglass photo and cosmic tarantula nebula image too.

Pandora's Cluster

First in this batch, NASA's most recently shared was captured using the JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and depicts what is known as Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744, a galaxy protocluster. This formation comprises a total of seven galaxies thought to be created 650 million years after the big bang, making it amongst the earliest galaxies yet to be spectroscopically confirmed as part of a developing cluster. 

Serpens galactic collision

Next up is a spectacular image showcasing a galactic merger, and collision of two spiral galaxies known as Arp 220, resulting in an enormous burst of new star formation. The aftermath has been captured glowing brightly with JWST's NIRCam and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). 

According to NASA, this stunning smash-up of galaxies occurred about 700 million years ago, and is in fact an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG), with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns! Situated in the constellation of Serpens, 250 million light-years away, Arp 220 forms part of Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, and is the brightest of galactic mergers that have taken place closest to our earth.

Cassiopeia A supernova

Probably the most stunning recent release from NASA this year has to be the close-up details of the prototypical supernova (star explosion) remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). As the result of a stellar explosion over 340 years ago, Cas A is said to be one of the youngest known supernova remnants within our galaxy, and scientists should be able to perform an intriguing stellar forensic investigation through collected data to determine the cause of the star's death. 

This new mid-infrared image of Cas A will allow researchers to untangle not only what caused the dramatic event, but understand what type of star was there beforehand, and how such supernovae occur. The image shows a sort-of debris field of what remains after the impact, and infrared light is then translated into visible-light wavelengths, showing incredible detail.

But why is this so important? One Principal Investigator of the Webb program which has been used to capture these observations, Danny Milisavljevic, noted that: “By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story”. 

Supernovae are crucial for understanding life, spreading core elements like calcium and iron in our blood across interstellar space, with the capability of seeding new generations of stars and planets. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set,” shared Milisavljevic.

Uranus

I can't think of a joke involving Uranus right now, but the JWST captured a new image of its "dramatic atmosphere." The ringed ice giant planet has been photographed in infrared and the latest image shows not only a complex system of dramatic rings but also a bright polar cap and what could potentially be storm clouds.

This is quite the change from what seemed pretty dull and lifeless when last observed, in 1986, by Voyager 2's flyby. Uranus has 13 known rings, 11 of which are visible in the image.

Wolf-Rayet 124

The Wolf-Rayet star WR 124, has been newly captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in unprecedented detail. A Wolf-Rayet star is actually a pretty rare sight, and the WR 124 is situated 15,000 light-years away in the Sagitta constellation. 

Stars in a Wolf-Rayet state are casting off their outer layers before an impending supernova. The WR 124 in this image is framed by a halo of dust and gas glowing in infrared light as well as cosmic dust forming nebulas surrounding it.

Nebula

These last few images released in early February all show the intricate details of gas and dust networks within nearby galaxies, captured by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument. 

The images tell the story of how young, newly forming stars actually influence the structure of gas and dust from nearby galaxies, and how this evolves over time, impacting the evolution of galaxies, the largest objects in our cosmos.

High-resolution imaging is needed to fully study and appreciate these structures, which long evaded astronomers until the Webb telescope infrared technology came along. These galaxies once appeared dim and dark pre-Webb, but now under the telescope's infrared eye piercing through the dust, they can be seen as glowing cavities with unprecedented resolution at infrared wavelengths. 

A research team comprising over 100 scientists from around the globe has been observing these images in a survey of nearby galaxies, and in turn astounding astronomers with the findings. “We are directly seeing how the energy from the formation of young stars affects the gas around them, and it’s just remarkable”, shared a team member from the University of Alberta, Erik Rosolowsky. 

If you want to keep up with the latest image releases, head to the James Webb Space Telescope gallery, where you can see all of Webb's first images and learn more about what they depict. NASA will be launching new images at least every other week.

• You might also be interested in the best telescopes for astrophotography, as well as our picks of the best cameras for astrophotography, or more specifically the best CCD cameras for astrophotography. 

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The James Webb Space Telescope launched almost a year ago today, on December 19, 2021. For those of us listening or watching, we heard a voice counted back in French from ten to one, and then, “Décollage” – lift-off. 

After fifteen years of preparation between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency, Webb was then left to fulfill its purpose – to orbit the sun and capture the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.

It wasn't until July 15 that NASA shared Webb's first images, in an exciting live broadcast that saw hundreds of thousands of space enthusiasts tuning in – not to mention an appearance from US president Jo Biden. The buzz was real, and we covered the event as James Webb Space Telescope at Digital Camera World, sharing that the first 5 images revealed by NASA would blow your mind.

Since that first live broadcast, NASA has shared new images and views of the cosmos regularly, giving us fascinating new insights into the work that Webb is performing, and the planetary scenes that it captures – with the help of a lot of expert scientists and image processors, we should add.

At the end of 2022, it's possible to track Webb online and get lost in high-resolution views of all of the James Webb Space Telescope images so far. Let's look back at some of the best images (not in order) we've seen this year.

Webb vs Hubble Pillars of Creation

Since launching, Webb's telescope images have included an asteroid-smashing mission and a planet outside of our solar system. Each new image serves not only to increase our understanding of far-out phenomena such as white dwarfs, nebulae, and 'Cosmic Cliffs', but to marvel at how far technology has come since the Hubble Telescope started sending us images back in the 1990s.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and it's still in operation today. Hubble’s cameras are better in sensitivity and resolution than when it was launched, possible through continued upgrades with several NASA space shuttle servicing missions from 1993 to 2009. Hubble – as the only visible light/UV space telescope – is expected to work in synergy with Webb well into the 2030s.

There's already an official James Webb Space Telescope gallery, where you can see all of Webb's first images and learn more about what they depict. And it's here that NASA has released a fascinating comparison image showing a comparison of the same subject side by side; with one image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and the other by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The finest comparison shot is of the famous Pillars of Creation, where you can see most clearly the outstanding difference in image quality and resolution between the two space telescopes. We've included it below in a higher resolution than above – open it in a full window for the best viewing experience.

James Webb Space Telescope camera data captures dreamy Exoplanet Atmosphere

The James Webb Space Telescope has compiled together instrument data that collectively reveal a molecular and chemical profile of an exoplanet atmosphere, WASP-39 b (otherwise known as Bocaprins), as we've never seen before! 

The WASP-39 b is said to be a planet that is unlike any other, a gas-filled behemoth and "hot-Saturn" planet that resembles the size of Saturn, and orbits its star eight times closer compared with the distance that Mercury orbits our sun.

The above image is actually an artist's illustration, not a digital image, but it has still been created from the combined data provided by three sensitive instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), that include its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Together these instruments have discovered many firsts in exoplanet science, detecting sulfur dioxide for the very first time in an exoplanet's atmosphere, and therefore providing concrete evidence of photochemistry at play. 

James Webb Space Telescope captures messy death of a star system

Another Web photo from NASA showed off never before seen stars that together craft the shape of the Southern Ring Nebula. Nasa worked together with the European Space Agency’s Gaia Observatory to put together the data collected by the ESA combining it with the brand new infrared images coming from the James Webb Telescope, to create these stunning images.

The team used this data to calculate the original mass of the star before it ejected the layers of gas and dust that can be seen in these images, with the star now having a mass 60% less than before this expulsion, this helps the scientists wind back the clock and figure out how this nebula was first created.

Orsola De Marco from Macquarie University in Sydney who worked on the project to analyze the data said “With Webb, it’s like we were handed a microscope to examine the universe. There is so much detail in its images. We approached our analysis much like forensic scientists to rebuild the scene.”

James Webb Space Telescope captures a sparkling dwarf galaxy

Following the last "Cosmic Tarantula" image released in time for Halloween, the next image shared by NASA showed "a portion of the dwarf galaxy Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM)" which gives us an idea of the telescope's amazing ability to resolve faint stars outside of the Milky Way – the galaxy that includes our own Solar System. 

One of the best things about the official Webb website is that each image is accompanied by a scientific explanation, in terms that make it easy to understand what's going on in the picture. In this image, information comes from Kristen McQuinn of Rutgers University, one of the lead scientists in Webb Early Release Science (ERS) program 1334, focused on resolved stellar populations. 

"WLM is a dwarf galaxy in our galactic neighborhood," she explains. "It’s fairly close to the Milky Way (only about 3 million light-years from Earth), but it’s also relatively isolated. We think WLM hasn’t interacted with other systems, which makes it really nice for testing our theories of galaxy formation and evolution."

Far out! James Webb Space Telescope takes first EVER image of planet outside solar system

According to the official NASA release, Webb’s powerful infrared gaze "can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets."

Here, astronomers have been able to use the telescope to capture an image of a planet outside our solar system. The inhabitable planet pictured is a gas giant with no solid surface, and it was seen by the telescope through four different light filters.

James Webb Space Telescope's 'Haunting' Pillars of Creation image released

The Pillars of Creation is the name given to the view of trunks of interstellar gas found within the vast Eagle Nebula, which are 6,500 light-years away from Earth. The scene was first photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 and revisited in 2014, but NASA released a mid-infrared view of the Pillars from the James Webb Space Telescope.

"Trace the topmost pillar, landing on the bright red star jutting out of its lower edge like a broomstick," NASA says. "This star and its dusty shroud are larger than the size of our entire solar system."

View of Saturn’s moon Titan excites scientists

At the beginning of November, scientists got to glimpse the first Webb images of Titan. Thaddeus Cesari explains that scientists had "waited for years to use Webb’s infrared vision to study Titan’s atmosphere, including its fascinating weather patterns and gaseous composition, and also see through the haze to study albedo features (bright and dark patches) on the surface."

Saturn's moon Titan is the only planet other than Earth with rivers, lakes, and seas. But unlike Earth, its dense atmosphere is full of a thick haze that obscures visible light reflecting off the surface.

The teams working on the project compared different images captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to confirm that a bright spot was actually a large cloud. "We then realized it was important to find out if the clouds were moving or changing shape, which might reveal information about the airflow in Titan’s atmosphere." They reached out to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii for follow-up observations that could help them to discover more.

We'll report on more James Webb Space Telescope images as they get released, from the angle of imaging than the subjects themselves. 

If you're feeling inspired, why not try deep-space photography yourself, and check out the best telescopes for watching the night sky at home?

Since the James Webb telescope was put into action earlier this year it has captured photos of a sparkling Dwarf Galaxy, the stunning Tarantula Nebula and the Pillars of Creation.  Now it has broken a new record by capturing a nebula further away than ever before in the outer regions of the distant Glass Galaxy. 

Compared to the famous Hubble telescope, the James Webb telescope blows it out of the park in color and clarity and has been able to photograph sections of the universe as never seen before. The latest mind-blowing photos to be sent back to earth are of very distant galaxies situated in the outer regions of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744. 

Previously hidden out of sight of other telescopes, the two galaxies captured came into existence roughly 450 and 350 years after the Big Bang and although much smaller than the Milky Way, scientists are surprised at how bright they are. 

• Capture photos that are out of this world with the best telescopes for astrophotography

Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of two researchers working on the Early Release Science programs. On capturing this latest image he said, “With Webb, we were amazed to find the most distant starlight that anyone had ever seen, just days after Webb released its first data”.

Previously, the galaxy known as GN-z11 was the record holder for the furthest-away galaxy ever identified. It formed around 400 million years after the big bang and was photographed in 2016 by the Hubble telescope. Although the distance of these early galaxies still needs to be confirmed, the extreme brightness surprises scientists whose knowledge of galaxy formations has been challenged through these photos. 

As the James Webb telescope continues to photograph deep space, our understanding of how the universe came to grow. Although scientists aren't yet sure how far away the Abell 2744 galaxy is, by using spectroscopy data collected from the telescope they should be able to work it out by measuring how light has been stretched in the expanding universe.

The James Webb Telescope was sent into space so we could solve the mysteries of our solar system and so far, the results have been astounding. The more we can understand about how the universe came to be, the more we can learn about our place in it. 

These light pollution filters for night photography will help you capture even clearer photos of starry skies.

The Pillars of Creation is the name given to the view of trunks of interstellar gas found within the vast Eagle Nebula, which are 6,500 light-years away from Earth. The scene was first photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 and revisited in 2014, but NASA has just released a creepy, mid-infrared view of the Pillars from the James Webb Space Telescope.

"Trace the topmost pillar, landing on the bright red star jutting out of its lower edge like a broomstick," NASA says. "This star and its dusty shroud are larger than the size of our entire solar system."

We'd recommend that you download the full-resolution, uncompressed version of this spooky Pillars of Creation image so that you can delve into it in full detail.

Many people are calling this a chilling image, including NASA itself. One of the reasons that this image is haunting has to do with wavelengths of light, and what the James Webb Space Telescope can capture. It views scenes in mid-infrared light, and while this can show where dust is, it means the stars within the scene aren't at bright enough wavelengths to show up. Instead, all we do see are gigantic, looming pillars of gas and dust, only hinting at what's actually inside them.

If you want to keep up with the latest image releases, head to the James Webb Space Telescope gallery, where you can see all of Webb's first images and learn more about what they depict. NASA will be launching new images at least every other week.

We'll report on more James Webb Space Telescope images as they get released, from the angle of imaging than the subjects themselves. 

If you're feeling inspired, why not try deep-space photography yourself, and check out the best telescopes for watching the night sky at home?

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was launched into space on Christmas Day in 2021 and has since been capturing the most spectacular images and spectrums of the universe that we've ever seen, in the highest quality, providing a new worldview into the mysterious cosmos. Webb will release images on a bi-weekly basis.

Yesterday, a new image was released captured by Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, which depicts a distant, lensed galaxy, and an intervening galaxy cluster known as MACS0647, as well as the MACS0647-JD system. 

• Check out The James Webb Space Telescope vs The Hubble Telescope: Pillars of Creation image comparison

NASA yesterday released another beautiful image captured by the NIRCam instrument of the James Webb Space Telescope. It shows an astonishing galaxy cluster, referred to as the MACS0647, as well as zoomed-in views of what it calls the MACS0647-JD System, a distant galaxy that has been captured in three separate locations within the same image, as a result of the method known as gravitational lensing. 

The dazzling cluster of galaxies that can be seen in the foreground of the image (MACS0647) acts as a cosmic lens, used to bend and magnify light to highlight and dig out the more faint background galaxies - in this case, the JD-system, which has been triply lensed and appears frequently in different parts of the image.

• These are the best cameras for astrophotography

NASA will supposedly be sharing a new Webb image or universal spectrum every other week at the very least, and those interested are advised to check NASA's James Webb Space Telescope blog every other Monday at the beginning of the week, to determine exactly when that week’s image will appear on the blog.

Yesterday's blog post published by NASA and authored by Thaddeus Cesari, the Strategic Communications Specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as Ann Jenkins, Principal Science Writer, Space Telescope Science Institute, includes a mini interview with three prominent astronomers that have been working on the JWST to talk about this image in more detail, as well as their latest findings.

Dan Coe, an astronomer of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency and the Johns Hopkins University discussed how he discovered the MACS0647-JD galaxy 10 years ago with the Hubble Space Telescope, and it was considered one of the most distant galaxies known. He also compares the quality of imagery captured by The Hubble Space Telescope vs The James Webb Space Telescope.

"At the time, I’d never worked on high redshift galaxies, and then I found this one that was potentially the most distant at redshift 11, about 97 percent of the way back to the big bang. With Hubble, it was just this pale, red dot. We could tell it was really small, just a tiny galaxy in the first 400 million years of the universe."

He continues, "Now we look with Webb, and we’re able to resolve TWO objects! We’re actively discussing whether these are two galaxies or two clumps of stars within a galaxy. We don’t know, but these are the questions that Webb is designed to help us answer."

Coe also explains that due to the gravitational lensing of the massive galaxy cluster MACS0647, "it’s lensed into three images: JD1, JD2, and JD3. They’re magnified by factors of eight, five, and two, respectively."

National Science Foundation fellow, astronomer, and Ph.D. graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, Rebecca Larson shares her excitement at how this is only the beginning of what images can tell us about the universe:

"Up to this point, we haven’t really been able to study galaxies in the early universe in great detail. We had only tens of them prior to Webb. Studying them can help us understand how they evolved into the ones like the galaxy we live in today. And also, how the universe evolved throughout time."

"I think my favorite part is, for so many new Webb images we get, if you look in the background, there are all these little dots—and those are all galaxies! Every single one of them. It’s amazing the amount of information that we’re getting that we just weren’t able to see before. And this is not a deep field. This is not a long exposure. We haven’t even really tried to use this telescope to look at one spot for a long time. This is just the beginning!"

To see the full interview with these insightful astronomers and for more details, be sure to keep up with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope blog.

There's also an official James Webb Space Telescope gallery, where you can view all of the Webb Telescope's first images, and learn what exactly they depict.

You may also be interested in NASA's asteroid-smashing mission, as well as the first EVER image of a planet outside the solar system. 

Take a look at our guides to the best telescopes for astrophotography, and the best deep-space telescopes, and don't forget the best lenses for astrophotography.

There's no shortage of reasons to be amazed by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, and the images that have been created by it and its large team. James Webb Telescope images have been shared by NASA thick and fast since its launch on December 25, 2021, and after the first images were unveiled back in July 2022.

Since then, Webb's telescope images have included an asteroid-smashing mission and a planet outside of our solar system. Each new image serves not only to increase our understanding of far-out phenomena such as white dwarfs, nebulae, and 'Cosmic Cliffs', but to marvel at how far technology has come since the Hubble Telescope started sending us images back in the 1990s.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and it's still in operation today. Hubble’s cameras are better in sensitivity and resolution than when it was launched, possible through continued upgrades with several NASA space shuttle servicing missions from 1993 to 2009. Hubble – as the only visible light/UV space telescope – is expected to work in synergy with Webb well into the 2030s.

There's already an official James Webb Space Telescope gallery, where you can see all of Webb's first images and learn more about what they depict. And it's here that NASA has released a fascinating comparison image showing a comparison of the same subject side by side; with one image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and the other by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The finest comparison shot is of the famous Pillars of Creation, where you can see most clearly the outstanding difference in image quality and resolution between the two space telescopes. We've included it below in a higher resolution than above – open it in a full window for the best viewing experience.

Webb vs Hubble telescope - what's the difference?

The image shows the Hubble Space Telescope on the left and the James Webb Space Telescope on the right. "The Hubble Space Telescope made the Pillars of Creation famous with its first image in 1995, but revisited the scene in 2014 to reveal a sharper, wider view in visible light, shown in the left picture," says NASA.

It goes further, explaining that while Webb can look at the Universe in the infrared, Hubble works on optical and ultraviolet wavelengths. Stars and planets are often obscured by a dusty region surrounding them, and infrared light can penetrate this dusty shroud to reveal more of what's there.

Webb has a much bigger mirror than Hubble does, which gives it a bigger area for collecting light, and it can peer back in time further. The last major difference is the distance from the earth that both space telescopes orbit. "Hubble is in a very close orbit around the earth, while Webb will be 1.5 million kilometers (km) away at the second Lagrange (L2) point."

Of course, since 1990 it's not just the quality of the deep-space telescopes that has improved, but the software used to resolve the images, stack them, and color them. Full credits for the image are as follows, broken down into science and image processing.

SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Hubble Heritage Project (STScI, AURA)
IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI) 

*Update from Ray Villard, Hubble Space Telescope News Chief

"Given Webb’s extraordinary performance and the public’s enthusiasm, it’s easy to overly interpret the image quality difference between Webb and  Hubble. The Webb image is about 1.33 times higher resolution than Hubble at the wavelengths observed in this image. 

Quantitatively, this difference a comparatively small. But qualitatively, it is nevertheless a dramatic gain, subjectively, when the two observatory images are directly compared. (Hubble and Webb sharpness over ground-based telescopic image is tenfold greater – that’s a truly dramatic gain in resolution.)"

We'll report on more James Webb Space Telescope images as they get released, from the angle of imaging than the subjects themselves. 

If you're feeling inspired, why not try deep-space photography yourself, and check out the best telescopes for watching the night sky at home?

Last November, NASA tasked its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft to embark on an asteroid-smashing mission, and on September 26, 2022, it successfully crashed into the small asteroid known as Dimorphos, obliterating it.

While the spacecraft may be no more, the images of its collision both before, during, and after the act was captured by not only the spacecraft itself, but the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and the Hubble Space Telescope's camera too! 

• These are the best telescopes for astrophotography.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was initially designed to test a kinetic impact, as well as being a unique NASA experiment to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid, in the world’s first-ever in-space test for planetary defense against near-earth asteroids, or comet hazards.

Known as the "kinetic impactor" technique, it involves scientifically slamming a heavy and fast-moving object into an asteroid, which in this case was the unmanned DART spacecraft, that was equipped with only a single instrument - the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO).

Both the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the events of the Dimorphos moonlet asteroid collision with the DART spacecraft, being the very first time that both telescopes have observed the same celestial target at the same time, according to NASA. 

The DART mission was launched almost a year ago in the late night of November 23, 2021, and early morning of November 24, 2021, depending on where you live. DART's main camera, the DRACO, supposedly captured and sent an image to Earth for every second until its final moments as the spacecraft was presumed to have crashed with the feed going black.

Aside from capturing and transmitting images, the DRACO was also responsible for helping to steer the spacecraft singlehandedly on a path of collision with Dimorphos. This is a pretty impressive feat, considering that (as reported by Space.com) the DRACO could only just spot the asteroid an hour and thirty minutes before impact.

The DART spacecraft deliberately impacted Dimorphos at speeds that reached 4.1 miles per second (6.6 km/s), in an attempt to change Dimorphos's orbit path around the much larger asteroid, Didymos, which measures 780 meters! 

Photos captured from the spacecraft during its final moments have revealed stunning details of Dimorphos, the small target asteroid which situates in the double-asteroid system of a larger asteroid, Didymos. The JWST and HST captured the impact in different light wavelengths, Webb in infrared using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), and Images from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 show the impact in visible light.

The different wavelength observations should reveal details about particle distribution sizes within the expanding dust cloud, helping to determine whether the collision dispersed lots of big chunks or mostly fine dust debris into space. The JWST is said to have observed the impact over a total of five hours, capturing 10 images, and the HST captured intervals of 22 minutes, 5 hours, and 8.2 hours after impact.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson shares that: "For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured imagery from the same target in the cosmos: an asteroid that was impacted by a spacecraft after a seven-million-mile journey. All of humanity eagerly awaits the discoveries to come from Webb, Hubble, and our ground-based telescopes – about the DART mission and beyond.”

The moonlet (Dimorphos) had never been seen in this way before, with the DART camera revealing it as covered in uneven terrain with multiple boulders, a strange new world. While the relatively small potato-shaped asteroid posed no threat to our world, scientists at NASA hoped to mimic what could be done and how we might prepare for the unlikely event of if a dangerous asteroid were ever headed towards the Earth. 

DART is just one part of a much larger planetary defense plan and strategy that is being led by NASA's Planetary Defence Coordination Office, according to Nancy Chabot, project scientist on the DART mission and planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

You might also want to take a look at the best deep-space telescopes, and the best cameras for astrophotography, as well as the best lenses for astrophotography. Don't forget the best star tracker camera mounts for astrophotography.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back online and functioning now that the final piece of the hardware puzzle, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3), has been successfully revived. After months of hardware glitching and a mysterious loss of crucial data synchronization messages, the Hubble is no longer orbiting in safe mode.

The world's most powerful space telescope had been placed into safe mode in October, with many operations suspended. The Wide Field Camera 3 is said to be the most heavily used instrument of the telescope, paired with its other Advanced Camera for Surveys, its function is crucial and used for observation.

• Read more: Best telescopes

Fixing the now very old but still superior Hubble Space Telescope piece by piece has taken months of troubleshooting efforts. Engineers were struggling to determine the cause of the Hubble's malfunction, but eventually managed to rerout operations to a backup computer, correcting the faults. WFC 3 is one of only a few instruments to be lifted from safe mode, but NASA states that the spacecraft is operating as expected.

Working continuously without fault for 31 years, the device was brought offline for the first time in June 2021 due to a payload computer glitch. The Hubble suffered another downfall in October, after discovering a loss of data being provided to the circuitry of the Control Unit, which affected synchronization messages providing instructions to the instruments on the telescope spacecraft. 

Unfortunately for the Hubble, in the event of this happening again, NASA’s only way to keep it alive is through remote software fixes as repair shuttles sent periodically to inspect the telescope were retired in 2011. Fortunately NASA is prepping a brand new Hubble successor – the James Webb Space Telescope – with an expected launch to take place no earlier than December 2022.

Scientists have used the Hubble over the years to observe the most distant stars and planets in our solar system. It was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains (only just) in operation of its mission to fundamentally change the ways in which we understand the universe. 

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Telescopes have been flying off the shelves ever since lockdown, but here comes a custom-made astrophotography-centric ‘digital observatory’-style smart telescope that will certainly buck that trend. Just announced by Vaonis is the Hyperia, which the French company calls the world's most powerful automated telescope, even a “domestic Hubble”, a reference to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. 

Hyperia will sell in 2023 or 2024 for a whopping $45,000 / £38,700. 

Aimed at (monied) amateur astronomers, the Hyperia is designed to be a hybrid between a consumer-style ‘smart telescope’ and a full blown astronomical observatory. Supposedly equipped with the best mechanical, optical and electronic technology currently available, it weighs 165 lbs/75kg and comes equipped with the most recent and most sensitive sensor from Sony, the IMX 455, which will help it produce photos of deep sky objects in stunning 61 megapixel resolution.

Compare that to the paltry 6.4 megapixel images traded by the Vaonis Stellina, a smart telescope launched by the same company a few years ago. It’s still the only available product from Vaonis, though it has recently announced another upcoming product, the Vaonis Vespera, a small 2-inch / 50 mm telescope that records 2 megapixel images and is slated to sell for €1,499 / US$1,499 / UK£1,287. 

Hyperia is at the polar opposite end of the market. With an an aperture of 5.9-inches / 150mm and a focal length of 41 inches/1,050mm, it’s named after after Hyperion, one of the Titan children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky) in Greek mythology (and also one of the moons of Saturn).

With an apochromatic triple lens, which brings red, green and blue wavelengths of light into focus in the same plane, it’s designed to mimic the automated telescopes on remote mountaintops used by astronomers. It uses the same ‘direct drive’ motorised technology that rotates professional telescopes. 

It will be capable of taking digital images of deep sky objects right down to 20th magnitude, with Vaonis offering examples of what it should be capable of; full colour images of objects like the Eagle Nebula, Tarantula Nebula and Sculptor Galaxy. Those images, shot in 9576x6388 pixel resolution, will be available for the owner to view on their phone, tablet or computer. 

Made from high-end Zircal, which is used by the aerospace industry and protects against the elements, Hyperia will be made to order and fully modular, with a waiting time of between 12 and 18 months.

“Since the creation of Vaonis, we have been committed to making the exploration of the universe accessible to everyone,” said Cyril Dupuy, founder of Vaonis. “Making the most efficient technologies on the market accessible to the most demanding public represents a new step taken for our company with the creation of Hyperia. However, ease of use and experience are in Hyperia’s DNA as in the rest of our range.” 

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