Webb Telescopes view face-on of spiral galaxy NGC 4254.
Webb launches on a cloudy day from an Arianne 5 rocket. The image shows the rocket just lifting off the pad with a plume of orange fire and a plume grey blue smoke extending well to the right against a slate blue sky.

Webb Telescope Latest News

Webb's latest news releases in reverse chronological order going back to 2012.

An image of a region of a molecular cloud. The orange cloud is dense and bright close to the top of the image, like rolling clouds, and grows darker and more wispy toward the bottom and in the top corner. One bright star with six short diffraction spikes and several dimmer stars are visible as light spots among the clouds.

Cheers! NASA’s Webb Finds Ethanol, Other Icy Ingredients for Worlds

5 min read

Editor’s Note: This article was updated March 13, 2024, to clarify the likelihood that chemicals found around IRAS 2A were present in the first stages of development of our solar system. What do margaritas, vinegar, and ant stings have in…

NASA’s Roman Team Selects Survey to Map Our Galaxy’s Far Side

7 min read

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has announced plans for an unprecedented survey of the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. It will peer deeper into this region than any other survey, mapping more of our galaxy’s stars than…

A spiral galaxy with a small bar of bright-white stars at its core. Two main spiral arms extend outward from each end of the bar. They appear to fork into multiple branches beyond the galaxy's core. The spiral arms have a lavender hue. Bright-white and bright-red stars dot the galaxy. Reddish-brown dust lanes line the inner curves of the spiral arms.

NASA’s Webb, Hubble Telescopes Affirm Universe’s Expansion Rate, Puzzle Persists

6 min read

NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope have tag-teamed to produce definitive measurements of the universe's expansion rate.

At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the center-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the center of the bubble there is an opaque blueish glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula, including two tiny cavities at the top center of the image. There are thousands of stars that fill the surrounding area outside the nebula, most of them are yellow or white. At 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock there are extremely bright stars with 8 diffraction spikes. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disk-shaped galaxies scattered across the image.

Peering Into the Tendrils of NGC 604 with NASA’s Webb

4 min read

The formation of stars and the chaotic environments they inhabit is one of the most well-studied, but also mystery-shrouded, areas of cosmic investigation. The intricacies of these processes are now being unveiled like never before by NASA’s James Webb Space…

Two side-by-side images of the same region of space. Superimposed on each is a simple, white line drawing of a telescope. Left: Drawing of the Hubble Space Telescope on a Hubble image showing numerous stars and a hazy blue to brown cloud of gas and dust. Right: Drawing of the Webb Space Telescope on a Webb image showing numerous stars and a pinkish yellow to brown cloud of gas and dust. The Webb image shows a more filamentous and billowy structure. There is no clear boundary between the two images.

What Are Hubble and Webb Observing Right Now? NASA Tool Has the Answer

4 min read

It’s not hard to find out what NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes have observed in the past. Barely a week goes by without news of a cosmic discovery made possible using images, spectra, and other data captured by NASA’s…

A rectangular image with thousands of galaxies of various shapes and colors on the black background of space. Some are noticeably spirals, either face-on or edge-on, while others are blobby ellipticals. Many are too small to discern any structure. One prominent foreground star at top center features Webb’s signature 8-point diffraction spikes. At lower right, a small region is highlighted with a white box. Vertical lines extend upward like a cone to the bottom corners of a larger box at upper right, showing a zoomed in version of the highlighted area. The pullout features a galaxy labeled GN-z11, seen as a fuzzy yellow dot. Above it is another galaxy, seen as a fuzzy red oval.

Webb Unlocks Secrets of One of the Most Distant Galaxies Ever Seen

5 min read

Looking deeply into space and time, two teams using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old. Initially detected with NASA’s Hubble…

A three-panel image of a supernova remnant. The left panel is labeled “NIRCam” while the two right panels are labeled “MIRI M R S Argon two” (at top) and “NIRSpec I F U Argon six” (at bottom). At left, a mottled light pinkish-orange oval whose inner edge resembles a string of pearls. Within the oval is a dense blue-green cloud, shaped like a keyhole. Three stars with six-point diffraction patterns surround the oval. Above and below these structures, are very faint orange rings, which form a figure eight pattern. The center of the supernova remnant is surrounded by a white box with lines leading to the upper and lower right of the image, where two stacked panels show a bright orange ring with an orange dot in the middle. The upper panel is fuzzier and more blobby, while the bottom panel has more clearly defined edges around the ring and central dot.

Webb Finds Evidence for Neutron Star at Heart of Young Supernova Remnant

5 min read

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for emission from a neutron star at the site of a recently observed supernova. The supernova, known as SN 1987A, was a core-collapse supernova, meaning the compacted remains at…

NASA Astronomer Sees Power in Community, Works to Build More

5 min read

Science is often portrayed as a solitary affair, where discoveries are made by lone geniuses toiling in isolation. But Dr. Natasha Batalha, an astronomer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, says solving problems with the people around…

Big Bang Infographic showing the timeline of the history of the big bang and the formation of the building blocks of the universe. he history of the universe is outlined in this infographic. It starts with Inflation, then the first particles in 1 microsecond, followed by first nuclei (10 seconds); first light (300,000 years); first stars (200 million years); galaxies and dark matter (400 million years); dark energy (10 billion years); present (13.8 billion years). NASA

What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe

11 min read

Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with a rapid expansion we call the big bang. After this initial expansion, which lasted a fraction of a second, gravity started to slow the universe down. But the cosmos wouldn’t stay…

Discovery Alert: A ‘Super-Earth’ in the Habitable Zone

4 min read

A newly discovered 'super-Earth' dwells in the habitable zone of its parent star – and might have a roughly Earth-sized companion.

Nineteen Webb images of face-on spiral galaxies are combined in a mosaic. Some appear within squares, and others horizontal or vertical rectangles. Many galaxies have blue hazes toward the centers, and all have orange spiral arms. Many have clear bar shaped-structures at their centers, but a few have spirals that begin at their cores. Some of the galaxies’ arms form clear spiral shapes, while others are more irregular. Some of the galaxies’ arms appear to rotate clockwise and others counterclockwise. Most galaxy cores are centered, but a few appear toward an image’s edge. Most galaxies appear to extend beyond the captured observations. The galaxies shown, listed in alphabetical order, are IC 5332, NGC 628, NGC 1087, NGC1300, NGC 1365, NGC 1385, NGC 1433, NGC 1512, NGC 1566, NGC 1672, NGC 2835, NGC 3351, NGC 3627, NGC 4254, NGC 4303, NGC 4321, NGC 4535, NGC 5068, and NGC 7496.

NASA’s Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies

6 min read

It’s oh-so-easy to be absolutely mesmerized by these spiral galaxies. Follow their clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to their centers, where there may be old star clusters and – sometimes – active supermassive black holes. Only NASA’s…

How NASA Chases and Investigates Bright Cosmic Blips

9 min read

Stephen Lesage’s phone started vibrating just after halftime on Oct. 9, 2022, while he was watching a soccer game in Atlanta with a friend. When Lesage saw the incoming messages, the match no longer seemed important. There had been a…

Orange mountain-like structures against a blue background form the Cosmic Cliffs

New U.S. Postal Service Stamps Feature Iconic NASA Webb Images

3 min read

The U.S. Postal Service has issued two new Priority Mail stamps celebrating NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, most powerful, and most complex telescope ever put in space. The stamps, issued Jan. 22, feature images of the cosmos captured…

Webb Shows Many Early Galaxies Looked Like Pool Noodles, Surfboards

7 min read

Researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like surfboards and pool noodles – and are rarely round, like volleyballs or frisbees. “Roughly 50 to 80%…

NASA’s Webb Discovers Dusty ‘Cat’s Tail’ in Beta Pictoris System

9 min read

Beta Pictoris, a young planetary system located just 63 light-years away, continues to intrigue scientists even after decades of in-depth study. It possesses the first dust disk imaged around another star — a disk of debris produced by collisions between…

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Possible Aurorae on Isolated Brown Dwarf

8 min read

Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due…

Hubble Space Telescope data are shown in green and blue; Chandra data are shown in purple. Together they form a brilliant cluster of stars among clouds where stars form.

NASA Features New Discoveries at American Astronomical Society Meeting

5 min read

Experts will discuss new research from NASA missions at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), on topics ranging from planets outside our solar system to fleeting, high-energy explosions in the universe. The meeting will take place Jan.…

In the foreground, the side profile of Webb lead photographer Chris Gunn wearing glasses and a mask in a cleanroom suit stares intently off screen to the left. Directly behind, the slightly blurry, full honeycomb like golden mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope is in clear view taking up most of the frame.

A Look Through Time with NASA’s Lead Photographer for the James Webb Space Telescope

2 min read

Nearly two years ago in the early morning hours of Dec. 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope successfully took flight from the jungle-encircled ELA-3 launch complex at Europe’s Spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana. Following a successful deployment in space, and…

Meet the Infrared Telescopes That Paved the Way for NASA’s Webb

8 min read

The Webb telescope has opened a new window onto the universe, but it builds on missions going back 40 years, including Spitzer and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. On Dec. 25, NASA will celebrate the two-year launch anniversary of the James…

NASA’s Webb Rings in Holidays With Ringed Planet Uranus

5 min read

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side. Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features – including a seasonal polar…

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