The ring-shaped shell of the first recorded supernova was captured by the dark energy camera of the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The bright debris marks the spot where a white dwarf star exploded more than 1,800 years ago and was recorded by Chinese astronomers in the year 185.
This artist’s illustration shows the large, puffy star Gaia17bpp partially eclipsed by a cloud of dust surrounding its mysterious, smaller companion star.
An image of the Sh2-54 nebula was taken in infrared light using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The Gemini North Telescope captured a pair of galaxies, NGC 4567 (top) and NGC 4568 (bottom), as they collide. Nicknamed the butterfly galaxies, they will eventually merge into a single galaxy in 500 million years.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular frontal view of the large spiral galaxy NGC 3631, located about 53 million light-years away.
This collection of 37 Hubble Space Telescope images, taken between 2003 and 2021, includes galaxies that are all hosts to both Cepheid variables and supernovae. They serve as cosmic tools for measuring astronomical distance and refining the rate of expansion of the universe.
This is the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope project.
Two galaxies, NGC 1512 and NGC 1510, appear to be dancing in this image from the Dark Energy Camera. The galaxies have been merging for 400 million years, which has triggered waves of star formation and distorted the two galaxies.
This illustration shows exocomets orbiting the nearby star Beta Pictoris. Astronomers have detected at least 30 exocomets in the system, which also hosts two exoplanets.
This artist’s impression shows a two-star system, with a white dwarf (foreground) and a companion star (background), where a micronova explosion can occur. Although these stellar explosions are smaller than supernovae, they can be extremely powerful.
This sequence of images shows how the solid nucleus (or “dirty snowball” core) of comet C/2014 UN271 was isolated from a vast shell of dust and gas to measure it. Scientists think the core could be 85 miles in diameter.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the most distant star to date: Earendel, which lies almost 13 billion light-years away.
Astronomers have imaged a space phenomenon called odd radio circles using Australia’s SKA Pathfinder telescope. These space rings are so massive that they are about a million light-years across, or 16 times larger than our galaxy, the Milky Way.
This illustration shows what happens when two large celestial bodies collide in space, creating a cloud of debris. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope saw a cloud of debris blocking light from star HD 166191.
Some 4.4 million space objects billions of light-years away have been mapped by astronomers, including 1 million space objects that had never been spotted before. The observations were made by the sensitive Low Frequency Array telescope, known as LOFAR.
An unusual triangle shape formed by two galaxies crashing together in a cosmic standoff has been captured in a new image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The head-on collision between the two galaxies fueled a star formation frenzy, creating “the bizarre triangle of newly created stars”.
This image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A combines some of the earliest X-ray data collected by NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, displayed in magenta, with high-energy X-ray data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory from NASA, in blue.
This image shows the Milky Way as seen from Earth. The star icon indicates the position of a mysterious repeating transient. The spinning space object emitted radiation three times per hour and became the brightest source of radio waves visible from Earth, acting as a celestial beacon.
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, which is filled with young stars. The bright center, surrounded by pink clouds, indicates the location of its black hole and star birth zones.
This image shows the Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured by radio waves.
This artist’s impression shows a red supergiant star in the last year of its life emitting a tumultuous cloud of gas, undergoing significant internal changes before exploding as a supernova.
