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Welcome to the Universe

Discover the universe: Learn about the history of the cosmos, what it's made of, and so much more.

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Exoplanets

Worlds beyond our solar system.

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Stars

Giant balls of hot gas that burn for millions to billions of years. 

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Black Holes

Concentrations of matter with gravity so powerful not even light can escape.

Looking like a pinwheel, this face-on spiral galaxy holds a bright-white core at image center. Arms curve outward from the core. They hold dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions. All on a black background dotted with stars.

Galaxies

Collections of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust bound together by gravity.

featured story

Coming in Hot – NASA’s Chandra Checks Habitability of Exoplanets

Astronomers are using NASA’s Chandra Observatory and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton X-ray data to explore whether nearby stars could host habitable exoplanets by tracking how much lethal radiation the exoplanets receive in orbit. This research will help guide observations with the next generation of telescopes searching for Earth-like planets.

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A bright, almost-round orange and yellow star is at the center of the black background of space. A light tan, circular planet is orbiting the star. The planet has a white halo around it.
The artist's illustration featured in the main part of this graphic depicts a star and its planet, WASP-18b, a giant exoplanet that orbits very close to it.
NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
Featured Video

Sound of Space Data: Crab Nebula Sonification

The Crab Nebula is an expanding remnant of a star’s supernova first seen by Japanese and Chinese astronomers nearly 1,000 years ago. In this new sonification of the explosion, X-ray wavelengths and brightness in data obtained with NASA’s NuSTAR and Chandra space observatories have been turned into sound.

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Featured News

Article
4 min read

Discovery Alert: Spock’s Home Planet Goes ‘Poof’

Artist's concept shows a full disk of imagined planet Vulcan, predominantly light brown with patches of gray-green, against the black background of space.
Article
5 min read

X-ray Satellite XMM-Newton Sees ‘Space Clover’ in a New Light

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An artist's concept of the binary star system HM Sge on the black background of space sprinkled with various sizes of red and white points of light. At the top of the image a blazing hot white disk surrounds a white dwarf star that is pulling a stream of material from its red giant companion, the glowing mottled ball at bottom right.
4 min read

Hubble Finds Surprises Around a Star That Erupted 40 Years Ago

Article2 months ago
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5 min read

NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins

Article2 months ago
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4 min read

Travel Through Data From Space in New 3D Instagram Experiences

Article2 months ago

NGC 1546

NASA Releases Hubble Image Taken in New Pointing Mode -- this image, featuring NGC 1546, represents one of the first observations taken with the Hubble Space Telescope since transitioning to a new operating mode that uses only one gyro.

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A galaxy against a black backdrop dotted with more distant galaxies and a few foreground stars. The galaxy is slightly tilted toward us, providing a good view of dark dust lanes from slightly above. They are backlit by the galaxy’s core. This dust appears rusty-brown. The core itself glows brightly in a yellowish light as brilliant-blue regions sparkle through the dust. Several background galaxies also are visible, including an edge-on spiral just to the left of NGC 1546.

More Stories From the Universe

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Article
2 min read

Hubble Images a Classic Spiral 

A spiral galaxy with three prominent arms wrapping around it. The galaxy holds plenty of extra gas and dark dust between the arms. There are shining blue points throughout the arms and some patches of gas out beyond the galaxy’s edge, where stars are forming. The center of the galaxy also shines brightly. It is on a dark background where some small orange dots mark distant galaxies.
Article
4 min read

NASA’s Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Seen

Illustration of a particle jet emerging from a dying star
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6 min read

How NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Will Illuminate Cosmic Dawn

Article4 days ago
This image shows the exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab. The image is mostly black, with blue scale-like features apparent in the central region of the image. At the center of the image, there is a black circle, and in the center, a symbol representing a star. This black circle blocks the light from the host star. To the lower left of the circle is a fuzzy bright orange circle, which is the exoplanet.
6 min read

NASA’s Webb Images Cold Exoplanet 12 Light-Years Away

Article5 days ago
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4 min read

25 Images to Celebrate NASA’s Chandra 25th Anniversary

Article6 days ago
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Galaxies

Looking like a pinwheel, this face-on spiral galaxy holds a bright-white core at image center. Arms curve outward from the core. They hold dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions. All on a black background dotted with stars.

Black Holes

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Stars

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Exoplanets

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