Tag Archives: Telescope

Quick facts What it is: Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) molecular cloud Where it is: 25,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius When it was shared: Sept. 24, 2025 Why it’s so special: Stars in the Milky Way galaxy are born in huge molecular clouds. The most massive is Sagittarius B2, which is just a few hundred light-years from our …

A maelstrom of star formation close to the center of our galaxy has been revealed in two different wavelengths by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), its beautiful images highlighting the intensity of star-birth in the region and deepening the mystery of why star formation at the very heart of our galaxy is so sluggish. Sagittarius B2 is a dense …

A private company will give a powerful NASA space telescope a new lease on life next year, if all goes according to plan. Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies has scored a contract to raise the altitude of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has been hunting for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from low Earth orbit (LEO) for more than two decades. Sparse …

NASA’s powerful James Webb Space telescope has revealed a colorful spread of stars and cosmic dust in the Milky Way’s most active star-forming region.  The telescope was studying Sagittarius B2, a massive molecular cloud, NASA said in a news release. The region is just a few hundred light-years from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way …

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An illustration of a black hole star — a potentially new class of cosmic object with a feeding black hole at its center, and a dense cocoon of turbulent gas surrounding it like a star. | Credit: MPIA/HdA/T. Müller/A. de Graaff Astronomers have …

Astronomers have discovered a new object that could help shed light on mysterious “little red dots” that were first spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022. The newfound object, dubbed “the Cliff,” suggests that the little red dots represent a totally new class of cosmic objects known as a “black hole star,” the researchers say. This newly …

Northumbria University scientists using the sensitive instruments on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have detected several mysterious structures orbiting at different altitudes above Saturn that they cannot explain. A statement announcing the unexpected discoveries said the unexplained features, which included “a series of dark, bead-like features embedded in bright auroral halos” in the ionosphere and an “asymmetric star-shaped …

Anyone hungry for the icy crunch of a Pluto-like body? No? Well, one nearby white dwarf is going all in on a Pluto-esque snack. According to NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a “burned-out star” snacking on a “fragment of a Pluto-like object” that’s not too far from Earth — only about 260 light-years away, which is very close …

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered strange “dark beads “above a four-armed star pattern in Saturn’s atmosphere. The surprising structures are unlike anything scientists have seen before, and they’re not sure what they are. The unusual features were discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope‘s (JWST’s) Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) as it peered into the gas giant’s atmosphere above …

An SwRI-led team used Webb telescope observations (white) to detect methane gas on the distant dwarf planet Makemake. Sharp emission peaks near 3.3 microns reveal methane in the gas phase above Makemake’s surface. A continuum model (cyan) is overlaid for comparison; the gas emission peaks are identified where the observed spectrum rises above the continuum. An artistic rendering of Makemake’s …