Galaxies speckle the heavens like stars in a stunning new photo of the deep and distant universe. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team shared a new image of a region of the sky called the COSMOS-Web field (short for Cosmic Evolution Survey). The image combines data collected by JWST’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and the…

Astronomers have discovered the closest known molecular cloud to Earth, giving them a rare close-up view of the cosmic recycling of matter that fuels the creation of new stars and planets. Named “Eos” after the Greek goddess of dawn, the newfound cloud is an enormous, crescent-shaped blob of hydrogen gas located just 300 light-years from…

A huge family of newborn stars seem to now be going their separate ways: Over 1,000 stars are hurriedly fleeing their nest in record time, leading to something of a mystery as to the cause of this stellar breakup. Typically it takes a few hundred million years for a cluster of stars that are born…

Astronomers thought the Perseus cluster was a massive-but-stable grouping of galaxies, until they found hints of a collision with another cluster — but no one had identified a cosmic interloper. Now, using a method called weak gravitational lensing, scientists think they’ve finally found the hidden intruder. The Perseus galaxy cluster is one of the most…

The iconic Whirlpool galaxy Messier 51 is pictured along with the smaller galaxy NGC 5195 at the top of the image. (Image credit: Dr. Michele Hernandez Bayliss) Vermont-based astrophotographer Michele Hernandez Bayliss has captured stunning views of Messier 94 – also known as the Croc’s Eye galaxy – and the famous Whirlpool galaxy (M 51),…

The Range Astronomy Club is celebrating National Astronomy Day at the Paulucci Space Theater on the campus of Minnesota North College in Hibbing. Games, activities and solar viewing will begin at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 3, with constellation viewing starting at 8 p.m. Events are free, except shows within the theater are $5. A show…

The cloud, named Eos, is chock-full of molecular hydrogen and possibly rife with star-forming potential in the future. A newly discovered potentially star-forming cloud that is one of the largest structures in the sky.Thomas Müller (HdA/MPIA) and Thavisha Dharmawardena (NYU) Stars and planets are born inside swirling clouds of cosmic gas and dust that are…

The surprise discovery of a huge cloud of molecular gas — the stuff that forms stars — just 300 light-years away is opening up new ways to study the conditions that enable star birth. Stars form from collapsing clouds of molecular gas. We see this in the likes of the Orion Nebula, which gets energized…

Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) has completed assembly of the Aspera space astrophysics microsatellite bus. The spacecraft is ready for integration with the far-UV Aspera telescope being built by the University of Arizona. SFL will perform instrument-spacecraft integration and testing at its Toronto facility later this year with launch slated for early 2026. Aspera is a…