Category: The Milky Way

NASA’s Roman Could Bring New Waves of Information on Galaxy’s Stars

Lee esta nota de prensa en español aqui. A team of researchers has confirmed stars ring loud and clear in a “key” that will harmonize well with the science goals and capabilities of NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Stars’ turbulent natures produce waves that cause fluctuations in their overall brightness. By studying these […]

NASA’s Webb Explores Largest Star-Forming Cloud in Milky Way

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a colorful array of massive stars and glowing cosmic dust in the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, the most massive and active star-forming region in our Milky Way galaxy.  “Webb’s powerful infrared instruments provide detail we’ve never been able to see before, which will help us to understand some […]

Milky Way Views

The Milky Way appears above Earth’s bright atmospheric glow in this Aug. 23, 2025, photograph from the International Space Station as it soared 261 miles above southern Iran at approximately 12:54 a.m. local time. The camera was configured for low light and long duration settings. Our home galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars, enough […]

How NASA’s Roman Mission Will Unveil Our Home Galaxy Using Cosmic Dust

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help scientists better understand our Milky Way galaxy’s less sparkly components — gas and dust strewn between stars, known as the interstellar medium. One of Roman’s major observing programs, called the Galactic Plane Survey, will peer through our galaxy to its most distant edge, mapping roughly 20 billion […]

Apocalypse When? Hubble Casts Doubt on Certainty of Galactic Collision

As far back as 1912, astronomers realized that the Andromeda galaxy — then thought to be only a nebula — was headed our way. A century later, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope were able to measure the sideways motion of Andromeda and found it was so negligible that an eventual head-on collision with the […]

NASA’s Roman Mission Shares Detailed Plans to Scour Skies

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team shared Thursday the designs for the three core surveys the mission will conduct after launch. These observation programs are designed to investigate some of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics while enabling expansive cosmic exploration that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe. “Roman’s setting out to do […]

NASA Webb’s Autopsy of Planet Swallowed by Star Yields Surprise

Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have provided a surprising twist in the narrative surrounding what is believed to be the first star observed in the act of swallowing a planet. The new findings suggest that the star actually did not swell to envelop a planet as previously hypothesized. Instead, Webb’s observations show the […]

NASA Webb Explores Effect of Strong Magnetic Fields on Star Formation

Follow-up research on a 2023 image of the Sagittarius C stellar nursery in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, has revealed ejections from still-forming protostars and insights into the impact of strong magnetic fields on interstellar gas and the life cycle of stars.   “A big question […]

Cosmic Mapmaker: NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Ready to Launch

NASA’s latest space observatory is targeting a March 8 liftoff, and the agency’s PUNCH heliophysics mission is sharing a ride. Here’s what to expect during launch and beyond. In a little over a day, NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope is slated to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. […]