Your backstage pass to the universe and how NASA studies it. Exoplanets, black holes, dark energy, and more!
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ALT This cartoon of the Swift observatory shows it pointing at a target in the sky. Against a black background, the Swift spacecraft has a boxy grey body with long blue solar panels extended on each side and a yellow triangular section pointed out into space. Swift is pointing toward a star on the left that is marked with a triangular pink flag on a blue pole and surrounded by four pink L-shaped brackets. There are five additional targets across the image, three with a blue checkmark above them indicating that Swift has already observed them. This image is watermarked with “Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.”
ALT This X-ray image of the supernova remnant G306.3-0.9 features a very small, bright purple object in the center of a dark and starry sky. The purple nebula has some bits of red and blue peeking through. It has a cartoon-like fish shape, poised as if swimming down into the water. It stands out from the surrounding stars due to its colors, brightness and contrast against the darker background. The image is roughly 20 arcminutes across, which corresponds to 150 light-years at the remnant's estimated distance of about 26,000 light-years.
ALT This cartoon of the Swift observatory shows it pointing at a target in the sky. Against a black background, the Swift spacecraft has a boxy grey body with long blue solar panels extended on each side and a yellow triangular section pointed out into space. Swift is pointing toward a star on the left that is marked with a triangular pink flag on a blue pole and surrounded by four pink L-shaped brackets. There are five additional targets across the image, three with a blue checkmark above them indicating that Swift has already observed them. This image is watermarked with “Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.”
ALT This cartoon of the Swift observatory shows it pointing at a target in the sky. Against a black background, the Swift spacecraft has a boxy grey body with long blue solar panels extended on each side and a yellow triangular section pointed out into space. Swift is pointing toward a star on the left that is marked with a triangular pink flag on a blue pole and surrounded by four pink L-shaped brackets. There are five additional targets across the image, three with a blue checkmark above them indicating that Swift has already observed them. This image is watermarked with “Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.”
ALT This oval image represents a view of the entire sky unfolded and laid out flat. It is set against a white background and has a faint gray grid within. The grid is the equivalent of latitude and longitude lines on a map of Earth, but here they mark those lines for our galaxy. Colorful dots speckle the oval, each representing a source that has been observed by Swift’s Burst Alert Telescope. The light blue and gray dots are concentrated along the central line of the oval which is where our galaxy’s plane lies. These sources come from within our galaxy. Other dots, like the red, pink, and navy ones, are scattered over the entire image. They come from outside our galaxy. Below the oval is a key, identifying which colors are associated with which type of source. This image is watermarked with “Credit: Amy Y. Lien et al 2025 ApJ 989 161.”
ALT This mosaic of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is created from images of astronomical objects captured by the satellite’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope. Swift looks like a long cylinder wrapped in golden foil, with a boxy silver-wrapped shape on one end. Long, glossy solar panels sit parallel to the body of the spacecraft on two sides. But zooming in closer, the image is made from small squares, each showing an astronomical object, including galaxies and star fields. The image is watermarked “Credit: NASA/Swift and AndreaMosaic”
ALT An irregular galaxy undergoing intense star formation. Thick towers of turbulent fuchsia gas burst from the top and bottom of a pale blue galactic disk.
ALT Dynamic, textured clouds swoop across the scene. Their color ranges from deep, steely blue to bright silver. Pink and white stars of varying sizes decorate the clouds.
ALT A chaotic, dust-shrouded system of merging galaxies forming stars at a furious rate. Chandra X-ray data (magenta) pinpoint powerful black hole activity and hot gas, while Hubble optical (blue and white) and Webb infrared (red and grey) data illuminate vast stellar nurseries hidden behind interstellar dust. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and J. Major
ALT Composite image of the Treble Clef, a giant radio structure in space. Bright pink filaments resembling a musical treble clef stretch through a diffuse blue cloud, surrounded by scattered stars against a black background.
ALT A spiral galaxy with two distinct arms forming a backwards "S" shape is in the foreground, against a background of many other much smaller, more distant galaxies. In the right lower corner, a gravitational lens can be seen, with a large, distinctive arc to the upper left.
ALT A nebula made of clouds of gas and dust with stars forming within. In the center and out to the left it is filled with thin, wispy blue gas that forms delicate layers. Around this are thicker orange clouds with dark ridges. Thin red filaments of gas cross the center of the nebula. Glowing bubbles in the gas contain dense, very bright clusters of stars. In the edges, distant stars are visible as bright points on a dark background.
ALT This composite shows a wide view of supernova remnant G306.3–0.9, placing it in context with star-formation regions in southern Centaurus. Chandra X-ray observations (blue), Spitzer infrared data (red, cyan), and radio observations (purple) from the Australia Telescope Compact Array are merged in this composite. The image is one degree across, which corresponds to 450 light-years at the remnant's estimated distance. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Michigan/M. Reynolds et al; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA
ALT In a darkened clean room, a technician clad in white coveralls, hood, mask, and blue gloves inspects a prototype telescope set within a black frame. At center, the telescope’s translucent, tan-colored structure glows as the technician shines a flashlight behind it. Other suited people partially appear in the background at right, while at top and left ceiling lights from areas beyond the clean room can be seen through windows. The image is watermarked “Credit: NASA/Dennis Henry.”
ALT The shimmering colors visible in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image show off the remarkable complexity of the Twin Jet Nebula. Lobes of material, in teal, orange and blue hues, stretch outward like elongated orbs from a central star system that shines bright white. Streams of gas jet outward from the center. Stars are visible in the background, dotting the black of space in yellow and white. Credit: NASA/ESA/Judy Schmidt