Inbox Astronomy: NASA Webb, Hubble Share Most Comprehensive View of Saturn to Date

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NASA Webb, Hubble Share Most Comprehensive View of Saturn to Date

Release date: Wednesday, March 25, 2026 2:00:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Infrared and visible observations show layers and storms in the ringed planet’s atmosphere

For centuries, Saturn has captivated skywatchers, from the first telescopic glimpses of its strange “ears” in the 1600’s to the detailed spacecraft portraits of today. Now, two of NASA’s most powerful observatories – the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope – are continuing that tradition. By observing the ringed planet in different wavelengths of light, the telescopes are revealing new insights into this gas giant.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2026

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NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2026

Release date: Wednesday, March 25, 2026 12:00:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Fellows will work to answer three broad questions about the universe

NASA just named the 2026 class of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). It includes 24 outstanding astrophysics researchers who will advance NASA’s pursuit of understanding how the universe works, how it evolved over time, and whether we’re alone in it. This highly competitive program received more than 650 applications for this year’s class, representing an oversubscription rate of 27 to 1.

Each fellow is awarded up to three years of support at a U.S. institution to pursue independent astrophysics research. These fellows are divided into three sub-categories based on their work: Einstein Fellows, who will investigate how the universe functions; Hubble Fellows, who will seek to understand how the universe evolved; and Sagan Fellows, who will try to answer the question, “Are we alone?”

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Hubble Revisits Crab Nebula to Track 25 Years of Expansion

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NASA’s Hubble Revisits Crab Nebula to Track 25 Years of Expansion

Release date: Monday, March 23, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Movement in the Crab Nebula is clearly detectable between Hubble images

In the year 1054, careful observers of the stars noted a new light in the sky, which was so bright it could be seen during the day for 23 days, and remained visible in the night sky for more than a year afterward. It was a supernova, a massive star exploding 6,500 light-years away. The remnant of the supernova was first seen through telescopes in the 1700s. It was eventually, and somewhat puzzlingly, nicknamed the Crab Nebula, likely a result of leggy-looking filaments extending from a central mass as seen through early telescopes.  

In the mid-twentieth century, Edwin Hubble was one of several astronomers who connected the Crab to Chinese astronomical records. On the cusp of a new millennium, the telescope named for Hubble captured an intricately detailed portrait of the full supernova remnant, and 25 years later it has turned again to the ancient site to track the nebula’s expansion and ongoing evolution.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Hubble Unexpectedly Catches Comet Breaking Up

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NASA’s Hubble Unexpectedly Catches Comet Breaking Up

Release date: Wednesday, March 18, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Researchers’ long-sought experiment happened serendipitously.

When scientists recently trained the Hubble Space Telescope on a comet, they got much more of a show than they expected—the comet was crumbling before their eyes! Comet K1, whose full name is Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), had just passed its closest approach to the Sun and was heading out of the solar system. Though it had been intact just days before, K1 fragmented into at least four pieces while Hubble was watching. The odds of that happening while Hubble viewed the comet are extraordinarily low.

Each piece looked like a tiny comet, with a fuzzy envelope of gas and dust surrounding it. From its perch in space, Hubble clearly resolved the fragments, though from the ground they appeared only as barely distinguishable blobs. 

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Webb Examines Cranium Nebula

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NASA’s Webb Examines Cranium Nebula

Release date: Wednesday, February 25, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

The telescope used two instruments to capture mind-bending new views of the little-known nebula PMR 1.

Astronomers are losing their heads over the latest images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which bear a striking resemblance to a transparent cosmic cranium, revealing the “brain” inside. The nebula, officially named PMR 1, is being created by an aging star that is expelling its outer layers. Webb’s predecessor in infrared space-based astronomy, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, also observed this peculiar nebula, but many of its mysteries remain to be revealed.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Webb Telescope Locates Former Star That Exploded as Supernova

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NASA’s Webb Telescope Locates Former Star That Exploded as Supernova

Release date: Monday, February 23, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

Webb shows star was surrounded by a vast shell of carbon-rich dust.

What types of stars explode as supernovas? Usually, we have to try to answer that question after the fact. Astronomers will study the composition and amount of gas expelled in the explosion to gain clues about the former star. But on rare occasions, astronomers are able to identify the specific star that exploded in pre-supernova images of the same region of the sky.

For the first time, astronomers have used images from the James Webb Space Telescope to identify a supernova progenitor that could not be seen by any other telescope: a red supergiant that was located in a nearby galaxy. The supergiant’s surroundings were surprisingly dusty – dusty enough to render it invisible to the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Hubble Identifies One of Darkest Known Galaxies

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NASA’s Hubble Identifies One of Darkest Known Galaxies

Release date: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

The elusive object dubbed CDG-2 may be composed of 99% dark matter.

Most galaxies in the nearby universe are quite luminous. But some are so faint they’re nearly invisible. Astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope in combination with other observatories, identified a galaxy that appears to be almost entirely dominated by dark matter with only a smattering of stars. The galaxy, known as Candidate Dark Galaxy-2 (CDG-2), appears to contain just four globular star clusters (compared to the Milky Way’s 150-plus), and dimly shines with the light of only about 6 million Suns.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Hubble Captures Light Show Around Rapidly Dying Star

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NASA's Hubble Captures Light Show Around Rapidly Dying Star

Release date: Tuesday, February 10, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

Interplay of shadow, light, and dust hints at processes shaping enigmatic nebula

Stardust dances with starlight to create the spectacular Egg Nebula—and the Hubble Space Telescope has a front-row seat to the show. The remarkably symmetrical structure is created by a newly dying, Sun-like star casting off its outer layers of dust and gas. About 1,000 light-years away, the enigmatic Egg Nebula is the youngest and closest nebula of its type ever discovered.  

Twin beams of light illuminate polar lobes and nested arcs, hinting at gravitational interactions with one or more hidden companion stars shrouded by the thick dust. Only Hubble’s exquisitely sharp vision can reveal intricate details of the Egg Nebula’s structure and provide scientists with a rare, close-up opportunity to study a dying star. 

 

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang

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NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang

Release date: Wednesday, January 28, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

In addition to setting a new distance record, galaxy MoM-z14 joins an emerging population of galaxies that are unexpectedly bright, compact, and chemically enriched.

It’s an exciting time to be an astronomer focused on the origins of the universe. How did we get here? It’s one of humanity’s biggest questions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is making it possible to explore that question in completely new ways, revealing galaxies closer to the big bang than we’ve ever seen before.

Webb’s current most-distant galaxy, MoM-z14, existed only 280 million years after the universe began in the big bang. The number, and contents, of bright galaxies in the early universe are defying expectations and demanding new theories of what this period of cosmic history was like, and how it led to us.

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Inbox Astronomy: AI Unlocks Hundreds of Cosmic Anomalies in Hubble Archive

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AI Unlocks Hundreds of Cosmic Anomalies in Hubble Archive

Release date: Tuesday, January 27, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

New findings include galaxy mergers and "jellyfish" galaxies.

Neural networks, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), can learn to recognize patterns in data, which makes them useful for tasks like image recognition. They can analyze vast amounts of imaging data in a fraction of the time that a human would take. Thanks to its longevity, the Hubble Space Telescope has accumulated a 35-year archive ripe for harvesting.

A team of astronomers developed an AI tool named AnomalyMatch to comb Hubble’s archives for rare and unusual objects. The results: more than 1,300 objects with an odd appearance, hundreds of which had never been seen before.

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