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Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Hubble Dazzles With Young Stars in Trifid Nebula

2026-04-20T14:08:10.530+00:00

INBOX ASTRONOMY

NASA's Hubble Dazzles With Young Stars in Trifid Nebula

Release date: Monday, April 20, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Actively forming stars are threaded throughout thick dust in this star-forming region.

Hubble is the most enduring space telescope the world has ever known. Many of its findings could not have been predicted when the concept for this telescope was proposed in 1946. Hubble provided the first confirmation that supermassive black holes exist, and that black holes are at the cores of almost all galaxies. This telescope was the first to confirm an atmosphere around a planet outside our solar system — and showed us the first images of asteroids with tails. It has observed a huge number of cosmic objects, from nearby stars and star-forming regions to more distant merging galaxies and galaxy clusters. Its extensive, precise observations are regularly referenced when astronomers calculate (and recalculate) the expansion rate of the universe itself. This great observatory is always “on” — Hubble takes new images and data daily. Its deeply detailed images capture ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light.

In honor of Hubble’s 36th anniversary, the telescope looked at a scene it first captured in 1997: A small portion of a star-forming region about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, known as the Trifid Nebula. This before-and-after shows changes over incredibly short timescales — and instills a sense of awe and wonder about our ever-changing universe.

Find additional resources at www.stsci.edu

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Inbox Astronomy: Roman Space Telescope Science Platform Will Open New Frontiers in Space Science

2026-04-16T14:43:37.456+00:00

INBOX ASTRONOMY

Roman Space Telescope Science Platform Will Open New Frontiers in Space Science

Release date: Thursday, April 16, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

With the release of the cloud-hosted Roman Research Nexus, STScI provides astronomers around the world an environment where they can prepare to work with the massive data stream expected from NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Preparations for NASA's soon-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have already introduced historic changes to the field of astronomy. Starting in 2027, Roman will deliver an unprecedented volume of complex survey data that will be impractical to download to individual computers for analysis.

Astronomers and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), working in close collaboration with the mission’s partners at NASA and Caltech/IPAC, have met these new developments head-on by creating and releasing a seamless interface, the Roman Research Nexus, which brings users to the data. This cloud-based science platform, which is live and ready to use, allows researchers to stream, manipulate, and analyze Roman’s currently simulated data, while accessing step-by-step tutorials, built-in tools, and editable algorithms. The Nexus will pave the way for an explosion of scientific discoveries once real Roman data begin flowing into it.

Find additional resources at www.stsci.edu

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Webb Redefines Dividing Line Between Planets, Stars

2026-04-14T14:08:50.621+00:00

INBOX ASTRONOMY

NASA's Webb Redefines Dividing Line Between Planets, Stars

Release date: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Composition and orbit of super-chonky 29 Cygni b point to accretion within a protoplanetary disk.

Where is the dividing line between stars and the most massive planets? Scientists think it may depend on how they formed. Was it from a bottom-up approach, gradually growing larger over time, or a top-down approach in which a large collection of gas and dust fragments into smaller, planet-sized bits?

To answer these questions, astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to study an object weighing about 15 times as much as Jupiter, which puts it right on the dividing line between the two processes. They found that the object, called 29 Cygni b, likely formed from the bottom up rather than the top down. In other words, it formed like a planet, not a star.

Find additional resources at www.stsci.edu

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