ESAWebb Images

Messier 77 (NIRCam)

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This new image, from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disc and its piercingly bright core like never before.

At the heart of M77 is a compact region filled with hot gas that handily outshines the rest of the galaxy put together, even overcoming the light-gathering capacity of Webb’s cameras. This is an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and it’s powered by M77’s central supermassive black hole, which is eight million times as massive as our Sun. Gas in the galaxy’s central regions is pulled by the strong gravity into a tight and rapid orbit around the black hole, where it crashes together and heats up, releasing tremendous amounts of radiation. The starburst pattern radiating from M77’s centre is diffraction spikes that are a feature of the telescope’s optics. They are most often seen from stars, but the bright and compact AGN creates some in this image too.

The bright AGN lies within a larger structure that is uniquely highlighted by Webb’s NIRCam. Since its discovery in 1780, M77 has been variously identified as a nebula (before the concept of separate galaxies beyond our own), a star cluster, and an ordinary spiral galaxy. But near-infrared images reveal a bar spanning from the inner end of one spiral arm to the other, a bar which doesn’t appear in visible-light images of the galaxy. Bars in galaxies channel vast amounts of star-forming material through a dense central region, and indeed M77 is an extremely prolific star-forming galaxy thanks to this bar, spawning tens of Suns worth of new stars every year!

Beyond the bar, M77’s spiral arms spin lazily out into the disc of the galaxy and beyond. The arms are the location of much of this new star birth, with dense clumps of gas collapsing to form tightly-packed clusters of stars. NIRCam pinpoints the light from these stars along the spiral arms, as well as capturing the glow that suffuses the galaxy from the billions of stars in its disc. Particularly along the southern spiral arm, NIRCam also traces infrared emission at slightly longer wavelengths — shown here in red colours — from complex molecules including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

The data used to create this image are from an observing programme (#3707) that surveyed massive, nearby, star-forming galaxies to create a rich dataset useful for many scientific investigations. As can be seen here, the stunning resolution of Webb’s instruments reveals star clusters and rich reservoirs of gas, which can be used to explore the cycle of star formation, life and death in these and other galaxies.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy shown in near-infrared light. Six long, thin rays of light emit from the centre, which are diffraction spikes created by the telescope’s optics. A glowing bar spans across the centre. A glittering orange ring of stars and dust surrounds the bar; at each side, the ring splits off into a spiral arm that winds outwards, traced by dark red dust and more glowing orange spots. The galaxy’s disc is a pale glow.]

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A beacon of light in swirls of dust

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This new image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disc and its piercingly bright core like never before.

The bright orange lines appearing to radiate out from the centre of M77 are not actually a feature of the galaxy: they are a type of distortion that arises from the optical design of the telescope. Called diffraction spikes, they are created because the intense light from the unresolved AGN is bent (“diffracted”) very slightly at the edges of Webb’s hexagonal mirror panels and around one of the struts that hold up its secondary mirror. This distinctive six-plus-two-pointed pattern is the same for any image taken by Webb. For diffraction spikes to appear, the light source has to be very bright and very concentrated, so they’re most often seen on stars. But in some galaxies, as here, the nucleus is bright and compact enough to make diffraction spikes appear as well.

M77 is not just known for its easily visible AGN, but also as a prolific star-forming galaxy. The near-infrared image of M77 reveals a bar spanning across the central region, which doesn’t appear in visible-light images of the galaxy. The bar is enclosed by a bright ring, called a starburst ring, formed by the inner ends of M77’s two spiral arms. Starburst regions in galaxies are typified by extremely high star-formation rates. This ring is more than 6 000 light-years across and displays intense and widespread starbursts, visible in this image by the densely concentrated orange bubbles all around the ring. Since M77 is relatively close to Earth, this starburst ring is a very well-studied example of the phenomenon.

As an active spiral galaxy, M77’s disc is filled with gas and dust which is both a product of and fuel for future star formation. Webb’s MIRI fills out our view of the galaxy with the glow of interstellar dust grains emitted at longer wavelengths, shown here in blue. The dust forms a huge vortex of smoky, swirling filaments with cavities in between. The glowing orange bubbles carved out by newly formed star clusters are also prominently visible out along the galaxy’s arms.

Beyond Webb’s quite focused view, M77’s arms join into a faint extended ring of hydrogen gas thousands of light-years wide, where yet more star formation is taking place. Vast, tenuous filaments of hydrogen gas stretch across this ring and out into intergalactic space, forming an outermost layer around the galaxy. For the tentacle-like appearance of these filaments, M77 is also named the Squid Galaxy.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy shown in mid-infrared light. The image is dominated by an extremely bright glow from the galaxy’s nucleus. Six large and two smaller rays of light emit from the centre, which are diffraction spikes created by the telescope’s optics. The galaxy’s spiral arms are visible by two lines of glowing orange bubbles which whirl out into the disc. Swirling blue clouds of dust make up the rest of the galaxy.]

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Messier 77 (MIRI + NIRCam)

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This new image from Webb highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disc and its piercingly bright core like never before.

M77 is not just known for its easily visible AGN, but also as a prolific star-forming galaxy. Data in this image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) reveals a bar spanning across the central region, which doesn’t appear in visible-light images of the galaxy. The bar is enclosed by a bright ring, called a starburst ring, formed by the inner ends of M77’s two spiral arms. Starburst regions in galaxies are typified by extremely high star-formation rates. This ring is more than 6 000 light-years across and displays intense and widespread starbursts, visible in this image by the densely concentrated orange bubbles all around the ring. Since M77 is relatively close to Earth, this starburst ring is a very well-studied example of the phenomenon.

Beyond the ring and bar, M77’s spiral arms spin lazily out into the disc of the galaxy and beyond. The arms are the location of much of this new star birth, with dense clumps of gas collapsing to form tightly-packed clusters of stars. NIRCam pinpoints the light from these stars along the spiral arms, as well as capturing the glow that suffuses the galaxy from the billions of stars in its disc. Particularly along the southern spiral arm, NIRCam also traces infrared emission at slightly longer wavelengths from complex molecules including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

As an active spiral galaxy, M77’s disc is filled with gas and dust which is both a product of and fuel for future star formation. NIRCam picks out the glitter of countless stars spread across the disc, and Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) fills out the view with the glow of interstellar dust grains emitted at longer wavelengths, shown here in dark red. The dust forms a huge vortex of smoky, swirling filaments with cavities in between.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy shown in infrared light. Six long and two smaller rays of light emit from the centre, which are diffraction spikes created by the telescope’s optics. A glowing bar spans across the centre. A glittering ring of stars and dust surrounds the bar; at each side, the ring splits off into a spiral arm that winds outwards. Faint, dark red dust clouds swirl throughout the rest of the disc, backed by a pale glow from all the galaxy’s stars.]

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Star-forming regions in M51

Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 +0200

Astronomers have long known that understanding how star clusters come to be is key to unlocking other secrets of galactic evolution. Stars form in clusters, created when clouds of gas collapse under gravity. As more and more stars are born in a collapsing cloud, strong stellar winds, harsh ultraviolet radiation and the supernova explosions of massive stars eventually disperse the cloud, and their light can bear down on other star-forming regions in the galaxy. This process is called stellar feedback, and it means that most of the gas in a galaxy never gets used for star formation. Researching how star clusters develop can answer questions about star formation at a galactic scale.

Now, the state of the art has been further developed with both Hubble and Webb working together to provide a broad-spectrum view of thousands of young star clusters. An international team of astronomers has pored over images of four nearby galaxies from the FEAST observing programme (#1783), trying to solve this mystery. Their results show that it is the most massive star clusters that clear away their gaseous shroud the fastest, and begin lighting their galaxy the earliest.

The team identified nearly 9000 star clusters in the four galaxies in different evolutionary stages: young clusters just starting to emerge from their natal clouds of gas, clusters that had partially dispersed the gas (both from Webb images), and fully unobstructed clusters visible in optical light (found in Hubble images). With Webb’s ability to peer inside the gas clouds, they were able to then estimate the mass and age of each cluster from its light spectrum.

This image shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), one of the four galaxies studied in this work, as seen by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The thick clumps of star-forming gas are shown here in red and orange, representing infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Within these gas complexes, each tens or hundreds of light years across, Webb reveals the dense, extremely bright clusters of massive stars that have just recently formed. The countless stars strewn across the arm of the galaxy, many of which would be invisible to our eyes behind layers of dust, are also laid bare in infrared light.

[Image description: A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colours the otherwise dark background.]

Star-forming region in M51 (close-up)

Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 +0200

This image shows a star-forming complex in Messier 51 (M51), measuring almost 800 light-years across. M51 is located about 27 million light-years away from Earth. The thick cloud of star-forming gas, in which clumps collapsed to form each of the individual star clusters, is shown here in red and orange colours that represent infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Many of the bright dots that can be seen within the clouds are star clusters. The massive young stars within cast powerful radiation on the gas clouds that surround them, creating the cyan illumination shown here. Eventually, the combination of radiation, stellar wind and the supernova explosions of the most massive of these stars will disperse the gas clouds, putting an end to the star formation in this part of M51.

[Image description: A close-in view of a star-forming nebula. At this resolution, it is slightly blurry. It is made of dense clouds of gas, red on the outside and orange in towards the center. Nestled in the cloud is a collection of bright blue-white dots, which are star clusters. They light up the inner gas clouds in cyan. Many stars from the galaxy are scattered across the view. A little of the dark background appears in the top right.]

Nearby star-forming FEAST galaxies

Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 +0200

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have looked deeply at thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies, studying clusters at different stages of evolution. Their findings show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in, clearing away gas and filling the galaxy with ultraviolet light. The result gives us a more detailed understanding of star formation in galaxies, as well as how and where planets can form.

This image shows the four galaxies studied in this research, each of which has previously been the subject of an ESA/Webb Picture of the Month: Messier 51 (top left), Messier 83 (top right), NGC 4449 (bottom left), and NGC 628 (bottom right).

[Image description: A collage featuring four images of spiral galaxies observed by Webb. Blue colours, especially in the centre of the galaxies, are near-infrared light that show the location of bright stars. Orange and yellow show ionised gas and red colours come from complex molecules and dust grains; these are longer mid-infrared wavelengths. They trace out the spiral arms of each galaxy as a network of filaments with cavities in between.]

Location of star-forming region in M51

Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 +0200

This image locates a star-forming complex in one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), measuring almost 800 light-years across. M51 is located about 27 million light-years away from Earth. The thick cloud of star-forming gas, in which clumps collapsed to form each of the individual star clusters, is shown here in red and orange colours that represent infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

[Image description: A graphic showing three images of spiral galaxy M51. The top image spans the spiral arms and the galactic centre. A large upright portion of the spiral arm on the left is highlighted in a box, which expands to the image on the left, showing the area in more colour and greater detail. This image has a scale bar labelled “1000 light-years”. A square indicates a cloud of gas, shown enlarged on the right with a scale bar “100 light-years”.]

Exoplanet 29 Cygni b (NIRCam image)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0200

Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to directly image 29 Cygni b, which weighs 15 times Jupiter. They found evidence for heavy chemical elements like carbon and oxygen, which strongly suggests it formed like a planet by accretion within a protoplanetary disc, and not like a star through fragmentation.

Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) was used in its coronagraphic mode, in which a wedge (indicated by the blue box) is used to block the light of the host star (labeled A and marked with a star symbol) to reveal the planet. This image combines light from three filters between 4 and 5 microns. The planet is brightest in the blue filter, then green, then red, so it appears as an off-white dot in the colour composite. If carbon dioxide weren’t present, the planet would appear noticeably redder.

In this image, the colour blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to 4.6 micron light.

Exoplanet 29 Cygni b (Artist's Concept)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0200

Exoplanet 29 Cygni b, seen in this artist’s concept, is a gas giant weighing about 15 times the mass of Jupiter. It orbits a type A star (shown at upper right) slightly hotter and more massive than our Sun, at an average distance of 2.4 billion kilometres. The star is known to possess a dusty debris disc. A hypothetical comet fragment is shown approaching the planet, while previous impacts have left dark splotches on its cloudtops, similar to what was seen from the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter in our solar system.

Astronomers studied 29 Cygni b with Webb to determine that it likely formed from accretion, a bottom-up process where small bits of rock and ice clump together and grow larger over time, rather than from disc fragmentation. In other words, it formed like a planet and not like a star.

Oph 163131 (annotated close-up)

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This shining disc is named Oph 163131, and it’s one of two protoplanetary discs featured for this month's ESA/Webb Picture of the Month. Also catalogued as 2MASS J16313124-2426281, it is located about 480 light-years away in our galaxy, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Its close location, almost edge-on inclination of 85 degrees (where 90 would be perfectly edge-on) and its considerable size of 66 billion kilometres across — several times wider than our Solar System — make it an excellent target for studying these kinds of planet-forming discs.

At the centre of Oph 163131 is a newly formed star that’s still wrapped in a thick disc of gas and dust. Eventually the new star will disperse all the dust with its ferocious radiation, but before that happens there’s a chance for the dust to clump together and grow into pebbles, planetesimals and eventually planets — hence, a protoplanetary disc. Whether planets appear, and what kind of planets they are, depends on how larger and smaller dust grains migrate in the disc. An edge-on view like this shows us if dust grains are settling into a layer of large dust grains at the core of the disc. Such a layer is critical for dust grains to further grow and begin forming planets, and the thicker it is, the better.

This image of Oph 163131 combines near- and mid-infrared data from Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments with visible light captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and radio waves from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Where Hubble and Webb each image tiny dust grains only micrometres across, ALMA sees larger dust grains that are about a milimetre in size, which are concentrated in the central plane of the disc. Combined with the very slightly off-edge perspective, this creates a particularly clear picture of the structure of Oph 163131. The annotations on this image describe different features of the disc.

[Image Description: A close-up of protoplanetary disc Oph 163131. Parts of the disc are annotated with labels: “Scattered dust”, at top and bottom, “Dark lane” across the centre, and “Inner disc”, “Outer disc” and “Gap” in the middle of the disc. A red glow around the disc is labelled “Extended diffuse emissions”. In the bottom right there is a scale bar, labelled “100 au”. It is about a quarter as long as the disc is wide.]

A pair of planet-forming discs

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This month’s ESA/Webb Picture of the Month offers us a two-for-one on brand new stars — with some potential planets thrown in as well! This visual highlights views from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope of the protoplanetary discs Tau 042021 (left) and Oph 163131 (right), otherwise known by the catalogue numbers 2MASS J04202144+2813491 and 2MASS J16313124-2426281, respectively. Tau 042021 is situated around 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, while Oph 163131 lies about 480 light-years away in Ophiuchus.

Protoplanetary discs like these appear around stars that have recently been born. When a clump of gas inside a larger molecular cloud collapses to form a star, unused gas and dust is left orbiting the star in a thick disc. Over time, this dust too collides and collapses, slowly forming planetesimals which can, in turn, develop into planets. The planetesimals which can’t make the jump to being a fully-fledged planet are left behind as asteroids and comets orbiting the star. Gas that isn’t consumed by this process is blown away by the new star’s radiation over the course of tens of millions of years, ending the protoplanetary disc. This is how our own Solar System formed in the distant past, creating the asteroids, comets, gas giants and terrestrial planets we know today. By observing other protoplanetary discs at a much earlier age, we can work out how this process worked for our own Solar System, and how the different kinds of planets we see across the galaxy could have formed.

The unique feature these two objects have in common is that, as we see them from our vantage point with Webb, they are oriented with the edge of the disc facing us. This means that the bright light from the young star in the centre is mostly blocked, and we see the fine dust that has risen out of the disc as a nebula above and below the disc, lit by reflected light from the star. Not only is this a beautiful sight, producing these images that resemble rainbow-coloured spinning tops in space, it’s essential for studying how these planet-forming discs are composed. The distribution of dust in the disc, both within it and above or below it, strongly affects where and how planets can form.

These images were created using data from Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments, as part of Webb programme #2562 (PI F. Ménard, K. Stapelfeldt). With the broad infrared sensitivity of these two cameras, Webb can track dust grains of different sizes across the disc. The red, orange and green colours of the discs in these images indicate various sizes of dust grains as well as molecules such as hydrogen (H2), carbon monoxide (CO) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Both images also feature data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which shows visible light, mainly from the central star reflected off the fine, floating dust. The image of Oph 163131 also includes observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Where Hubble and Webb each image tiny dust grains only micrometres across, ALMA sees larger dust grains that are about a milimetre in size, which are concentrated in the central plane of the disc. This can create the right conditions for the grains to continue to grow and potentially form planets. Indeed, the ALMA data for Oph 163131 shows a gap in the inner disc, which may already be evidence of a planet forming and clearing out the dust around it.

[Image Description: Two images of protoplanetary discs side-by-side. The left image shows a dark horizontal band covering the star, with broad, colourful, conical outflows above and below it, and a narrow jet pointing directly up and down from the star. The right image shows the star within a yellow dusty disc, with scattered dust creating purple lobes above and below the disc. Each is on a black background with several galaxies or stars around it.]

Tau 042021

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope presents Tau 042021, a protoplanetary disc that is one of two featured for month's ESA/Webb Picture of the Month. It’s also known as 2MASS J04202144+2813491, and it is found in the constellation Taurus, around 450 light-years away. It may look like a colourful spinning top, but the light show pictured here comes from a newly born star wreathed in a churning torus of gas and dust a thousand times as wide as the distance from here to the Sun.

Protoplanetary discs like these appear around stars that have recently been born. Eventually the new star will disperse all the dust with its ferocious radiation, but before that happens there’s a chance for the dust to clump together and grow into pebbles, planetesimals and eventually planets — hence, a protoplanetary disc. Whether planets appear, and what kind of planets they are, depends on how larger and smaller dust grains migrate in the disc. An edge-on view like this shows us if dust grains are settling into a layer of large dust grains at the core of the disc. Such a layer is critical for forming planets, and the thicker it is, the better.

In this image of Tau 042021, since the disc is nearly exactly edge-on to us, it appears as a dark band running straight across the centre of the image. Larger, millimetre-sized dust grains settle in this area from the outer regions of the disc and build up, creating the conditions for planets to potentially form. Tau 042021’s central star is hidden from us behind this dusty disc, but we can see plenty of evidence for its presence, most notably the purple jets blasting straight up and down — a common feature of young stars embedded in dusty discs.

Above and below the dark band, the dust grains gradually become smaller and smaller the farther out we look, to less than a millionth of a metre in size. They are lit by the central star, creating these colourful “wings” top and bottom. Different colours in the wings mark out different kinds of molecules, indexed by Webb’s keen infrared vision; the red areas forming a cross shape are thought to be part of a wind blowing hydrogen atoms and light molecules far out of the disc. Above and to the right of the disc, three distant galaxies appear in the background.

The detailed and eye-catching view shown here combines Webb’s images, taken with the Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam and the Mid-Infrared Imager MIRI, with visible-light data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The knots in the jet that is perpendicular to the disc appear in different colours between the Hubble (bluer) and Webb (redder) images because of the motion of the jet in the 12 years between the observations.

[Image Description: A close-in image of a protoplanetary disc around a newly formed star. The disc is a dark, horizontal band in the centre. Broad, conical outflows from the star emerge from the top and bottom of this disc. A thin, broken jet of gas reaches out from the disc’s centre. The jet and outflows appear in pink, purple, blue and green colours, representing the various wavelengths of light they emit.]

Oph 163131 (wide view)

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This shining disc in the middle of a dark, empty background is a protoplanetary disc named Oph 163131, and it’s one of two featured for this month's ESA/Webb Picture of the Month. Also catalogued as 2MASS J16313124-2426281, it is located about 480 light-years away in our galaxy, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Its close location, almost edge-on inclination of 85 degrees (where 90 would be perfectly edge-on) and its considerable size of 66 billion kilometres across — several times wider than our Solar System — make it an excellent target for studying these kinds of planet-forming discs.

Small dust grains floating above and below the disc scatter light from the star and reflect it at us, creating the purple arcs above and below the centre; these are most clearly seen by Hubble and Webb’s NIRCam. The disc of dust itself, here shown in yellow, is made of the larger dust grains visible to ALMA. It distinctly shows two rings separated by a gap — potentially a region where a planet is already forming and clearing up dust in the disc. The red, green and blue glow around the disc that extends far into the background appears most brightly in the mid-infrared images from MIRI, combined with the distinctive diffraction spikes from Webb at the longer wavelength observations.

Taken together, the observations describe a disc where the large dust grains that create an environment where planets can form have been concentrated into the centre, and might even have created a clump of gas that is well on its way to becoming a new planet. We get a unique view of this very interesting protoplanetary disc out of the bargain, too!

[Image Description: A protoplanetary disc around a newly-formed star. The disc itself appears to be made of two flat, purple lobes that meet in the centre. Yellow rings are visible in the midplane. The whole disc glows brightly, shining bands of green, blue and red light into space around it. Several stars are visible nearby as white dots. Distant galaxies also appear as large, dark orange spirals and other shapes, fading into the black background.]

Saturn (Hubble image, cropped and annotated)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

This visible-light image of Saturn, captured on 22 August 2024, by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope as part of its long-running Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, reveals the planet’s softly banded atmosphere and bright ring system.

Several of Saturn’s larger moons appear in the image. Janus is visible to the left of the planet along the rings, while Mimas appears closer to the disk as a small point of light, with its shadow superimposed on Saturn. On the right side of the image is Epimetheus, a moon that shares a unique co-orbital relationship with Janus.

The image helps scientists track seasonal changes, storms, and evolving atmospheric features on the ringed giant over time.

[Image description: An image of Saturn on the black background of space. The image is labeled Saturn, Hubble Visible Light, August 22, 2024. Saturn’s horizontal bands appear pale yellow, with some bands towards the north and south pole having a light blue hue. The rings appear bright white, glowing slightly less than Webb’s infrared image. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Janus, Mimas, and Epimetheus. Mimas casts a small dark circular shadow onto Saturn’s surface.]

Saturn (Hubble image, cropped and clean)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

The image helps scientists track seasonal changes, storms, and evolving atmospheric features on the ringed giant over time.

Saturn (Webb image, cropped and annotated)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

This infrared view of Saturn was captured on 29 November 2024, by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Observing the planet in infrared wavelengths allows Webb to reveal details of Saturn’s atmosphere and rings that can’t be seen in visible light. In this view, Saturn’s rings appear exceptionally bright because they are composed largely of highly reflective water-ice particles that efficiently scatter sunlight.

Infrared observations also highlight structure in Saturn’s atmosphere, including broad cloud bands and subtle variations caused by temperature differences, winds, and high-altitude hazes. Webb’s sensitivity to infrared light allows scientists to probe different layers of the atmosphere, helping researchers study how gases, clouds, and aerosols interact across multiple altitudes. These observations provide new insight into the planet’s complex weather patterns and atmospheric dynamics.

Several of Saturn’s moons are visible in this image. Janus appears near the rings to the left of the planet, while Dione is visible below as a bright point of light. Close to the centre of the image, Enceladus appears near the rings. Enceladus is of particular scientific interest because it harbors a global subsurface ocean beneath its icy crust and ejects plumes of water vapor and ice grains into space from fractures near its south pole.

[Image description: An image of Saturn on the black background of space. Image is labeled Saturn, Webb Infrared Light, November 29, 2024. Saturn has horizontal bands, with bands at the north and south poles appearing darker orange and lightening to tan as they approach the equator. The north and south poles glow a greenish-grey. The rings appear in an icy neon white. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Janus, Dione, and Enceladus.]

Saturn (Webb image, cropped and clean)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

[Image description: An image of Saturn on the black background of space. Image is labeled Saturn, Webb Infrared Light, November 29, 2024. Saturn has horizontal bands, with bands at the north and south poles appearing darker orange and lightening to tan as they approach the equator. The north and south poles glow a greenish-grey. The rings appear in an icy neon white. White dots represent several of Saturn’s moons.]

Saturn (2024 Webb and Hubble images, clean)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

Side-by-side views of Saturn from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (left) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (right) reveal the planet in infrared and visible light. Hubble highlights subtle cloud banding and colour variations, while Webb’s infrared vision probes different atmospheric layers, bringing out storms, waves, and glowing ring structures in striking detail.

[Image description: Side-by-side comparison of Saturn observed at different wavelengths and times show how differently it appears in infrared, on the left, versus visible light, on the right. Left image is labeled Saturn, Webb Infrared Light, November 29, 2024. Right image is labeled Saturn, Hubble Visible Light, August 22, 2024. In the infrared, Saturn has horizontal bands, with bands at the north and south poles appearing darker orange and lightening to tan as they approach the equator. The north and south poles glow a greenish-grey. The rings appear in an icy neon white. White dots represent several of Saturn’s moons. In visible light, Saturn’s horizontal bands appear pale yellow, with some bands towards the north and south pole having a light blue hue. The rings appear bright white, glowing slightly less than Webb’s infrared image. White dots represent several of Saturn’s moons]

Saturn (2024 Webb and Hubble images, annotated compass image)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

These images of Saturn, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb and NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes, show compass arrows, scale bar, and colour key for reference.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

The scale bar is labeled in miles, kilometres, and arcseconds.

These images show invisible near-infrared and visible wavelengths of light with their colour assignments. The colour key shows which filters were used when collecting the light. The colour of each filter name is the visible light colour used to represent the light that passes through that filter.

[Image description: Two side-by-side images of Saturn, with the left labeled Webb NIRCam, November 29, 2024 and the right labeled Saturn, Hubble WFC3/UVIS, August 22, 2024.
In each image, Saturn has horizontal banding. Saturn is a darker orange in the NIRCam image, and a paler yellow in the WFC3/UVIS image. The planet’s rings are white in both, but glow brighter in the NIRCam image. White dots representing moons are labeled in both images. At bottom right of each image are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points to 12 o’clock, the east to 9 o’clock. The scale bar, at the bottom left of each image, reads 65,000 miles/100,000 km/16 arcsec and spans about one-third of each image. Below each image label is a colour key showing which filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. NIRCam filters are F164N in blue, F212N in cyan, F430M in green and F470N in red. WFC3/UVIS filters are F395N in blue, F502N in green, and F631N in red.]

Saturn (Webb image, wide view, clean)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

This wider infrared view of Saturn was captured on 29 November 2024 by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Saturn’s bright rings glow in reflected sunlight, and Webb’s observations reveal structures at different altitudes throughout the planet’s banded atmosphere. Several of Saturn’s larger moons appear across the field of view, including Titan (far left), Janus, Dione, Enceladus, Mimas, and Tethys.

[Image description: A wide look at Saturn and several of its moons on the black background of space. Image is labeled Saturn, Webb Infrared Light, November 29, 2024. Saturn has horizontal bands, with bands at the north and south poles appearing darker orange and lightening to tan as they approach the equator. The north and south poles glow a greenish-grey. The rings appear in an icy neon white. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Titan, Janus, Dione, and Enceladus. Titan is the largest dot, and appears at the far left of the image, some distance away from Saturn and the other moons.]

Saturn (Webb image, wide view, annotated)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

Saturn (2024 Webb and Hubble images, annotated)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0100

[Image description: Side-by-side comparison of Saturn observed at different wavelengths and times show how differently it appears in infrared, on the left, versus visible light, on the right. Left image is labeled Saturn, Webb Infrared Light, November 29, 2024. Right image is labeled Saturn, Hubble Visible Light, August 22, 2024. In the infrared, Saturn has horizontal bands, with bands at the north and south poles appearing darker orange and lightening to tan as they approach the equator. The north and south poles glow a greenish-grey. The rings appear in an icy neon white. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Janus, Dione, and Enceladus. In visible light, Saturn’s horizontal bands appear pale yellow, with some bands towards the north and south pole having a light blue hue. The rings appear bright white, glowing slightly less than Webb’s infrared image. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Janus, Mimas, and Epimetheus.]

Exposed Cranium Nebula (NIRCam image)

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0100

A distinct dark lane between two cosmic clouds adds to the brainy appearance of nebula PMR 1. The NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope shows multiple phases of a dying star’s outbursts in one image: the skull-like, whitish outer bubble is from an initial ejection, mostly of hydrogen, followed by other heavier material, shown in orange in the nebula’s interior. As with many NIRCam images, many stars and even distant galaxies can be seen behind the nebula.

Beyond its unusual appearance there is still much to be uncovered about PMR 1. It’s unclear if the star creating the nebula is massive enough to undergo a supernova, or if it will evolve into a dense white dwarf once it has shed all its outer layers.

[Image description: A nebula appears like a transparent bubble with a white edge, inside which are two hemispheres of orange clouds being blown out from the centre, split by a dark lane, giving the overall appearance of a see-through skull with a brain inside, as seen from above. A few stars appear with six points, and small background galaxies can be seen around and through the outer bubble.]

Exposed Cranium Nebula (MIRI image)

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0100

More of the dusty material in the nebula PMR 1 shows up in the mid-infrared light captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Fewer stars and background galaxies appear in this image than in the near-infrared light captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument. Seeing the nebula in different wavelengths of infrared light will give astronomers a better idea of how much material the dying star at the heart of the nebula is shedding, and what phase of its decline Webb has captured.

Like NIRCam, MIRI also shows two distinctly different-looking phases of the nebula’s formation — an outer shell primarily of hydrogen that was blown off first, then a more complex and structured mix of material closer to the centre of the nebula. Together, these episodes give the nebula the unusual appearance of a brain inside a semi-transparent skull.

The MIRI instrument shows the ejection of material at the top of the nebula more prominently than NIRCam, interrupting the overall oval, brain-like shape. Less prominent is a potential twin ejection on the opposite, bottom side, hinting at a potential bipolar outflow that, with further analysis, can shed light on the dynamics at play inside this “exposed cranium.”

[Image description: A nebula appears like a transparent bubble with a blue edge, inside which are two hemispheres of off-white material being blown out from the centre, interspersed vertically by a dark lane that gives the overall appearance of a brain seen from above. At the top of the nebula the dark lane ends in an oval, with the inner off-white material arcing overtop, giving the impression of an eruption. The bottom of the nebula mirrors this effect, but less dramatically. A few scattered background galaxies can be seen around the outer bubble.]

Exposed Cranium Nebula (MIRI image)

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0100