View a gallery of stunning images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope

The aesthetics of the James Webb images

The highly popular images produced by the James Webb Space Telescope are an artful collaboration between data science and visual designers. The raw data reflects real physical aspects of space, but it arrives without visual representation. Visual experts assign colors to specific wavelengths, crop and orient images in an accessible way, and consider the emotional impact of images as they incorporate design principles into the final product. Learn the fascinating details here.

See a timeline of James Webb Space Telescope discoveries

Since its launch on Christmas Day 2021, NASA's $10B James Webb Space Telescope has captivated the world with its rapid revelations of ancient galaxies, star-formation hotbeds, and more. This regularly updated timeline of Webb's discoveries keeps you up to date with the latest developments.

The James Webb Space Telescope is rewriting what we know about the early universe

Thanks to its advanced infrared sensors and massive mirror, the James Webb Space Telescope can see farther back in cosmic history than Hubble, revealing galaxies formed just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

James Webb Space Telescope aims to unlock secrets of the early universe

Decades in the making, JWST is designed to study the universe in infrared light, allowing it to see through cosmic dust and observe ancient galaxies, star formation, and potentially life-supporting exoplanets. The Webb will orbit the sun at a stable point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

See where the James Webb Space Telescope is in space right now

Webb travels through space in a stable orbit, but unlike the Hubble, it doesn't orbit around Earth. The Webb orbits around the sun in a way that allows it to always be in line with the Earth, as you can see in this visualization of the telescope's real-time position.

View galleries of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

With more than 1.7 million observations made since 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of space missions, planets, stellar nurseries, interstellar comets, star clusters, galaxies, and more. This search tool allows users to sort and filter across these celestial objects to explore over 35 years of Hubble's astrophotography.

Published photography from JWST are false-color images

The James Webb Telescope captures invisible light, not photos. Scientists then color-map wavelengths of infrared light to show us the invisible universe.

Images of Jupiter in unprecedented detail

Jupiter has never seemed closer and clearer than it does in these images gathered by the James Webb Telescope. Behold beautiful auroras, hazy clouds, and more. This may not be the classic image of Jupiter (and its stormy Great Red Spot) you're used to, but it tells scientist, and us, more about the largest planet in our solar system.

Infrared vision gives Webb telescope access to the oldest light in the universe

To peer into the universe’s earliest moments, the Webb had to solve several immense engineering challenges: deploying a massive sun shield, surviving extreme cold, and stabilizing ultra-sensitive instruments. The telescope’s mirrors can adjust themselves in steps 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

Inside the James Webb's amazing sun shields

The Webb team has stationed its mammoth observatory in solar orbit—and brought its instruments below 40 kelvins (minus 233 ºC). Remarkably, most of the cooling has been done passively, by shielding the telescope from the sun and letting physics take care of the rest.

James Webb telescope shows new views of Uranus

Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere.

The twenty-year effort to design the Webb's optics

Since its located 1 million miles from Earth, the Webb space observatory has to be able to repair itself—no Space Shuttles can be dispatched with astronaut engineers to repair it. That's why over two decades teams reiterated, cross-checked, and hyper-optimized the Webb's observing surface. Their efforts produced the world's largest space-based optical surface that is peering billions of years back in time. Learn the wild engineering of the telescope here.

Webb Telescope zooms in on Orion Nebula and finds planet pairs

The Webb telescope has trained its infrared cameras on the nearest star-forming nebula in our universe, the Orion Nebula. Its images revealed a never-before-seen phenomenon: dozens of pairs of planet-sized objects in binary orbit, seemingly floating...

Watch a tour of a 3D visualization of the Pillars of Creation

Combining observational data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes has allowed NASA scientists to create a multiwavelength model of the star-forming region at the heart of the Eagle nebula.

Fly through the deepest image of space ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Taken over 11 days between 2003 and 2004, when the space telescope was aimed at a seemingly empty patch of the sky, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field revealed about 10,000 sources of light, most of which are entire galaxies. This visualization expands the 2D image into a 3D view spanning 12 billion years.

View galleries of images taken by the Voyager spacecraft, including close-ups of Uranus, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Saturn's ring system, and Neptune's Great Dark Spot.

Webb discovers galaxy that formed 280 million years after the Big Bang

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a galaxy that formed just 280 million years after the Big Bang. It is another in a series of increasingly ancient galaxies that, according to current formation models, should not have been able to form so quickly after the birth of the universe.

Explore a gallery of astronomical images curated by the European Space Agency, which includes illustrations and images of aurorae, planets, stars, galaxies, stellar nurseries, exoplanets, and black holes.

The next generation of space-based observatories

How exactly does a space telescope come to be funded by NASA? NASA's most famous telescopes, like Hubble and James Webb, were once featured in the decadal survey–a once per decade survey run by the National Academy of Science that recommends which projects to support. This article and podcast covers which telescope designs are in contention to be part of NASA's next generation of space-based observatories.

View maps of the Milky Way across all wavelengths of light.

View a media gallery from the assembly of Voyager 1 and 2

This archive includes the many steps it took to put together each Voyager probe. Photos focus on individual parts, like the 8-track tape deck, the large dish-shaped antenna, and its long arm magnetometer boom.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures enormous aurora displays on Jupiter

The auroras flicker faster and brighter than those seen on Earth. This contrasts with earlier predictions that the lights would fade slowly over several minutes, providing insights into how Jupiter's magnetosphere operates.

A real-time 3D-explorer of the solar system

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System allows you to track all kinds of objects in space in real time, from observatories like the James Webb Telescope to all manner of comets and asteroids. Zoom in and out, read up on space missions, and see the solar system from a totally new angle with this incredible interactive site. Jump in here.

Ten underrated astronomy studies from 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope understandably received a lot of coverage in 2022. This astrophysicist wants to highlight ten major studies published last year you might have missed.

Zoom into this mega-photo of the Milky Way galaxy

A telescope in Chile has captured 21,400 exposures of the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, and scientists created one composite image showcasing over 3 billion celestial objects. Zoom in here.

Webb's sunshield enables extreme cooling for precision space observation

To avoid interference from its own heat, the telescope uses a five-layer shield to stay ultra-cold and stable, allowing its instruments to function at cryogenic temperatures. One instrument, MIRI, gets so cold it needs a helium-powered cooler to reach just 7 Kelvin, or -447°F.

View a gallery of neutron stars and related phenomena captured by Chandra

Launched on July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is one of NASA's "Great Observatories" and has captured high-energy astronomical phenomena, including neutron stars and their surrounding nebulae, which are composed of the outer stellar layers expelled by their predecessors. Data from other observatories, including Hubble, help produce spectacular composite images.

Play an interactive game to explore and learn about Hubble images

Aboard the fictional USS Hubble, users can choose their own adventure to investigate the solar system, our galaxy, and the universe beyond. Each option directs users to a real image accompanied by relevant information and additional media elements, such as a time-lapse of the moon Phobos orbiting Mars.

View a gallery of the best images of Jupiter from the Juno mission

Using the JunoCam, scientists have observed several of Jupiter's features, including cyclones, the Great Red Spot, and cloud bands and zones. The mission's effectiveness has resulted in its extension from July 2021 to September 2025.

Throughout its 10-year mission to create a time-lapse of the universe, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will generate 500 petabytes of data by taking an ultrawide, ultra-high definition image every 34 seconds.

New ways of seeing the cosmos have redrawn the map of human identity

From Galileo’s crude spyglass to the James Webb Space Telescope, each technological leap has expanded our observational reach and redefined philosophical and moral conceptions of our place in the universe. Identifying signs of life through the study of exoplanet atmospheres would represent the next great revolution.

The Hubble Space Telescope made discoveries within our solar system and across the universe

The observatory helped confirm the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, and uncovered seasonal variations on planets like Uranus. It also observed exoplanets and gravitational lensing, proved the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and detected the accelerated expansion of the universe.

View a colorful gallery of solar features, including coronal loops and filamentary prominences, curated by the National Solar Observatory.

Blurriness in the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared imaging was fixed by AI

Australian researchers developed the Aperture Masking Interferometry Generative Observations AI algorithm to sharpen images affected by electronic distortions in the JWST's Aperture Masking Interferometer.

Research suggests that the small red dots in images of deep space captured by the James Webb Space Telescope since 2022 are black hole stars—black holes surrounded by enormous clouds of gas.

Explore a gallery of space-based images and animations of Earth

This collection compiles shots of well-known locations, such as US national parks, and natural features, including aurora borealis and fall foliage, to provide a high-level view of Earth's surface.

See to the edge of the universe with this two-decade astronomy project

A New Mexico telescope has captured astronomical data for two decades to compile this map of the universe. Starting from earth and ending at the "edge" of the universe, it shows one slice of the cosmos: a total of 200,000 galaxies.

Explore a gallery of photographs of Mars taken from space

Spacecraft have been taking pictures of Mars from space since 1965, when the Mariner 4 probe became the first to beam back an image of a planet other than our own. The technology has significantly evolved since then, with ultra-high definition resolutions revealing previously unseen surface features.

View a gallery of photographs of Uranus taken during NASA missions.

Astrophotographer Vincent Bouchama's stellar photo archive

Astrophotographers specialize in collecting as much light from celestial objects as possible while minimizing the movement of the object they're capturing. It's a unique skillset—requiring unique tools—but the results are often universally...

Explore the night's sky from anywhere

Stellarium Web is a planetarium running in your web browser. It shows a realistic star map, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Using its interface, you can click on object's visible at your location on the Earth...

View a simulated demonstration of how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey large portions of the sky to capture in 90 minutes what took three years for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Ice found in another star system for the first time

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered frozen water in a young star system. The ice is similar to that found in Kuiper Belt objects in our solar system, and provides insights into planetary formation processes.

What are the Pillars of Creation?

The Pillars of Creation, recently photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope, are a gas-and-dust-filled space region 7,000 light years away where young stars are being born in the aftermath of a supernova. Learn why scientists say the formation has been long destroyed.

The Hubble Space Telescope uses curved mirrors to collect and focus light

Classified as a Cassegrain reflector, the observatory bounces incoming visible light and some infrared and ultraviolet light off a primary mirror with a diameter of 2.4 meters. The reflected light is directed to a secondary mirror, which reflects it through a tiny hole in the primary mirror and onto detectors.

View a gallery of photographs of Neptune taken during NASA missions.

James Webb championed both space science and human spaceflight at NASA

As NASA Administrator during the 1960s, Webb prioritized a balanced approach between manned missions and scientific research, fostering advancements in astronomy, robotic exploration, and university involvement. Despite having no background in science or engineering, Webb oversaw more than 75 space science mission.

Lagrange points offer energy-efficient orbits for telescopes

Lagrange Points are special locations where gravitational forces let spacecraft "park" without constant course corrections, making them ideal for science missions. NASA’s James Webb Telescope uses Lagrange Point 2 to stay aligned with Earth while orbiting the Sun.

Colorizers convert Hubble's gray scale images into color composites of different wavelengths

The near-infrared and ultraviolet light captured by the space telescope is not visible to human eyes, but observational data of these types of light can be filtered and modified into visible colors. Many detailed images of astronomical objects are the result of combining these artificially colored images into layers.

Explore a series of NASA visualizations tracking satellites and space debris

The series illustrates the population of objects orbiting Earth as of February 2024, using data from US Space Command. These include active satellites, defunct spacecraft, rocket bodies and debris fragments larger than roughly 10 centimeters in low Earth orbit.