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.

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.

Explore a gallery of astronomical images curated by the European Space Agency

The collection includes illustrations and images of aurorae, planets, stars, galaxies, stellar nurseries, star clusters, exoplanets, quasars and black holes. Mission photography of astronauts, shuttles and telescopes is also featured.

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.

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 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.

View maps of the Milky Way across all wavelengths of light

By combining imaging from ground- and space-based telescopes designed to capture specific wavelengths of light, phenomena across a range of energies can be observed. If limited to a single frequency range, astronomers would not be aware of some cosmological events, such as those whose visible light is blocked by dust.

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.

View a colorful gallery of solar features curated by the National Solar Observatory

Many of the images are captured at different nonvisible wavelengths, such as UV, and then colorized into the visible range to illuminate the sun's magnetic field and magnetism-driven solar activity, including coronal loops and filamentary prominences. Close-up imaging also reveals solar granules—Texas-sized cells of material that bubble to the surface from the convection zone.

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.

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.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

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...

Bray Falls' astrophotography gallery

Bray Falls is a deep sky photographer out of Phoenix, Arizona, using his own set-ups to capture dazzling images of nearby galaxies and much more. Check out his images here.

Zoom from Earth to Maisie's galaxy

Discovered by the Webb Telescope in 2022, Maise’s Galaxy (named after the nine-year-old daughter of the scientist who discovered it) was found as part of a survey of a section of the universe known as the Extended Growth Strip, home to thousands of galaxies. This video takes you from Earth to Maise’s galaxy, formed roughly 300 million years after the birth of the universe.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

The beauty of the Earth in 80 photos

The world is full of beautiful landscapes, creatures, and scenes. Here's a gallery of 80 incredible photos with explanatory captions to deepen your appreciation for the diverse wonders of Earth.

Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station

The ISS is the largest human-made object in space. Its modules were meticulously connected by robotic arms and astronauts during slow, careful spacewalks, creating a structure with over eight miles of electrical wire.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by more than 1.5 million Muslims each year.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.