Explore:
Exoplanets
Worlds beyond our solar system.
Stars
Giant balls of hot gas that burn for millions to billions of years.
Black Holes
Concentrations of matter with gravity so powerful not even light can escape.
Galaxies
Collections of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust bound together by gravity.
NASA’s NICER Maps Debris from Recurring Cosmic Crashes
QPEs, or quasi-periodic eruptions, are a class of X-ray flares made when objects move through gas disks surrounding supermassive black holes. Studying QPEs can help us understand how these monster black holes interact with their environments — places where gravity, energy, and matter behave in ways we can’t replicate on Earth. Using data from NASA telescopes, scientists have probed one of these mysterious phenomena, bringing us a step closer to cracking their cosmic rhythm.
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Spectroscopy, explained
How does a rainbow help astronomers analyze distant objects for speed, temperature, and even composition?
Spectroscopy, the science of how matter interacts with light, provides a powerful window into what makes up the universe.
Cotton Candy Clouds
This vibrant swirl of gas and dust lives in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light-years away.
NASA’s Hubble combined ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light to form this vibrant, data-rich view of star-forming regions in one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors.
NuSTAR celebrates 13 years in orbit
The NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission studies the universe in high energy X-rays to better understand the dynamics of black holes, exploding stars, and the most extreme active galaxies.
Listen to the Small Steps, Giant Leaps Podcast about NuSTAR celebrates 13 years in orbit
