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Space Telescope Science Institute
@stsci.edu
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The Space Telescope Science Institute is the Science Operations Center for Webb, Hubble, and the upcoming Roman space telescopes, & Mission Operations Center for Webb. We help humanity explore the universe with advanced space telescopes and data archive.
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STScI has three goals: 1) to excel in the science operations of NASA's current and future astrophysics missions; 2) to advance astronomical research, archives, and tools for scientific discovery; and 3) to make astronomical information accessible to all: https://www.stsci.edu/ 🔭 🧪
November 11, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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Our fascinating Public Lecture Series is now on YouTube! 👀 We currently have the 2022-2025 lectures available to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm0MBdI3VlBV9UAeU8Vbgwd-hPdQh6ZXT 🔭 🧪
November 10, 2025 at 9:22 PM
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The ridge-like Orion Bar, seen in the lower left of this Hubble image, is created when stars’ ultraviolet light—capable of carving more diffuse matter—collides with denser, less penetrable matter.

Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI. 🔭 🧪
A portion of the Orion Nebula. There are clouds of different colors and densities throughout. In the center, there are several bright white orbs, which are stars, surrounded by a pale-yellow cloud of dust and gas. Filaments of brown are spread throughout the pale-yellow clouds. Between 9 o’clock and 2 o’clock, and between 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock, there are darker brown clouds that spread to the image’s edges. A sharp diagonal line separates the pale-yellow clouds and a more purple-colored region, which contains two more bright-white stars. To the right of the pale-yellow clouds are black clouds of dust and gas. Red stars are spread throughout.
November 10, 2025 at 6:28 PM
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Flying through Dulles Airport near D.C.? If you’re taking the Metro, expect to be awed by almost 40 recently installed images from #NASAWebb, paired with more than 30 from the ever-active Hubble, on your way to the main terminal: https://bit.ly/4qPfl7m #wmata 🔭 🧪
November 6, 2025 at 3:10 PM
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In 2023, #NASAWebb observed a spectacular light show on Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The planet’s auroras are hundreds of times brighter and more energetic than Earth’s. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Nichols (University of Leicester), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb). 🔭 🧪
November 4, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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CAT’S PAW ON YOUR WALL! Download and print a poster featuring an infrared image of the Cat’s Paw Nebula captured in 2025 by #NASAWebb. Perfect for posting at home, school, work, or around your neighborhood: https://go.nasa.gov/3IThBsS 🔭 🧪
A James Webb Space Telescope image featuring a detailed view of the Cat's Paw Nebula, showcasing vibrant clouds of gas and dust in rich blues and oranges. Surrounding the nebula is a black border with the NASA logo at the top right, and the words “James Webb Space Telescope, Cat’s Paw Nebula at the bottom left. Along the bottom of the image are muted shades of blue, green, yellow and red.
November 3, 2025 at 4:13 PM
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"There is something haunting in the light of the [red giant].”

Have a happy and safe Halloween, from STScI! 🎃

Credit: Illustration: Ralf Crawford/STScI; Quote: Joseph Conrad.
October 31, 2025 at 2:05 PM
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Check out some of the great costumes worn by Space Telescope Science Institute staff as they celebrate Halloween. 🎃
A man is wearing a replica of the 18-panel Webb telescope mirror, hanging from his neck. Two people dressed as "la Catrina" and "el Catrina," popular for celebrating Dia de Muertos. Three people facing the camera, two of them are wearing bee costumes and the one in the middle is dressed as a beekeeper. A man wearing green carves a design into a pumpkin.
October 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM
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#NASAWebb 🤝 Rocky exoplanets

With Webb, astronomers have found that several rocky worlds around red dwarf stars have no atmospheres. This is fostering new questions about these distant, habitable-zone worlds, and Webb is helping astronomers investigate.

Credit: STScI. 🔭 🧪
October 30, 2025 at 2:30 PM
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There are no expansive, glowing eyes in this Hubble image. This “face” is the result of two galaxies that collided head-on and have begun to intertwine. They will merge completely in 1-2 billion years. For now, they make up a ring galaxy, a rare classification. Credit: NASA/ESA 🔭 🧪 🎃
Galaxy merger that resembles a face with large, glowing yellow eyes. At the center are two bright white, fuzzy ovals that appear side by side. These white ovals are the cores of the galaxies. The right galaxy’s core has a brown ring of dust and gas around it and appears fully face-on. The left galaxy is appears at a slight angle, but is mainly face-on. Together, they appear to make up the “eyes” of the “face.” Outside this core are lanes of blue gas and dust, which take the shape of a rough oval, and are about as large as a head when compared to the size and appearance of the galaxies. Strewn throughout the image are many fuzzy streaks and dots, which are galaxies and stars respectively.
October 29, 2025 at 2:25 PM
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Cassiopeia A is one of the closest and brightest supernova remnants to Earth, created by the explosion of a massive star.

Click through this image of Cas A on ViewSpace: https://viewspace.org/interactives/image_tours/6 🔭 🧪
Image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, captured in vivid colors showing intricate details of the explosion with interactive icons for further information.
October 28, 2025 at 5:37 PM
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The Chandra observatory is adding a pop of pink to our day! X-ray light shines through these #NASAWebb images of merging galaxies and star-forming regions. Chandra released a collection of images that showcase how it complements other observatories: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2025/cosmic/ 🔭 🧪
A giant star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Shafts of golden light bursting out of a central glowing orb cut through misty purple clouds. Pink rays burst from the glowing orb. A star-forming region in our Milky Way galaxy. This image resembles a tangle of dark pink hair flowing upward that is dotted with dozens of colorful orbs in various sizes. A system where two galaxies are in the process of merging set against a star-filled black background. Two white clusters meet, backed by hot pink tendrils, swirls of speckled orange, and gauzy steel blue ribbons. They gleam with golden shafts of light.
October 24, 2025 at 2:28 PM
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A dead star has been spotted ripping a planet apart! “Something clearly disturbed this system long after the star’s death,” said co-investigator John Debes of the Space Telescope Science Institute. (1/4) 🔭 🧪 🧵
At image center is a small, white star against a gray background. It is surrounded by a large translucent disk with rings and gaps that extends from upper left to lower right. In the foreground, irregular chunky rocks are floating in space along the bottom of the frame. A stream of material extends from lower right toward the central star. The words, artist’s concept are at lower left.
October 23, 2025 at 3:44 PM
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Before #NASAWebb, it had been 30+ years since astronomers looked closely at Neptune. With Webb, scientists imaged the planet’s auroras and studied its atmosphere, including unexpectedly finding a significant drop in temperature—all at a distance.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. 🔭 🧪
October 23, 2025 at 2:33 PM
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Astronomers have found a rare, ancient planetary system 145 light-years away, where a white dwarf star is actively consuming debris from a disrupted planet—the oldest and most “polluted” disk ever seen around such a star: https://bit.ly/47mYktj 🔭 🧪
At image center is a small, white star against a gray background. It is surrounded by a large translucent disk with rings and gaps that extends from upper left to lower right. In the foreground, irregular chunky rocks are floating in space along the bottom of the frame. A stream of material extends from lower right toward the central star. The words, artist’s concept are at lower left.
October 22, 2025 at 2:06 PM
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Reminder: #NASAWebb is revealing intricate details and stunning objects that we can’t see in visible light. In infrared light, Webb reveals barred spiral galaxy NGC 1433’s bright core, hollow cavities, and filaments of dust and gas: https://bit.ly/3Lh8G5e 🔭 🧪
A large, face-on spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the frame. The scene is mostly black with a bright, glowing oval core at the center. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white- and light-blue-colored dust that emanates from the core’s center, but it is tightly contained to the core. There is black space between the core and glowing dust of the outer oval rings. The rings are wispy and highlight filaments of dust around cavernous black bubbles. The dust in the outer rings contains dots that are navy blue, pinkish, reddish, and white. Throughout, there is also a smattering of background galaxies seen as small red and greenish dots.
October 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
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The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft + asteroid moon Dimorphos = an impact captured by #NASAWebb. This in-space planetary defense test was also observed by Hubble, revealing a scene of scientific intrigue: http://bit.ly/484ujPA 🔭 🧪
On a black background, a bright red spot with a white core appears at center. The spot, which is the asteroid Didymos-Dimorphos system after impact from NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, has 8 red diffraction spikes extending out from its center. Also surrounding the asteroid is a haze of bright red light with wispy tendrils extending outward.
October 17, 2025 at 2:25 PM
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Black holes galore! That’s what astronomers discovered when #NASAWebb peered into the distant cosmos. These smaller, fainter black holes are more similar to the one in our own galaxy. With Webb, scientists can study the black hole-galaxy relationship over time.

Credit: STScI. 🔭 🧪
October 16, 2025 at 2:46 PM
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Two views: one serene and the other with teeming with meaning! #NASAWebb “weighed” the Bullet Cluster, measuring its two galaxy clusters and refining the dark matter mass (shown in blue). X-rays (pink) from the Chandra observatory show the bullet: https://go.nasa.gov/42CXF4k
Image without annotations: Webb observation of the Bullet Cluster shows many overlapping objects, including foreground stars, galaxies in galaxy clusters, and distorted background galaxies behind the galaxy clusters. The objects are all at various distances set against the black background of space. Most galaxies appear as fuzzy ovals in white, orange, or red, but a few have distinctive spiral arms. A slightly larger, very bright light blue spiral galaxy is at center. To its left are several bright white blob-like galaxies that are members of one galaxy cluster. On the opposite side of blue spiral galaxy is another, slightly smaller set of bright white galaxies, part of the second galaxy cluster. There are many thin, long, orange arcs that follow invisible concentric circles. These orange arcs, easiest to spot on the left, are background galaxies that have been stretched and distorted by the foreground galaxy clusters. Webb near-infrared data combined with Chandra X-ray data of the Bullet Cluster show the same overlapping objects as the first image. A slightly larger, very bright, light blue spiral galaxy is at center. To its immediate left and right are two large bright pink splotches representing X-rays. The right pink area has a rounded nose facing right, where it is darker pink, and fades to the left as a triangular shape. This is referred to as the Bullet. To the far left and far right, next to the pink regions, are two blue regions representing dark matter mass. The left blue region is a large, long oval at an angle. The blue region at right is a far smaller oval. There are two large dashed circles. At left, the dashed circle largely covers the blue and pink, and extends beyond them at left. At right, the dashed circle covers the pink bullet and the blue region, but extends wider than both for most of its circumfrence.
October 15, 2025 at 2:09 PM
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Why do some rocky planets have atmospheres when others don’t? #NASAWebb and Hubble space telescopes are teaming up to find out. ➡️ https://go.nasa.gov/47a9fFD 🔭 🧪
Artist's concept showing a distant star, with two rocky planets in the foreground. One planet is larger than the other.
October 14, 2025 at 2:56 PM
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Flocculent spirals, like NGC 2090, seen in this #NASAWebb image, are one of the more common types of spiral galaxies. They have patchy arms that seemingly blend together and disconnect in spots.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy. 🔭 🧪
A spiral galaxy. There is a fuzzy, blue-white spot at the center of the galaxy, which is a cluster of stars. Two, patchy orange arms composed of dust and gas spiral outward and wrap around the central region. Brighter orange patches dot the arms. The entire structure glows with a slight blue halo, which becomes more diffuse toward the edges of the image. There are many orange, white, and blue background galaxies spread throughout.
October 13, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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#NASAWebb is clearing up some mysteries about star formation thanks to its infrared capabilities—ideal for seeing the coolest, dimmest stars. ✨ Building on Hubble’s look at the Flame Nebula, Webb revealed new details, including the region’s low mass objects. 🔭 🧪
October 9, 2025 at 2:51 PM
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Columbia University's Kishalay De spoke about efforts toward conducting an all-sky survey of infrared variability, and gave an overview of upcoming infrared surveys, including the first look into the high redshift dusty universe with #NASARoman, today at STScI. 🔭 🧪
A man stands at a lectern, taking about astronomy to an audience in a auditorium. On the screen are images of the Hubble, Webb and Roman space telescopes.
October 8, 2025 at 7:26 PM
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Can a small planet maintain an atmosphere in the blazing light of a small, cool red dwarf star? #NASAWebb and Hubble are teaming up to find out. Learn more about the Rocky Worlds program designed to understand the most common type of planetary system in the galaxy: https://go.nasa.gov/3VLUJ1n 🔭 🧪
Artist's concept of a planet with a dark and light gray mottled surface moving out from behind its star. Most of the hemisphere in view is lit by the star, which has dynamic patterning and an orange coloring somewhat darker than the Sun.
October 7, 2025 at 2:48 PM
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In this Halloween edition of NASA’s Universe of Learning Science Briefings, you will hear about vampire stars, “Black Widow” pulsars destroying their companions, and dark energy: https://bit.ly/4gaTrq6 🔭 🧪
Illustration of an ominous, green bat that emerges from the cosmos, pushing objects like galaxies and stars further apart into the void of outer space.
October 6, 2025 at 2:43 PM