Astrophysics Division

Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Citizen Science
A new paper from NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project announces that volunteers have essentially doubled the number of known brown dwarfs, with over 3,000 new discoveries made over the past 10 years since the project began. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas the size of Jupiter, less massive than stars.
Posted May 5, 2026
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Emission Nebulae
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
Nebulae
Stars
The Universe
This shimmering region of star-formation, a close-up of the Trifid Nebula about 5,000 light-years from Earth, was captured in intricate detail by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Posted April 20, 2026
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Galaxies
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
Spiral Galaxies
The Universe
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. IC 486 lies right on the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), around 380 million light-years from Earth. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, […]
Posted April 13, 2026
Astrophysics Division
Comets
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
Planetary Science
Small Bodies of the Solar System
The Solar System
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence […]
Posted March 26, 2026
Astrophysics Division
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its 2026 class. The NHFP enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observations, simulations, experimentation, or instrument development.
Posted March 25, 2026
Astrobiology
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Science-enabling Technology
Technology Highlights
A team of NASA researchers is developing new types of optical masks that could help enable the many orders of magnitude of starlight suppression needed for future space observatories to pick out very faint habitable exoplanets from the far brighter glare of their stellar hosts. 
Posted March 24, 2026
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Crab Nebula
Emission Nebulae
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
Nebulae
Neutron Stars
Pulsars
Supernova Remnants
A quarter-century after its first observations of the full Crab Nebula, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken a fresh look at the supernova remnant. The result is an unparalleled, detailed look at the aftermath of a supernova and how it has evolved over Hubble’s long lifetime. A paper detailing the new Hubble observation is published […]
Posted March 23, 2026
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Comets
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
Small Bodies of the Solar System
The Solar System
In a happy twist of fate, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope just witnessed a comet in the act of breaking apart. The chance of that happening while Hubble watched is extraordinarily minuscule. The findings published Wednesday in the journal Icarus. The comet K1, whose full name is C/2025 K1 (ATLAS)—not to be confused with interstellar comet […]
Posted March 18, 2026
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Galaxies
Goddard Space Flight Center
Hubble Space Telescope
Lenticular Galaxies
The Universe
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features an uncommon galaxy with a striking appearance. NGC 7722 is a lenticular galaxy located about 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. A lenticular, meaning “lens-shaped,” galaxy is a type whose classification sits between more familiar spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies.
Posted January 30, 2026
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Galaxies
Goddard Space Flight Center
Gravitational Lensing
Hubble Space Telescope
Irregular Galaxies
Origin & Evolution of the Universe
The Universe
A team of astronomers has employed a cutting-edge, artificial intelligence-assisted technique to uncover rare astronomical phenomena within archived data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The team analyzed nearly 100 million image cutouts from the Hubble Legacy Archive, each measuring just a few dozen pixels (7 to 8 arcseconds) on a side.
Posted January 27, 2026
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