Following its liftoff from Cape Canaveral on July 21 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) hosting the NASA-supported Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) payload is now en route to geosynchronous Earth orbit, where it will use its advanced robotics to service spacecraft.
RSGS leverages in-space robotics expertise from NASA, aligned with the agency’s broader goals to advance U.S. capabilities for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing that can be applied to space commerce and exploration.
Northrop Grumman’s Mission Robotic Vehicle hosting the NASA-supported Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) payload launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 21. The RSGS program is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and uses twin robotic arms developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
SpaceX
Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the RSGS program uses twin dexterous robotic arms designed and developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. DARPA provided the robotic arm assembly for integration onto Northrop Grumman’s MRV, the nation’s first multi-mission robotic in-space servicer. The spacecraft will inspect and upgrade satellites in orbit by installing small propulsion modules – called mission extension pods – extending the operational life of existing spacecraft for years.
RSGS brings together government agencies and industry to test advanced robotic systems in space. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began supporting the RSGS mission in 2024 under an interagency agreement with DARPA.
NASA’s contributions to the mission leverage its legacy of servicing missions including the Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions and the Robotic Refueling Missions on the International Space Station. NASA support to RSGS program includes the development of dynamic simulation and analysis tools, software analysis for performance verification, and a team of flight robot operators who will support highly technical procedures in orbit. Hundreds of satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. Of those, fully functional satellites are often decommissioned early because they run out of fuel or their equipment becomes obsolete. RSGS establishes a critical U.S. capability to extend the lifetime of spacecraft in orbit, allowing for more innovative and cost-effective mission designs.
By Colleen Wouters NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Wildland fire activity in Canada ramped up in July 2026, a time of year when lightning ignitions typically increase, according to a seasonal outlook published by several North American fire agencies. The blazes sent smoke plumes pouring across the U.S. and Canada, affecting air quality in both countries.
This animation tracks brown carbon, the organic aerosols emitted by fires that give smoke plumes their characteristic yellow, orange, and brown tint. Brown carbon is a major component of a fire’s PM2.5 emissions, a type of air pollution that can aggravate cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. Here, the plume drifts across North American skies from July 14 through July 20, 2026.
Data for the animation come from a version of the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) model, which assimilates data from satellites, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems. In addition to satellite observations of aerosols and fires, the model also incorporates meteorological data such as air temperature, moisture, and winds to project the plume’s behavior.
On July 14, at the start of the animation, numerous fires had already cropped up, including more than 180 in Ontario and several in northern Minnesota. Winds carried the smoke southeast, and by July 15, skies turned hazy and air quality declined from southern Ontario in Canada to the Upper Midwest and Northeast in the U.S. July 16 and 17 saw air quality in many areas continue to plummet, including in Detroit, where it stayed in the hazardous range for several consecutive days. Toronto, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., saw air quality ranging from unhealthy to hazardous.
On July 19 and 20, smoke continued to affect air quality downwind, including in the Great Lakes region, according to the National Weather Service. Storms began clearing it away in parts of the East, where air quality improved to good or moderate. Meanwhile, fires in the Pacific Northwest began degrading air quality there.
The brown carbon shown in this animation represents organic carbon that comes specifically from wildfire smoke. Wildfires also emit black carbon, or soot, which contributes to their PM2.5 output. Black carbon has long served as a tracer for smoke plumes, but human sources—such as vehicle exhaust and industrial combustion—produce it too, blending in with the black carbon from fires. The GEOS model has been able to make that distinction for brown carbon since February 2026, when an update enabled it to split organic carbon into its anthropogenic and biomass-burning components.
Technicians and engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida use a crane to lift the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to a specialized work stand June 26, 2026, as the mission prepares to launch nine months ahead of schedule. The Roman Space Telescope will offer a field of view at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s, resulting in deep, sweeping explorations of the cosmos.
Credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)
Media are invited to join NASA for a virtual news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, July 29, to preview the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission, scheduled to launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday, Aug. 30.
NASA will stream this event live through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online: https://www.nasa.gov/live.
Participants in the briefing, who will provide an overview of the mission and its status, include:
Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington
Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard
Jeremy Perkins, Roman telescope integration and test scientist, NASA Goddard
Media interested in participating by phone must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the briefing to Rob Garner at rob.garner@nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a deep, panoramic view of the cosmos, generating never-before-seen pictures that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe. The observatory will usher in a new era of cosmic surveys, unveiling troves of celestial objects and shedding light on some of the universe’s most profound mysteries, including phenomena we can’t see. Roman also will showcase cutting-edge technology, including a test of the most advanced technology ever flown in space to directly image planets around nearby stars, a key step in NASA’s search for life on other worlds.
The Roman telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a team of scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc., L3Harris Technologies, and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging. Contributions to Roman also are made by ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
For more information about NASA’s Roman telescope, visit:
Media accreditation now is open for the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the agency’s SpaceX Crew-13 missions, both targeting launch in the coming months.
The Roman telescope is slated to launch no earlier than 7:20 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The observatory, named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, will have a deep, panoramic view of the cosmos, generating never-before-seen pictures that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is seen here in the clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where the observatory was built and tested. Roman’s vast, deep surveys will explore dark matter, dark energy, exoplanets, and almost anything from our own solar system to galaxies at the edge of the observable universe.
Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya
Crew-13 is scheduled to launch no earlier than mid-September from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The mission will carry NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov to the International Space Station for a science and research expedition. This will be NASA’s 13th commercial crew rotation mission with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 members are pictured in their pressure suits seated inside a mockup Dragon spacecraft during a preflight training session at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. From left to right, Roscosmos Sergey Teteryatnikov, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk.
Credit: SpaceX
Media interested in attending either or both launches must apply by the following deadlines:
International media without U.S. citizenship must apply by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, July 26.
U.S. media and U.S. citizens representing international media organizations must apply by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, July 30.
All accreditation requests must be submitted online at:
NASA Study of Pristine Meteorite Adds to Story of Ancient Asteroids
C1 clasts in Hillsborough: On the left is a back-scattered electron image with two C1 748 clasts circled. On the right, an X-ray map of the same area as (A), indicating Na enrichment in 749 of the C1 clasts relative to the bulk of Hillsborough. Credit: NASA/SETI
A meteorite recovered immediately upon its fall to Earth on July 16, 2024, is helping NASA scientists uncover new clues about ancient water, the chemical evolution of primitive asteroids, and the ingredients that may have helped make life possible throughout the early solar system.
This rapid recovery began when an amateur astronomer in New Jersey quickly recognized that a newly fallen meteorite had landed on his property. Recognizing its scientific value and wearing protective gloves, he collected the fragments and stored them in aluminum foil and glass containers, which preserved delicate minerals and organic compounds that are often altered by moisture, weather, and contamination.
As the meteorite fell to Earth, cameras across New Jersey captured its fiery passage through the atmosphere. Scientists used these observations to reconstruct the fireball’s trajectory and, after recovering the meteorite, combined this data with laboratory analyses to determine where in the solar system the rock most likely originated. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers found evidence that ancient salty water altered minerals within the meteorite’s parent asteroid, preserving unique minerals and a rich inventory of organic compounds.
“When we have both a documented fireball and a quick recovery of its meteorite, we can learn not only what the rock is made of, but where it came from in the asteroid belt,” said Peter Jenniskens, meteor astronomer at both NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and the SETI Institute, and lead author of the study.
Combined radar detections from the Hillsborough meteorite fall. The green line shows the fireball’s projected path, while colored radar signatures show falling meteorite fragments drifting east-northeast with prevailing winds. Credit: NASA/Marc Fries
Named for the township where it was recovered, the Hillsborough meteorite belongs to a class of carbon-rich meteorites known as CM carbonaceous chondrites. These primitive rocks preserve some of the oldest materials in the solar system, recording the chemical processes that shaped asteroids more than 4.5 billion years ago.
While examining the unusually pristine meteorite, researchers found a mosaic of tiny broken-up rocks and noticed that some contained unusually high concentrations of sodium — an unexpected finding for this type of meteorite. The surprising signal prompted a closer investigation using powerful electron microscopes that allowed scientists to examine the meteorite from the millimeter scale down to individual atoms. By combining observations across multiple scales, researchers reconstructed the history of the minerals and the fluids that once flowed through them.
These analyses revealed microscopic fractures filled with sodium-rich material left behind by ancient brines. Unlike pure water, brines contain dissolved salts that allow them to transport elements and chemically alter the rocks they move through. In the case of the Hillsborough sample, those ancient fluids altered the asteroid’s minerals and left behind chemical evidence that remained preserved for billions of years.
Scientists were also able to detect fragile sodium-carbonate salts that normally react with moisture in Earth’s atmosphere before they can be studied. Jangmi Han, a paper co-author and mineralogist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, identified evidence of ancient brines preserved within microscopic fractures. Similar salts were identified in samples returned from the asteroids Bennu and Ryugu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. However,Hillsborough marks the first time the salts have been identified in a CM carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, offering a new glimpse into the surfaces of the primitive asteroids that produced these meteorites.
Together, these findings suggest that ancient, salt-rich brines were more widespread among primitive asteroids than previously recognized, and provide scientists with new opportunities to compare how water altered different asteroid bodies across the early solar system.
“The chips of the most salt-rich bits of this meteorite are quite comparable to the samples returned by the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx missions,” said Mike Zolensky, a meteorite researcher at NASA Johnson and co-author of the study. “They’re not identical. They’re different in some very interesting ways, but they’ve seen very similar processes.”
Following the history of water through the solar system is an essential part of understanding the origin of life.
Mike Zolensky
Meteorite Researcher
Scientists expected Hillsborough to contain a rich suite of organic compounds because it is a CM carbonaceous chondrite. What made the meteorite exceptional was how quickly it was recovered, allowing researchers to study those compounds before prolonged exposure to Earth’s environment could contaminate the sample.
“One of the big surprises for me when we analyzed a small chip of the Hillsborough meteorite was the complexity of amino acids and other organic compounds,” said Danny Glavin, senior scientist in the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-author of the study.
Its diversity of amino acids and other organic compounds is, comparable to the Murchison meteorite, a nearly 100-kilogram carbonaceous chondrite that fell in Australia in 1969 and became the benchmark for extraterrestrial organic chemistry.
“It’s just more proof that the chemical building blocks of life could have been delivered — and are still being delivered — to Earth today by these carbonaceous asteroid fragments,” said Glavin, who was a co-investigator on OSIRIS-REx, leading an international team that studied the organic composition of the samples delivered to Earth from asteroid Bennu in 2023.
Understanding the Hillsborough meteorite required expertise from multiple scientific disciplines.
Astronomers reconstructed the meteorite’s journey through space, finding evidence that it may have originated from the Erigone asteroid family in the inner asteroid belt, home to the asteroid Donaldjohanson, which was visited in 2025 by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. Mineralogists identified evidence of ancient brines preserved within microscopic fractures, while organic chemists analyzed the meteorite’s inventory of amino acids and other organic compounds.
“Together, those complementary studies are helping scientists build one of the clearest pictures yet of how primitive asteroids such as the asteroid Erigone evolved chemically over billions of years,” said Jenniskens.
Researchers continue to study the Hillsborough meteorite, revealing new details about how water transformed primitive asteroids and shaped the early solar system.
By tracing the history of water on primitive asteroids, scientists are learning how water and the chemical ingredients for life were distributed throughout the early solar system.
“If you follow the water through the solar system, you’re actually following life,” Zolensky said. “Following the history of water through the solar system is an essential part of understanding the origin of life.”
For more information on NASA’s astromaterials research and exploration, visit:
NASA’s Webb Discovers Hidden Planet in Famous Star System
This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.
Credits: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant planet outside our solar system, called an exoplanet, hiding within one of the most intensely studied planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy.
The young, nearby star Beta Pictoris was already known to host two giant planets: Beta Pictoris b, one of the first exoplanets ever directly imaged, and Beta Pictoris c. The newly identified Beta Pictoris d makes it only the second planetary system known to contain at least three imaged planets. Unlike Beta Pictoris b and c, however, Beta Pictoris d was discovered not by identifying a bright point of light, but by detecting the unique chemical fingerprint of its atmosphere, a technique that could transform the search for worlds around other stars.
“This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system,” said Aidan Gibbs, lead author of a new study published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that story.”
Image: Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept)
This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.
Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Familiar system, new surprise
Located 63 light-years from Earth and about 23 million years old, Beta Pictoris is a nearby system in the Milky Way offering a rare glimpse of the interactions between newborn planets and the disk of dust and debris left behind from their formation.
The team estimates that the newfound Beta Pictoris d is likely at least two times the mass of Jupiter, making it the smallest of the three known giant planets in the system. Modeling suggests it likely circles around its star at about 30 astronomical units, comparable to the region occupied by Neptune in our own solar system. It’s the widest orbit of the known three planets, but still located inside the inner edge of the debris disk.
Although astronomers were not searching for another planet with Webb, Beta Pictoris d emerged while the team was using the telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to study the atmosphere of Beta Pictoris b. Specifically, they used NIRSpec’s Integral Field Unit, which obtains both an image and a spectrum from each pixel in an image.
“We weren’t looking for a new planet,” said Gibbs. “We were trying to understand one we already knew existed. Then, this telltale signal appeared in the data where we didn’t expect it.”
This signal was a series of peaks and troughs within the spectroscopic data where the team expected to see a smooth spectrum from light bouncing off dust. It was a distinctive pattern of carbon monoxide absorption lines, spread out like a barcode, an expected feature in giant planet atmospheres.
Because spectroscopy not only reveals chemical composition, but the motion of an object, the team was able to also extract radial velocity from the data. The team determined the planet’s speed, position, and alignment with the debris disk were all consistent with something orbiting Beta Pictoris rather than a background star or brown dwarf with carbon monoxide in its atmosphere.
“There was an unexpected bright source of light within the Integral Field Unit imaging, but we’ve learned not to trust bright blobs in images,” said Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, a research scientist at University of California, San Diego and principal investigator of the first Webb observations where the discovery was made. “They can be instrumental artifacts or other structures in the debris disk. By obtaining a spectrum at the same time as the image, we were able to quickly confirm our suspicions.”
Follow-up observations with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) through a Director’s Discretionary Time request detected water vapor and methane, further confirming the planet’s identity while providing a richer look at the atmosphere of the planet.
Unlike traditional imaging, the spectroscopic approach allowed researchers to identify the planet and begin studying its atmosphere from the very first observation.
“A spectrum contains an incredible amount of information,” Ruffio said. “You don’t just learn that something is a planet; you immediately begin learning about its temperature, chemistry, and motion.”
A separate imaging study led by Ben Sutlieff of the University of Edinburgh and Markus Bonse of the European Southern Observatory complements the team’s findings with data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and independently confirmed the existence of Beta Pictoris d.
Image: Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum)
Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI); Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego), Alexis Bidot (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Image: Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated)
The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph).
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Seeing through cosmic fog
Beta Pictoris d remained hidden for years because it lies within one of the brightest debris disks known.
The dusty disk acts like fog, scattering light from the star, making it difficult for conventional imaging techniques to distinguish planets from surrounding structures. The team’s spectroscopic method with Webb effectively ignored that dust, isolating only the narrow molecular signatures unique to a planetary atmosphere.
Scientists say the planet’s presence may help explain why the famous debris disk has such a sharply defined inner edge and other puzzling structures. In fact, astronomers had already predicted the existence of a planet like Beta Pictoris d to account for the disk’s unusual structure.
Beyond expanding our understanding of Beta Pictoris, the discovery demonstrates a powerful new way to find exoplanets.
This is the first directly imaged planet discovered primarily through moderate-resolution spectroscopy, showing that astronomers can identify worlds in complex environments through their atmospheric fingerprints rather than relying solely on traditional coronagraphic imaging.
The researchers plan to continue analyzing Webb’s observations to better determine the planet’s temperature, atmospheric composition, and orbit, providing an even more detailed view of one of astronomy’s most iconic planetary systems.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos
Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept)
This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.
Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum)
Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.
Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated)
The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph).
How do black holes at the center of galaxies form and grow over time? To answer this question, scientists need to detect and study supermassive black holes at great distances, which existed much earlier in the universe’s history. New research suggests NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is on track to launch Aug. 30, 2026, will be able to detect these distant, ancient black holes that existed up to 11 billion years ago.
This artist’s concept portrays a Sun-like star being shredded by a supermassive black hole — a phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event. During these events, the region around a black hole can brighten and become visible across great distances. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to spot and study tidal disruption events that occurred early in the universe’s history. By characterizing an earlier population of supermassive black holes, astronomers can learn about their origins.
NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Black holes are best studied by looking for the light emitted from their accretion disk — the matter that swirls around them before being consumed. Lighter supermassive black holes are challenging to observe because they tend to be less luminous due to less accretion. But occasionally, they shred and consume an entire star, brightening to outshine their entire host galaxy — known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). By characterizing that population of early supermassive black holes and how they evolve and grow for billions of years, Roman will provide clues to the ultimate origin of these behemoths.
“The Roman Space Telescope is going to be transformative for transient science,” said lead author Mitchell Karmen of the Johns Hopkins University, a graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. “Thanks to Roman’s high sensitivity, we can find multiple tidal disruption events out to greater distances and earlier cosmic times than ever before.”
Roman’s High-Latitude Time-Doman Survey, one of three core community surveys, is particularly well suited to find and study TDEs in the early universe. This survey will cover about 18 square degrees on the sky, an area equivalent to 90 full moons, at a regular cadence. By revisiting the same regions repeatedly, astronomers can find large numbers of transient events like TDEs.
Tidal disruption events are phenomena unique to lighter supermassive black holes. Heftier black holes weighing more than 1 billion Suns will swallow incoming stars whole. But lighter black holes of about 100,000 to 100 million Suns can shred a star before consuming it, creating a beacon that brightens over a couple of weeks before gradually fading away.
The rate of TDEs fluctuates over cosmic time. Previous work predicted that the rate of TDEs would decrease with increasing distance because most young black holes were too light to generate a TDE. However, this new research takes into account numerous factors that evolve over time, like the frequency of galaxy (and hence black hole) mergers as well as the number of stars within the core of each galaxy and how closely packed they are.
Karmen and his colleagues modeled these and other effects to predict how many tidal disruption events Roman could observe, as well as other observatories like the ground-based National Science Foundation-Department of Energy Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The team forecasts that astronomers will see the rate of TDEs increase as Roman probes greater distances and earlier times until “cosmic noon,” about 11 to 12 billion years ago when star formation peaked throughout the universe, before decreasing again.
This visualization shows the average number of tidal disruption events NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is predicted to detect in a year, based on simulations. Roman is expected to record about 100 such events in a year.
Video: NASA, STScI. Visualization: Christian Nieves (STScI). Sound: Christian Nieves (STScI). Designer: Dani Player (STScI). Animation: Greg Bacon (STScI)
Complementary Observations
Roman will observe near-infrared wavelengths of light. Light from distant TDEs becomes stretched to longer wavelengths by the expansion of the universe, a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift. As a result, Roman is inherently optimized to detect TDEs whose light traveled anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion years to reach us.
The Rubin Observatory also will scan large swaths of the sky and pick up many new TDEs. However, it will observe visible light, which limits it to closer TDEs than Roman.
The research by Karmen’s team finds that Rubin will detect thousands to tens of thousands of TDEs per year. While Roman is expected to find up to 100 TDEs per year, those black holes will be much more distant, within the realm of cosmic history that is most important for distinguishing among black hole origin scenarios.
“Just by counting the number of TDEs as a function of redshift, you can put meaningful constraints on the population of million-solar-mass black holes,” said co-author Suvi Gezari, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland. “Roman will be transformative in that it can probe tidal disruption events out to greater distances, so you can look at how the rate of TDEs evolves over time.”
Origins of supermassive black holes
Astronomers have observed truly gargantuan black holes very early in the history of the universe — so early that theories struggle to explain how they could have become so large, so quickly. They must have started smaller and grown over time, but how much smaller?
One theory, known as “light seeds,” begins with black holes that are created from the deaths of massive stars. Such black holes might weigh up to a few hundred times our Sun. These black holes then would merge over time, as well as consume surrounding gas at an astonishing rate. In this scenario, every young galaxy would be expected to have a massive black hole at its center.
A second theory, known as “heavy seeds,” suggests that a black hole could be born with a much higher mass, up to a million times our Sun, through a process such as the direct collapse of a gas cloud. This process should be less common, though, which would result in supermassive black holes being much rarer in early galaxies.
“Tidal disruption events help us probe the population of light supermassive black holes, which can help us discriminate between these models,” Karmen said.
Ultimately, Roman’s tally of tidal disruption events will help researchers trace global effects that impact the black hole population over time.
Once Roman and Rubin begin regular science operations, the team looks forward to comparing their forecasts to the actual detections those observatories make.
“Just like Webb has transformed our understanding of distant, high-redshift galaxies, Roman is poised to transform our understanding of high-redshift transients,” Gezari said.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Christine Pulliam Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
NASA’s Hubble Discovers First of Star Cluster’s Missing Black Holes
An image of the globular cluster Omega Centauri, a collection of myriad stars colored red, white, and blue on the black background of space.
Credits: Science: Maximilian Häberle (MPIA)
The massive globular star cluster Omega Centauri has puzzled astronomers for decades. It should be filled with black holes left behind by exploding stars, yet evidence for them is scarce. Now, astronomers using archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and supportive observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally located their first stellar-mass black hole in this cluster. Discovering the first of this missing black hole population will help refine current theories on black hole formation within environments such as Omega Centauri. The team’s findings published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Omega Centauri is composed of 10 million gravitationally bound stars. Though the astronomical community previously found evidence with Hubble that an intermediate-mass black hole lurks at its center, models suggest this star cluster should also contain about 10,000 smaller, stellar-mass black holes. This notable population of black holes evaded detection in previous observational studies, which used the radial velocity method or looked for radio and X-ray emission from material falling onto black holes.
This new discovery features a different approach, known as astrometry, to measure very small movements of stars over time. By sifting through more than 20 years of Hubble archival data and pulling in recent Webb data to further refine their astrometric measurements, the team located a star orbiting an invisible object so hefty that it has to be a black hole. Dubbed oMEGACat BH-2, it is the first stellar-mass black hole detected in Omega Centauri, and it has some surprising qualities. oMEGACat BH-2 has a lower-than-expected mass and, with its visible star companion, the black hole-star duo has the longest orbital period of any black hole binary system known to date.
“With Hubble and Webb data, we were able to see the motion of the visible main sequence star that is part of this binary, which is about 18,000 light-years away in the dense environment of Omega Centauri,” said Matthew Whitaker of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, lead author of the paper. “The precision of these measurements is incredible, down to a fraction of a pixel on Hubble and Webb’s detectors. It would not have been possible to find this black hole without these two space telescopes.”
Astronomers found Omega Centauri’s first stellar-mass black hole, which has a visible star companion that is shown in greater detail. They used 20-plus years of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and recent data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to make the discovery.
Image: ESA, NASA, Maximilian Häberle (MPIA), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
The team’s findings refine a past study by a different group of scientists that suggested this binary system included a neutron star. By expanding Hubble data from the earlier investigation with archival Hubble astrometric measurements from 2002 to 2023, and pulling in Webb near-infrared data to improve precision, the University of Utah-led team was able to better constrain the mass of the visible star’s dark companion, ruling out the neutron star possibility.
“While we already knew that the star was 0.78 solar masses, we can now calculate the black hole’s mass, which is 4.46 solar masses and therefore too heavy to be a neutron star. However, its mass is much lower than would be expected in a metal-poor environment like Omega Centauri. This is surprising and exciting,” said Anil Seth of the University of Utah, a coauthor of the study. “We now know that a metal-poor star is able to form a black hole like this, and we need to figure out how that happens. This detection is providing some data to those who do that kind of modeling.”
Long time coming
Based on the precise data from Hubble and Webb, the team could chart the star’s path over 20-plus years, during its closest approach to its black hole companion when it moved the fastest across the sky. From the extensive data, the team determined that the visible star orbits oMEGACat BH-2 once every 94 years, making it the longest-period black hole binary ever known.
Its long orbital period also gives a clue to the origin of this binary system. It was probably dynamically formed, meaning the star and its black hole companion did not start out together but rather found each other in this cluster. The researchers calculated that a system like oMEGACat BH-2 will survive for less than a billion years before it is torn apart by encounters with nearby stars, a much shorter span than the age of the cluster (approximately 12 billion years old).
“It’s important to understand black hole populations in globular clusters because there’s uncertainty about their physics and formation,” said Seth. “More specifically, understanding the process of forming black holes and then dynamically forming binaries is vital, because it affects our ability to interpret and understand gravitational wave events. Environments like Omega Centauri are the primary places where we think binaries are merging and creating these waves.”
The team’s discovery of stellar-mass black hole oMEGACat BH-2 with the Hubble-Webb dataset is just the start of finding these evasive black hole populations in globular star clusters.
“With Hubble and Webb, we can continue to look at Omega Centauri and expand our search for similar systems within other clusters,” said Whitaker. “We’re also very excited for the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope because it will image the crowded galactic bulge, including the galactic center, very regularly with Hubble-like resolution and with a much wider field of view. We’re hoping we’ll be able to find black hole binary systems like this one because of the regular cadence of Roman’s observations.”
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Astronomers found Omega Centauri’s first stellar-mass black hole, which has a visible star companion that is shown in greater detail. They used 20-plus years of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and recent data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to make the discovery.
Star Orbiting Black Hole Animation
The precise data collected by NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes enabled a team of astronomers to chart the visible star’s orbital path over a 20 year-plus period.
NASA Transfers ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ to Patuxent Research Refuge
Following a ceremony on July 7, 2026, officials hold up a U.S. 250th pennant at “Area 400,” a 105-acre parcel previously part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and now part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Patuxent Research Refuge.
NASA ceremonially transferred ownership of about 105 acres of wooded land at its Goddard Space Flight Center’s Greenbelt, Maryland, campus Tuesday to the adjoining Patuxent Research Refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The property, formerly known as NASA Goddard’s Area 400, is now part of the largest block of unfragmented forest between Washington and Baltimore. The nearly 13,000-acre woodland is the nation’s only refuge specifically established to support wildlife research. The refuge also supports recreational uses, such as walking, biking, horseback riding, fishing, and hunting.
At a ceremony on July 7, 2026, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik (left) and Jamie Dunn, center director, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., sign certificates that ceremonially transfer a 105-acre parcel of property known as “Area 400” from NASA Goddard to the Service.
NASA
“For over six decades, NASA Goddard has helped shape humanity’s understanding of Earth,” said Jamie Dunn, center director, NASA Goddard. “We’re glad to present this land to our colleagues in the Fish and Wildlife Service, whose conservation and research helps do the real legwork in preserving our Blue Marble for future generations.”
NASA Goddard had used Area 400 for propellant research beginning in the 1960s. That work has largely since shifted to NASA facilities in other states or to commercial providers, and the property had long been a candidate for divestment. NASA and the Service began discussing a potential transfer in 2021.
Following remarks from attending dignitaries and the signing ceremony, assembled guests participated in a monarch butterfly release and milkweed seed dispersal.
NASA
Prior to the transfer, Area 400 was still almost entirely wooded aside from a two-and-a-half-acre clearing with 11 small structures. The interagency transfer was effective on Feb. 23, and NASA recently completed its final closeout activities at the property, deconstructing the buildings, roadway, and utility service.
This aerial photograph shows Area 400’s appearance in 1984. The surrounding forest has remained largely unchanged since NASA Goddard occupied the property in the 1960s.
NASA
“Through working with partners on the best use of land, as exemplified with this land transfer, we can continue to conserve America’s natural beauty and expand outdoor recreation opportunities for future generations,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik.
Media contacts:
Rob Garner News Chief, Office of Communications NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Keith Shannon Regional Communications Lead – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region U.S. Department of the Interior
The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) has achieved all primary and extended mission objectives.
Credits: NASA
As NASA prepares for a sustained human presence on the Moon, missions will increasingly require spacecraft that can navigate and communicate without a direct connection to Earth.
NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, validated and advanced these capabilities.
Designed to test and validate technologies in lunar orbit, CAPSTONE launched in June 2022 and became the first U.S. commercial mission at the Moon. The spacecraft tested operations in three-body orbits around the Moon, using the combined gravity of Earth and the Moon to reduce the fuel needed to maintain a stable lunar path. It became the first spacecraft to fly and characterize this orbit for future exploration and science missions. Owned and operated by Advanced Space, the microwave-sized spacecraft then received a 15-month mission extension, becoming a testbed for advanced communications, networking, autonomous navigation, and software-defined satellite technologies.
Dylan Schmidt, CAPSTONE assembly integration and test lead, right, and Lachlan Moore, systems integration engineer, left, install solar panels onto the CAPSTONE spacecraft at Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc., in Irvine, California.
NASA/Dominic Hart
Rather than launch a new satellite, NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate demonstrated that CAPSTONE’s existing hardware could host new applications after launch, transforming the spacecraft into a cost-effective, flexible lunar technology demonstration platform. NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Division will now use the data to demonstrate innovative networking and navigation techniques on future experiments.
“Operating multiple experiments simultaneously aboard the same spacecraft allows NASA to evaluate how these technologies perform together in a real lunar environment,” said Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology Division within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Investments in autonomous operations and resilient communications infrastructure are essential to ensuring U.S. leadership as activity around the Moon continues to increase.”
Two experiments aboard CAPSTONE used software-defined infrastructure to advance two future mission essentials: autonomous navigation and deep space communications. The autonomous Navigation, Guidance, and Control software, or autoNGC, is designed to allow a spacecraft to determine where it is, where it is going, and how to get where it needs to be without waiting for instructions from the ground. While portions of the software had previously flown in Earth orbit, CAPSTONE marked the first time autoNGC was tested at the Moon.
“To really demonstrate that something works, you have to fly it,” said Sun Hur-Diaz, principal investigator for the autoNGC technology development project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The real environment is key.”
To really demonstrate that something works you have to fly it. The real environment is key.
Sun Hur-Diaz
Principal Investigator for the autoNGC Project, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Researchers also evaluated how autoNGC performed with limited contact to Earth. While NASA’s Deep Space Network antennas were supporting the Artemis II crewed test flight around the Moon, CAPSTONE’s communications window dropped to just a few passes per week.
Those gaps became one of the experiment’s most valuable tests. Without data from Earth, autoNGC determined CAPSTONE’s location using an onboard star tracker camera to image the Moon, Earth, and other celestial bodies. The camera-based system, known as optical navigation, at times outperformed ground-based methods for real-time onboard navigation, advancing technologies for future deep-space missions.
Alongside autonomous navigation testing, CAPSTONE also tested delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN), a communications architecture designed for deep space. Unlike Earth-based internet systems, deep space communications must function despite long delays and frequent signal gaps. The DTN system addresses those challenges by storing information on the spacecraft when no connection is available and automatically forwarding it once communications are restored. With these demonstrations, CAPSTONE became the first to fly the latest DTN protocols beyond Earth orbit and the first to run them in NASA’s core Flight System, an open-source framework that can be implemented on any spacecraft.
In one demonstration, engineers began transmitting data from CAPSTONE to Earth, but the connection ended before the transfer was complete. The spacecraft stored the remaining data until the next communications opportunity, and transmission resumed automatically. Every piece of data made it home.
Artist’s rendering depicting astronauts, habitats, rovers, power systems, and cargo operations supporting sustained human activities at the Moon Base near the lunar South Pole. The technologies CAPSTONE tested may be key to NASA’s growing lunar communications and navigation infrastructure.
NASA
“You can imagine an astronaut walking behind a lunar hill or descending into a crater and temporarily losing connectivity,” said Ben Anderson, a systems engineer for the Near Space Network at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This technology allows that data to be automatically retransmitted once communications are restored.”
In addition to its primary achievements, CAPSTONE’s second life as a software-defined testing platform demonstrated that new technologies can be affordably tested and proven directly in their operational environment.
After nearly four years of technology maturation, NASA’s activities on CAPSTONE concluded in June 2026, while Advanced Space will continue to use the spacecraft as a technology development testbed.
The CAPSTONE spacecraft was designed and built by Terran Orbital and is owned and operated by Advanced Space. NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate managed the mission through the Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems program, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Elements of the CAPSTONE technology suite were supported by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. The autoNGC and DTN demonstrations conducted during CAPSTONE’s extended mission were managed by NASA’s SCaN Division, based at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
About the Author
Korine Powers
Lead Writer and Communications Strategist
Korine Powers, Ph.D. is a writer for NASA's SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program office and covers emerging technologies, commercialization efforts, exploration activities, and more.
NASA Webb Uncovers Unusual Galaxy Shaped by Cosmic Collision
6 Min Read
NASA Webb Uncovers Unusual Galaxy Shaped by Cosmic Collision
The mid-infrared view of Centaurus A from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals dusty structures and hidden activity within the nearby, active galaxy.
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Macarena Garcia Marin (ESA Office at STScI)
In new images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to celebrate its fourth science anniversary, a familiar galaxy transforms into something far richer, and far more complex, than ever seen before. Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity across near- and mid-infrared wavelengths cuts through the thick lanes of dust that obscure Centaurus A’s center in visible light, showing a densely packed tapestry of individual stars and an active, everchanging galaxy. These images mark four years of better-than-anticipated performance and successful science operations for the most powerful space telescope in history.
Centaurus A is 11 million light-years away from Earth, relatively close in cosmic terms. Yet, unlike most nearby galaxies, it is very active, making it a powerful laboratory for understanding how galaxies and black holes grow and evolve together.
Image: Centaurus A (MIRI Image)
The mid-infrared view of Centaurus A from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals dusty structures and hidden activity within the nearby, active galaxy.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Macarena Garcia Marin (ESA Office at STScI)
At its core sits a supermassive black hole actively feeding on surrounding material. As it does, the black hole launches powerful jets and releases enormous amounts of energy, shaping the galaxy around it. At the same time, Centaurus A bears the scars of a dramatic past: a major collision with another galaxy roughly two billion years ago. The aftermath of that merger is still visible today in its unusual structure and ongoing star formation.
Visible light observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope could not reveal the central region where dust blocked the view, while NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope revealed large scale structures in the infrared without resolving individual stars. Now, Webb brings both clarity and depth, exposing the galaxy’s inner workings star by star.
Interactive: Journey into Centaurus A
Use this interactive tool to journey into NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view of Centaurus A, where dust gives way to a rich landscape of stars and hidden features.
NASA / STScI
“No single telescope tells the whole story,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, division director, Astrophysics, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Discoveries build over time and new observatories expand on the foundations laid by earlier missions. Webb represents the most powerful step forward yet, opening a window into wavelengths and details never before accessible. This allows astronomers to examine structures and processes that other telescopes could not see.”
Dust, awe
Webb’s mid-infrared vision highlights the galaxy’s rich dust structures, which glow in intricate shapes that surprise and even perplex astronomers. A warped, parallelogram-like band cuts across the galaxy’s center, while wisps of material stretch outward like cosmic clouds.
An “S” shaped feature, most notable in the image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), is also unusual and invites questions that need further study to answer. What created this shape? How does the black hole influence it? Is it influenced by merger-induced star formation?
Many of the glowing red points in the MIRI image are dust-rich stars or stellar nurseries, where aging stars are shedding material back into space or new stars are forming. This dust is the raw ingredient for future generations of stars and planets, making it central to the ongoing life cycle of the galaxy.
Image: Centaurus A Crop (NIRCam & MIRI)
In the combined mid- and near-infrared view of Centaurus A, the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope brings out the galaxy’s dense field of millions of stars.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Macarena Garcia Marin (ESA Office at STScI)
Written in its stars
With Webb’s high resolution, astronomers can now study Centaurus A star by star, even in its long-obscured central region. What looks “grainy” in the image from Webb, most obvious in the combined MIRI and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) view, is actually a densely packed field of individual stars, together carrying information about the galaxy’s past.
With Webb’s view of Centaurus A, it becomes a case of galactic archaeology. Each star revealed helps to reconstruct when different events happened: when older stars first formed, when activity slowed down, a burst of star formation during the collision, and stars born from gas stirred in its aftermath. Together, they form a timeline of the galaxy’s evolution.
Dynamic black hole
Webb’s capabilities go beyond imaging. By analyzing light with spectroscopy, astronomers can measure how gas moves within the galaxy.
Early findings from Webb show fast-moving ionized gas flowing outward, likely driven by the black hole’s activity, and warmer molecular hydrogen in a warped rotating disk near the center. These observations help explore one of astronomy’s biggest questions: How does a black hole influence an entire galaxy?
The answer appears to be complex. The black hole can trigger star formation by compressing gas, but also limit it by pushing material away. Centaurus A offers a rare, nearby view of this cosmic interplay.
By tracing dust in never-before-seen detail, resolving millions of stars, and revealing the motion of gas near a supermassive black hole, Webb transforms Centaurus A into a vivid record of cosmic history.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos
Centaurus A (MIRI Image)
The mid-infrared view of Centaurus A from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals dusty structures and hidden activity within the nearby, active galaxy.
Centaurus A Crop (NIRCam and MIRI Image)
In the combined mid- and near-infrared view of Centaurus A, the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope brings out the galaxy’s dense field of millions of stars.
Centaurus A Context Image (ESO and Webb Images)
A ground-based image of nearby galaxy Centaurus A from the European Southern Observatory (top left) puts the near-infrared and mid-infrared views from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope image into context.
Centaurus A (MIRI Compass Image)
Annotated image of the active galaxy Centaurus A captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), with compass arrows, a scale bar, and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note …
Centaurus A Crop (NIRCam and MIRI Compass Image)
Annotated image of the active galaxy Centaurus A captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), with compass arrows, a scale bar, and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientat…
Ancient stars shine in red, white and blue from a globular cluster almost as old as the universe itself in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, and A. Dotter (Dartmouth College); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Red, white, and blue stars glitter like a sparkler being waved on a dark night in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. NASA released this image to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, as the agency carries forward America’s legacy of exploration.
Located in the outer halo of our Milky Way galaxy, globular cluster NGC 6426 is a spherical collection of stars bound together by their mutual gravity, one of 150 known globular clusters in our galaxy. These groups of stars are thought to form as a unit from the same collapsing cloud of gas, and thus the stars in them typically have similar ages. The stars in globular clusters tend to be ancient. At approximately 13 billion years old, NGC 6426 is one of the Milky Way’s oldest globular clusters and almost as old as the universe itself (13.7 billion years).
In this image, blue indicates the shorter wavelengths that are visible light, while red depicts the longer wavelengths of visible light, as well as some near-infrared light. Colors in Hubble images are chosen based on standard image processing techniques to best represent the wavelengths of light that pass through the filters used in the observation. Because the color and temperature of stars are directly related, we know that the blue stars in this image are hotter and the red stars are cooler.
The stars of NGC 6426 have low metallicity, which means they have fewer elements that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. These conditions resemble those of the early universe, when matter was mostly helium and hydrogen and heavier elements were just beginning to form via nuclear fusion within massive stars.
Researchers have found evidence for two chemically distinct populations of stars in NGC 6426, indicating that the slightly younger and more metallic stars were enriched with material from the explosive deaths of the cluster’s earlier stars. Massive stars that explode as supernovae fling elements heavier than hydrogen and helium into the universe, seeding it with materials to build new stars and planets.
Hubble took this image as part of a study of globular clusters in the Milky Way’s halo intended to determine their ages and shed light on the formation and evolution of the galaxy. Over the past three decades in orbit, Hubble has fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. Its discoveries are expanded upon and complemented by observations from other NASA missions like the infrared-detecting James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in late summer.
NASA’s Hubble Captures Crimson Cloud Sparkling with White, Blue Stars
A glowing landscape of gas and dust is heated and illuminated by a thriving population of young stars in the LH 95 region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (The University of Virginia), G. De Marchi (European Space Agency – ESTEC), and D. Gouliermis (Universitat Heidelberg); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Like fresh fireworks launched against a background of dissipating smoke, blue and white stars shine brilliantly against a crimson background of glowing gas in this image of stellar nursery LH 95 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
LH 95 is a region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. Low-mass infant stars live alongside massive blue giant stars in what is known as a stellar association, one of many in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The LH 95 region’s most massive stars, possessing at least three times the mass of the Sun and visible here as the largest and brightest blue stars, expel ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds that both heat and shape the surrounding hydrogen gas. Dark filaments stand out in sharp contrast against the glowing hydrogen where denser dust lanes resist erosion.
In this image, blue indicates the shorter wavelengths that are visible light, while red depicts the longer wavelengths of visible light, as well as some near-infrared light. Colors in Hubble images are chosen based on standard image processing techniques to best represent the wavelengths of light that pass through the filters used in the observation. The gas of the nebula glows crimson due to hydrogen-alpha emissions.
Hydrogen-alpha is an excellent indicator of star formation, allowing astronomers to identify very young stars embedded in this glowing gas. Researchers found developing stars still gathering material from the disks of gas and dust around them. In fact, LH 95 is home to an extraordinary 2,500 stars that have accumulated almost all of their critical mass but have not yet “turned on” by beginning fusion reactions. These stars, called “pre-main-sequence stars,” have formed from collapsing clouds of gas and are still contracting. They will soon begin burning hydrogen in their cores to become full stars.
By studying these forming stars, researchers confirmed that the stars’ accretion rate ― the rate at which they accumulate matter ― decreased with age, as expected. However, they also learned that accretion can persist for several million years, longer than sometimes assumed. This information helps refine our understanding of how young stars keep growing and how their disks evolve.
Researchers noted that distinct generations of stars in LH 95 exist side-by-side, indicating that rather than forming stars in a single event, the region produces multiple stellar generations over an extended period.
The most massive star in LH 95 (above center, slightly left) has about 60-70 times the mass of the Sun and is about a million years younger than the rest of stars in the system, which appear to be around 4 million years old. Massive stars like these burn through their fuel quickly and die in supernova explosions.
With its rich stellar population, LH 95 is valued by astronomers for providing a way to observe forming stars at relatively close range in an environment with less obscuring dust than similar regions of the Milky Way.
As one of NASA’s flagship observatories, Hubble has produced a wealth of scientific discoveries over more than 30 years in orbit. Its observations are expanded upon and enhanced by observations with other NASA missions, including the infrared-detecting Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late summer.
This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows Messier 3, a densely packed cluster of stars whose origins may be a merger between globular clusters in the early universe.
NASA, ESA, and A. Sarajedini (Florida Atlantic University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
More than 500,000 stars blaze red, white, and blue in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, released in celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary. The image showcases Messier 3 (M3), one of the Milky Way galaxy’s most massive globular clusters, or spherical collections of gravitationally bound stars. Globular clusters are made up of ancient stars that formed at roughly the same time from the same cloud of gas, giving those stars similar ages. Around 150 known globular clusters are sprinkled around the outer regions of the Milky Way.
In addition to its significant mass, M3 is unusual because it lies relatively far from the galactic center and has more than 240 RR Lyrae variable stars, the most of any globular cluster in our galaxy. RR Lyrae variables are some of the galaxy’s oldest stars and are of special interest to astronomers, due to their age and because their light fluctuates over time in a way that tells us their intrinsic brightness. This true brightness can be used to measure distances in the cosmos, just as knowing the brightness of car headlights on a dark road can help estimate the distance to an oncoming vehicle.
The M3 globular cluster also contains around 70 identified “blue straggler” candidates, which are stars that shine with a bright, blue light that makes them look like younger stars than the typical, redder residents of globular clusters. This was the first cluster in which these oddball stars were located. These stars are thought to have gravitationally pulled mass from companion stars, rejuvenating them and making them appear bluer and younger despite their true age.
The unusual characteristics of M3 may arise from its origins. The globular cluster, which contains two distinct populations of stars, may be the result of a merger of two globular clusters. These two clusters were members of the same dwarf galaxy, which was later swallowed up by the Milky Way.
Hubble has taken several images of M3, also known as NGC 5272, documenting its complicated and intriguing characteristics. In this image, blue indicates the shorter wavelengths that are visible light, while red depicts the longer wavelengths of visible light, as well as some near-infrared light. Colors in Hubble images are chosen based on standard image processing techniques to best represent the wavelengths of light that pass through the filters used in the observation. Because the color and temperature of stars are directly related, we know that the blue stars in this image are hotter and the red stars are cooler.
This image is part of a Hubble Treasury program survey designed to observe approximately half of the Milky Way’s globular clusters to construct a detailed chronology of how the Milky Way galaxy formed. With over 30 years of observations, Hubble is one of NASA’s flagship observatories and works in complement with its sibling space missions, including the infrared-detecting Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to weave together a comprehensive picture of our vast universe.
NASA’s Webb Reveals Stars Sparking to Life in Cosmic Celebration
In infrared light, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals bright protostars in star system FS Tau and a tapestry of background galaxies. FS Tau B, the orange protostar slightly right of center, is thought to be responsible for the orange outflows amid the dusty region.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the infrared light of numerous features that previously were impossible to see beyond the thick dust of the FS Tau star system. In addition to myriad background galaxies that burst into view like fireworks for the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations, this image flickers with a number of protostars, or baby stars that are formed from dense pockets of gas and dust. These hot, clumpy, and low-mass objects eventually will become full-fledged stars capable of burning hydrogen in their cores, like our Sun. The protostars of FS Tau are about 1 to 3 million years old, which is relatively young in cosmic scales. Our Sun, by contrast, is 4.6 billion years old.
Low-mass stars emit less radiation and have less energetic stellar winds than those with larger masses, which means they disrupt their environment at a much lower level. This makes the FS Tau region incredibly useful for studying low-mass star evolution without the same level of environmental interference seen near higher-mass stars. A pair of protostars that creates the largest diffraction pattern seen slightly to the left of center in the image, called FS Tau A, is about half the mass of our Sun.
Image: FS Tau (Webb Image)
In infrared light, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals bright protostars in star system FS Tau and a tapestry of background galaxies. FS Tau B, the orange protostar slightly right of center, is thought to be responsible for the orange outflows amid the dusty region.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Even though these objects are young and low-mass, they still can impact their surroundings, partially due to the outflows they emit. These outflows, seen as orange and red wisps and wide sheets, are theorized to come from FS Tau B, the protostar slightly to the right of center that has an orange diffraction pattern. As FS Tau B feeds on the surrounding dust and gas to grow, it ejects some of that matter outward. The wider outflows are thought to come from the interaction between the protostar’s magnetic field and superheated matter closest to the protostar within its accretion disk. The disk is seen as a dark band that cuts across at a 30-degree angle.
The gaps between the outflows, newly discovered in this Webb observation, add to growing evidence that protostars accrete matter in discrete episodes. In the periods where protostars gather material and increase in mass, they also eject superheated matter in different directions. In between these episodes, they are relatively quiet.
Image: FS Tau Side-by-Side (Webb and Hubble Image)
A comparison between the observations of FS Tau by NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. Hubble’s visible-light view shows the star-forming region mostly obscured by thick dust. Webb sees through the dust, revealing how the protostars are shaping their surroundings.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
As protostars eject these outflows, they shape their surroundings. This is best shown by the prominent light-blue ridges of dust and gas near FS Tau B. These thicker regions were likely created as outflows struck and compressed matter together. The brightness of these light-blue ridges shows that the nearby protostar’s light is reflected. Moreover, Webb’s sensitivity reveals the varying textures of dust and gas across the entire region.
The range of colors seen in this observation also provides a wealth of information, specifically about where dust is and how much of it obscures the region. Light with bluer wavelengths is absorbed and scattered by dust, while redder-wavelength light is able to slip through. Therefore, background galaxies behind thicker foreground dust appear redder. Alternatively, yellow galaxies have much less dust obscuring them. The few white stars visible in this image are likely in the foreground.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos
FS Tau (Webb Image)
In infrared light, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals bright protostars in star system FS Tau and a tapestry of background galaxies. FS Tau B, the orange protostar slightly right of center, is thought to be responsible for the orange outflows amid the dusty region.
FS Tau Side-by-Side (Webb and Hubble Image)
A comparison between the observations of FS Tau by NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. Hubble’s visible-light view shows the star-forming region mostly obscured by thick dust. Webb sees through the dust, revealing how the protostars are shaping their surroundings.
FS Tau (Webb Compass Image)
An image of FS Tau captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.
NASA’s Webb Studies How Planet Survived Death of its Star
Exoplanet WD 1856 b, shown in this artist’s concept, is a gas giant that orbits its star at a distance 50 times closer than Earth orbits the Sun. Observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope determined the planet’s temperature and detected molecules in its atmosphere.
Credits: Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving us new insight into the far-future of solar systems like our own, as the agency continues to reveal the secrets of the universe and our place in it. Billions of years ago, a Sun-like star nearing the end of its life swelled tremendously in size to become a red giant before ejecting its outer layers, leaving a hot, remnant core known as a white dwarf. As a red giant, the star should have engulfed and destroyed any nearby planets. Yet astronomers have found a Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbiting the white dwarf every 34 hours at a separation of less than 2 million miles (3 million kilometers).
To solve the mystery of how this exoplanet survived, an international team of astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to watch the Jupiter-sized exoplanet WD 1856 b transit its host star, measuring the planet’s temperature and detecting molecules in its atmosphere. They found the planet is significantly warmer than expected and determined how it most likely reached its very tight orbit around the white dwarf star. The results are a window into the future of planets like Jupiter after the death of the Sun, billions of years into the future.
The results published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
WD 1856 b was discovered in 2020 by scientists using NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the retired Spitzer Space Telescope. It orbits the white dwarf WD 1856+534, which is located about 80 light-years from Earth. “The planet is about the size of Jupiter, but the white dwarf it orbits is the size of Earth, so the planet is seven times larger than its star,” said lead author Ryan MacDonald of the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.
WD 1856 b orbits extremely close to its host star, a distance 50 times closer than Earth orbits the Sun. If WD 1856 b had originally been orbiting at that distance, it would have been obliterated while the star was a red giant. How did it survive the death of its host star and end up in its current position?
Image: Exoplanet WD 1856 b (Artist’s Concept)
Exoplanet WD 1856 b, shown in this artist’s concept, is a gas giant that orbits its star at a distance 50 times closer than Earth orbits the Sun. Observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope determined the planet’s temperature and detected molecules in its atmosphere.
Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
How big, how hot
The new study used Webb to watch the planet passing in front of its star. This transit yielded unique information about the planet’s mass, which is between four and eleven times the mass of Jupiter.
The team also was able to determine the planet’s temperature. During the transit, light from the star was partly blocked, but infrared light was reduced less than other wavelengths. The difference was infrared light emitted by the planet from its own heat. The data indicated that the planet has a temperature of about 260 degrees Fahrenheit (126 degrees Celsius) — significantly hotter than it would be if its only source of heat was the light from the white dwarf. This puzzling discovery turned out to be the key fact that proved how the planet must have reached its current orbit.
Christopher O’Connor of Northwestern University in Illinois, a co-author on the paper, was responsible for tracing the temperature of the planet back in time. O’Connor said, “The big question is how WD 1856 b ended up where it is today, and there are two theories. One is that the planet was swallowed by the host star as it was dying, and managed to survive on the inside. The other is that migration took place due to the gravitational effect of other objects in the system. The white dwarf is part of a triple star system, and the companion stars could have influenced WD 1856 b’s orbit.”
The researchers realized that there was no source of energy present to generate that heat today, so it must be residual energy from an earlier time when the planet was heated. Using models of how sub-stellar objects like WD 1856 b cool down over time, coupled with the new data from Webb, the team was able to project its temperature back in time and deduce how long ago the heating must have happened. The timing is key to determining whether the heating was from being engulfed by the red giant or occurred during an inward migration
They concluded that the heating most likely happened between 3 and 5.5 billion years after the star became a white dwarf. In this scenario, the planet was on a wide orbit that kept it safe from the star during its destructive red giant phase, and only migrated to its present location later on. “As the planet moved inward, its interactions with the strong gravity of the white dwarf will have caused it to warm up considerably, and it has been cooling ever since,” said O’Connor.
Light from the star passing through the planet’s atmosphere also picked up information about its chemical composition. “We saw the telltale signatures of small cloud particles and hydrocarbons, most likely methane, which is the first time we have seen an atmosphere on a planet transiting a dead star,” said co-author Victoria Boehm of Cornell University. “We recently observed four more transits of WD 1856 b with Webb to take a deeper look into its atmospheric chemistry and can’t wait to see the results.”
Image: Exoplanet WD 1856 b (Transmission Spectrum)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope measured the constituents of exoplanet WD 1856 b as it passed in front of its star, finding signs of methane. WD 1856 b orbits a white dwarf star the size of Earth. As a result, the planet blocks more than half of the star’s light.
Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
Solar system’s possible future
In approximately five billion years, the Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel in its core and swell up more than 100 times larger than it is now into a red giant star. It will then shed its outer layers and end its life as a white dwarf star. Mercury, Venus, and possibly the Earth will be destroyed by the red giant. However, the fate of the more distant planets, particularly the gas giants, is unclear. Finding and studying planets in orbit around the remnants of Sun-like stars after their death is a means of learning what might happen in our own solar system in the far future.
“We’re used to looking back in time when we use telescopes, but this is the first time we have been able to look forward to what might happen to the outer planets around the remnant of a Sun-like star,” said MacDonald. “It’s like using a time machine to peer into the distant future of our solar system.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos
Exoplanet WD 1856 b (Artist’s Concept)
Exoplanet WD 1856 b, shown in this artist’s concept, is a gas giant that orbits its star at a distance 50 times closer than Earth orbits the Sun. Observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope determined the planet’s temperature and detected molecules in its atmosphere.
Exoplanet WD 1856 b (Transmission Spectrum)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope measured the constituents of exoplanet WD 1856 b as it passed in front of its star, finding signs of methane. WD 1856 b orbits a white dwarf star the size of Earth. As a result, the planet blocks more than half of the star’s light.
NASA’s TESS Mission Finds Planetary System in New Way
This artist’s concept visualizes a super-Jupiter orbiting an orange dwarf star at a distance similar to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
For the first time, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to ripples in space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly reveals, the newfound world is a super-Jupiter orbiting far from its host star.
“When TESS launched, no one expected it to ever be capable of finding this kind of planet,” said Diana Dragomir, a professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and co-author of a paper describing the results. At 1.6 times Jupiter’s mass and a similar orbital distance, it would be extremely unlikely to find such a planet via the primary detection method TESS was designed for. “The discovery implies that there are probably other so-called microlensing planets hiding in TESS’s data that we hadn’t previously thought to look for.”
This artist’s concept visualizes Gaia23bra b, the first microlensing planet orbiting a distant star found by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). This super-Jupiter orbits an orange dwarf star at a distance similar to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Astronomers found the first hint of the planet, called Gaia23bra b, in 2023 using ESA’s (European Space Agency) now-retired Gaia space telescope. Gaia’s alert system flagged a star that brightened — something that can happen when a foreground star passes in front of a more distant one and magnifies its light through gravitational microlensing.
Researchers later looked back through archived TESS data and found TESS had caught it too.
“Gaia’s observations were too sparse to pick up on the planet,” said Mallory Harris, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico, who led the study. “The TESS spacecraft happened to be monitoring the same area of the sky during the event, and its denser time coverage showed extra features in the light curve caused by a planet.”
The team’s analysis, published July 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, revealed that Gaia23bra b, which orbits an orange dwarf star that’s about 80 percent of the Sun’s mass, is nearly 40,000 light-years away from Earth, far exceeding TESS’s usual search radius of about 150 light-years.
Microlensing 101
Out of more than 6,000 known exoplanets (worlds outside our solar system), about three-fourths were discovered via the transit method, TESS’s typical planet-hunting technique. Astronomers monitor hordes of stars, watching for ones that periodically dim as orbiting planets cross in front of them — an event called a transit.
This animation illustrates the concept of gravitational microlensing. When one star in the sky (shown in the center of the animation) appears to pass nearly in front of another (located in the dashed circle at the right) from our vantage point, the light rays of the background star become bent due to the warped space-time around the foreground star. This star acts like a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background star and causing its position to appear to slightly shift. If the nearer star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short deviation in the brightness of the source. When astronomers find planets this way, they can measure their mass and orbital distance from their host star.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
Microlensing has revealed less than 5% of known exoplanets. This light-bending phenomenon occurs when two stars align closely from our vantage point. Light from the more distant star curves as it travels through the warped space-time caused by the nearer star’s mass.
If the alignment is especially close, the nearer star acts like a cosmic lens, focusing and magnifying light from the background star. Planets orbiting the foreground star may also modify the distant star’s light, acting as their own tiny lenses. Astronomers see the effect as a spike in the star’s brightness.
The transit method is best at finding large planets orbiting very close to their host stars; large planets block the most starlight, while close-in planets are more likely to pass in front of the host star. These gargantuan, steamy worlds are fascinating to scientists, but astronomers want to find planets like those in our solar system, too. That’s microlensing’s specialty.
With microlensing, we can find smaller planets with greater orbital distances, including worlds in the habitable zone of their star and even farther away.
Mallory harris
Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico
Microlensing isn’t well suited to finding huge, close-in planets because their gravitational signals would just blur together.
“Transits and microlensing are complementary because they each reveal a category of planet the other may not be able to detect,” Dragomir said. “And they offer different details. Transits give us the size of a planet, and in concert with other methods we can determine its mass and density. Microlensing gives us masses and orbital distances for planets we’d otherwise never see.”
This graphic highlights the search areas of three planet-hunting missions: NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the retired Kepler Space Telescope, and NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). While TESS discovers transiting planets within a 150-light-year radius of Earth, it recently detected a planet about 40,000 light-years away (marked by the star symbol) via another method, called microlensing.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
But microlensing observations are time-limited opportunities.
Microlensing events happen once and they’re gone — they don’t repeat. I like to joke that we’ll probably find the first Earth analog with microlensing, and then wave at it as it goes by because we’ll never see it again.
Mallory Harris
Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico
That makes detailed observations of microlensing planets tough. However, the method can serve as a powerful demographics tool that offers broad information about planetary populations.
Roman will specifically target the heart of the galaxy because stars are packed so tightly together there, increasing the odds of seeing microlensing events. While that crowding would make many stars blend together in TESS’s larger pixels, TESS looks at nearly the whole sky, where stars are more spread out.
“Since TESS looks elsewhere in the galactic plane, it can naturally find microlensing planets in other parts of the galaxy, as demonstrated by this first microlensing planetary system,” Dragomir said. “That means it could help us study planets in regions with different conditions.”
That could have implications for the search for habitable worlds. The bustling galaxy center is rife with radiation from more frequent supernova explosions, which could sterilize planets. And gravitational encounters between crowded stars may disrupt planetary systems. Observations from TESS focus on a milder part of the galaxy.
“The key to Roman’s microlensing survey is its dense time coverage targeting the galactic bulge,” Fausnaugh said. “The TESS mission uniquely provides these rapid observations for stars in other parts of the galaxy, and pairing the two opens up prospects for understanding planet formation in a diverse population of stars. Since microlensing finds solar system-like planets, this offers a new chance to understand how planetary systems like our own vary in different regions of the galaxy.”
Login
