In July 2023, scientists launched the Euclid Space Telescope into orbit with a straightforward, albeit massive, task: to map the dark universe, revealing the dark matter and dark energy that we cannot directly observe but makes up the bulk of everything.
Last month, astronomers focused the Webb Space Telescope on the galaxy MRG-M0138 and found something surprising: a supernova in the ancient universe, magnified for your viewing pleasure by the gravitational lensed galaxy.
It’s not yet December, but NASA is already in a festive mood: the Webb and Hubble space telescopes recently imaged MACS0416, a pair of colliding galaxy clusters 4.3 billion light-years from Earth that is bedecked in sparkling lights.
The latest data release from the European Space Agency’s Gaia observatory just dropped, and it’s a massive one: the spacecraft has identified half a million stars in a nearby cluster, nearly 400 gravitational lenses, and the orbits of some 156,000-odd asteroids.
Behold a galactic onion: the shell galaxy NGC 3923, spotted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory’s Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at a distance of about 70 million light-years from Earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope is no spring chicken, having operated in space for over 30 years. But the veteran observatory soldiers on. It recently imaged a massive galaxy cluster that could hold secrets about both dark and ordinary matter.
Researchers have trained the unrelenting gaze of the Webb Space Telescope on Earendel, the most distant star ever detected, revealing the star’s color and a potential companion star.
