SCIENCE NEWS

$An artist's concept looks down into the core of the galaxy M87, which is just left of center and appears as a large blue dot. A bright blue-white, narrow and linear jet of plasma transects the illustration from center left to upper right. It begins at the source of the jet, the galaxy’s black hole, which is surrounded by a blue spiral of material. At lower right is a red giant star that is far from the black hole and close to the viewer. A bridge of glowing gas links the star to a smaller white dwarf star companion immediately to its left. Engorged with infalling hydrogen from the red giant star, the smaller star exploded in a blue-white flash, which looks like numerous diffraction spikes emitted in all directions. Thousands of stars are in the background.$

NASA’s Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions

Artist Illustration of Early-Universe Quasar Cosmic Neighborhood

DECam Confirms that Early-Universe Quasar Neighborhoods are Indeed Cluttered

$At center right is a compact star cluster composed of luminous red, blue, and white points of light. Faint jets with clumpy, diffuse material extend in various directions from the bright cluster. Above and to the right is a smaller cluster of stars. Translucent red wisps of material stretch across the scene, though there are patches and a noticeable gap in the top left corner that reveal the black background of space. Background galaxies are scattered across this swath of space, appearing as small blue-white and orange-white dots or fuzzy, thin disks. There are two noticeably larger points, foreground stars, with diffraction spikes: an orange-white point on the left, and a blue-white point in the top right.$

NASA’s Webb Peers into the Extreme Outer Galaxy

AURA NEWS

A group poses in front of of a starry sky with a visible comet

NSF Representatives and US Senate Staffers Visit AURA Facilities in Chile

Sharing “Deep Sky” in Hawai’i

A group of people stand in front of of a very large telescope at Simonyi Survey Telescope Dedication Ceremony at Rubin Observatory

Simonyi Survey Telescope Dedicated at NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Ceremony

AURA enables astronomical discovery and promotes broad engagement in exploring the Universe.

CENTERS

Montage of the telescopes of NOIRLab with data connecting them

NSF NOIRLab

The preeminent US national center for ground-based, nighttime optical and infrared astronomy.

NSF NSO

Advancing knowledge of the Sun, the dominant external influence on Earth and the local archetype of a typical star.

STScI

Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is a multi-mission operations center for NASA’s flagship observatories and a world-class astronomical research center.