X-Ray Optics for 21st Century Space Telescopes
A new idea to use super-polished silicon wafers as the heart of a telescope is set to reveal more of the hot, high-energy Universe, peering back…
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National Air & Space Museum Opens Hubble Exhibit
Two instruments that played critical roles in discoveries made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope now are on display in an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air…
Read the articleHubble Celebrates 24th Anniversary With InfraRed Look at Monkey Head Nebula
In celebration of the 24th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (on April 24, 1990) astronomers have taken an infrared-light portrait of a…
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A Natural Telescope More Than 500,000 Light Years Wide
More than 400 years ago, Galileo turned a primitive spyglass toward the sky, and in just a few nights learned more about the unseen heavens than…
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The Kepler Space Telescope Marks 5 Years in Orbit
Exactly five years ago, on March 6, 2009, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope rocketed into the night skies above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to…
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NGC 7538: A Stellar Nursery for Massive Stars
The billowing clouds portrayed in this image from ESA’s Herschel observatory are part of NGC 7538, a stellar nursery for massive stars. Located around 9000 light-years…
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Kepler Mission Announces Discovery of 715 New Planets
NASA’s Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.…
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How Supernovas Happen Unravelled by NuSTAR
One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, how stars blow up in supernova explosions, finally is being unraveled with the help of NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope…
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ESA’s Billion-Star Surveyor Mission Has Successful Liftoff
ESA’s Gaia mission blasted off this morning on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on its exciting mission to study a billion…
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Herschel’s 37,000 Science Observations in Less Than a Minute
This animation shows the timeline of over 37,000 scientific observations made by ESA’s Herschel space observatory throughout its entire mission, condensed into less than a minute.…
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