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Hubble's Ultraviolet Views of Nearby Galaxies Yield Clues to Early Universe
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By NASA
In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and expand, possibly engulfing Earth. These end stages of a star’s life can be utterly beautiful – as is the case with this planetary nebula called the Helix Nebula. Astronomers study these objects by looking at all kinds of light.X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand This image of the Helix Nebula, released on March 4, 2025, shows a potentially destructive white dwarf at the nebula’s center: this star may have destroyed a planet. This has never been seen before – and could explain a mysterious X-ray signal that astronomers have detected from the nebula for over 40 years.
This view combines X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (magenta), optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (orange, light blue), infrared data from the European Southern Observatory VISTA telescope (gold, dark blue), and ultraviolet data from GALEX (purple) of the Helix Nebula. Data from Chandra indicates that this white dwarf has destroyed a very closely orbiting planet.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s SPHEREx, which will map millions of galaxies across the entire sky, captured one of its first exposures March 27. The observatory’s six detectors each captured one of these uncalibrated images, to which visible-light colors have been added to represent infrared wavelengths. SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the top three images; the same area of the sky is also captured in the bottom three images. NASA/JPL-Caltech Processed with rainbow hues to represent a range of infrared wavelengths, the new pictures indicate the astrophysics space observatory is working as expected.
NASA’s SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) has turned on its detectors for the first time in space. Initial images from the observatory, which launched March 11, confirm that all systems are working as expected.
Although the new images are uncalibrated and not yet ready to use for science, they give a tantalizing look at SPHEREx’s wide view of the sky. Each bright spot is a source of light, like a star or galaxy, and each image is expected to contain more than 100,000 detected sources.
There are six images in every SPHEREx exposure — one for each detector. The top three images show the same area of sky as the bottom three images. This is the observatory’s full field of view, a rectangular area about 20 times wider than the full Moon. When SPHEREx begins routine science operations in late April, it will take approximately 600 exposures every day.
Each image in this uncalibrated SPHEREx exposure contains about 100,000 light sources, including stars and galaxies. The two insets at right zoom in on sections of one image, showcasing the telescope’s ability to capture faint, distant galaxies. These sections are processed in grayscale rather than visible-light color for ease of viewing.NASA/JPL-Caltech “Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe,” said Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Southern California. “It’s performing just as it was designed to.”
The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. To make these first images, science team members assigned a visible color to every infrared wavelength captured by the observatory. Each of the six SPHEREx detectors has 17 unique wavelength bands, for a total of 102 hues in every six-image exposure.
Breaking down color this way can reveal the composition of an object or the distance to a galaxy. With that data, scientists can study topics ranging from the physics that governed the universe less than a second after its birth to the origins of water in our galaxy.
“This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it’s the thing we wait for,” said Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL. “There’s still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!”
During the past two weeks, scientists and engineers at JPL, which manages the mission for NASA, have executed a series of spacecraft checks that show all is well so far. In addition, SPHEREx’s detectors and other hardware have been cooling down to their final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is necessary because heat can overwhelm the telescope’s ability to detect infrared light, which is sometimes called heat radiation. The new images also show that the telescope is focused correctly. Focusing is done entirely before launch and cannot be adjusted in space.
“Based on the images we are seeing, we can now say that the instrument team nailed it,” said Jamie Bock, SPHEREx’s principal investigator at Caltech and JPL.
How It Works
Where telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes were designed to target small areas of space in detail, SPHEREx is a survey telescope and takes a broad view. Combining its results with those of targeted telescopes will give scientists a more robust understanding of our universe.
The observatory will map the entire celestial sky four times during its two-year prime mission. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will collect the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in more wavelengths any other all-sky survey telescope.
Track the real-time location of NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory using the agency’s 3D visualization tool, Eyes on the Solar System. When light enters SPHEREx’s telescope, it’s directed down two paths that each lead to a row of three detectors. The observatory’s detectors are like eyes, and set on top of them are color filters, which are like color-tinted glasses. While a standard color filter blocks all wavelengths but one, like yellow- or rose-tinted glasses, the SPHEREx filters are more like rainbow-tinted glasses: The wavelengths they block change gradually from the top of the filter to the bottom.
“I’m rendered speechless,” said Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “There was an incredible human effort to make this possible, and our engineering team did an amazing job getting us to this point.”
More About SPHEREx
The SPHEREx mission is managed by JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Caltech managed and integrated the instrument. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more about SPHEREx, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Galaxies Origin & Evolution of the Universe The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Technion/N. Keshet et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss People often think about archaeology happening deep in jungles or inside ancient pyramids. However, a team of astronomers has shown that they can use stars and the remains they leave behind to conduct a special kind of archaeology in space.
Mining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team of astronomers studied the relics that one star left behind after it exploded. This “supernova archaeology” uncovered important clues about a star that self-destructed – probably more than a million years ago.
Today, the system called GRO J1655-40 contains a black hole with nearly seven times the mass of the Sun and a star with about half as much mass. However, this was not always the case.
Originally GRO J1655-40 had two shining stars. The more massive of the two stars, however, burned through all of its nuclear fuel and then exploded in what astronomers call a supernova. The debris from the destroyed star then rained onto the companion star in orbit around it, as shown in the artist’s concept.
This artist’s impression shows the effects of the collapse and supernova explosion of a massive star. A black hole (right) was formed in the collapse and debris from the supernova explosion is raining down onto a companion star (left), polluting its atmosphere.CXC/SAO/M. Weiss With its outer layers expelled, including some striking its neighbor, the rest of the exploded star collapsed onto itself and formed the black hole that exists today. The separation between the black hole and its companion would have shrunk over time because of energy being lost from the system, mainly through the production of gravitational waves. When the separation became small enough, the black hole, with its strong gravitational pull, began pulling matter from its companion, wrenching back some of the material its exploded parent star originally deposited.
While most of this material sank into the black hole, a small amount of it fell into a disk that orbits around the black hole. Through the effects of powerful magnetic fields and friction in the disk, material is being sent out into interstellar space in the form of powerful winds.
This is where the X-ray archaeological hunt enters the story. Astronomers used Chandra to observe the GRO J1655-40 system in 2005 when it was particularly bright in X-rays. Chandra detected signatures of individual elements found in the black hole’s winds by getting detailed spectra – giving X-ray brightness at different wavelengths – embedded in the X-ray light. Some of these elements are highlighted in the spectrum shown in the inset.
The team of astronomers digging through the Chandra data were able to reconstruct key physical characteristics of the star that exploded from the clues imprinted in the X-ray light by comparing the spectra with computer models of stars that explode as supernovae. They discovered that, based on the amounts of 18 different elements in the wind, the long-gone star destroyed in the supernova was about 25 times the mass of the Sun, and was much richer in elements heavier than helium in comparison with the Sun.
This analysis paves the way for more supernova archaeology studies using other outbursts of double star systems.
A paper describing these results titled “Supernova Archaeology with X-Ray Binary Winds: The Case of GRO J1655−40” was published in The Astrophysical Journal in May 2024. The authors of this study are Noa Keshet (Technion — Israel Institute of Technology), Ehud Behar (Technion), and Timothy Kallman (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center).
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release features an artist’s rendering of a supernova explosion, inset with a spectrum graph.
The artist’s illustration features a star and a black hole in a system called GRO J1655-40. Here, the black hole is represented by a black sphere to our upper right of center. The star is represented by a bright yellow sphere to our lower left of center. In this illustration, the artist captures the immensely powerful supernova as a black hole is created from the collapse of a massive star, with an intense burst of blurred beams radiating from the black sphere. The blurred beams of red, orange, and yellow light show debris from the supernova streaking across the entire image in rippling waves. These beams rain debris on the bright yellow star.
When astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to observe the system in 2005, they detected signatures of individual elements embedded in the X-ray light. Some of those elements are highlighted in the spectrum graph shown in the inset, positioned at our upper lefthand corner.
The graph’s vertical axis, on our left, indicates X-ray brightness from 0.0 up to 0.7 in intensity units. The horizontal axis, at the bottom of the graph, indicates Wavelength from 6 to 12 in units of Angstroms. On the graph, a tight zigzagging line begins near the top of the vertical axis, and slopes down toward the far end of the horizontal axis. The sharp dips show wavelengths where the light has been absorbed by different elements, decreasing the X-ray brightness. Some of the elements causing these dips have been labeled, including Silicon, Magnesium, Iron, Nickel, Neon, and Cobalt.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By European Space Agency
Using the unique infrared sensitivity of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, researchers can examine ancient galaxies to probe secrets of the early Universe. Now, an international team of astronomers has identified bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in an unexpectedly early time in the Universe’s history. The surprise finding is challenging researchers to explain how this light could have pierced the thick fog of neutral hydrogen that filled space at that time.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 5 Min Read NASA’s Webb Sees Galaxy Mysteriously Clearing Fog of Early Universe
The incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the big bang, was initially discovered with deep imaging from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). Full image below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, JADES Collaboration, J. Witstok (University of Cambridge/University of Copenhagen), P. Jakobsen (University of Copenhagen), A. Pagan (STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) Using the unique infrared sensitivity of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, researchers can examine ancient galaxies to probe secrets of the early universe. Now, an international team of astronomers has identified bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in an unexpectedly early time in the universe’s history. The surprise finding is challenging researchers to explain how this light could have pierced the thick fog of neutral hydrogen that filled space at that time.
The Webb telescope discovered the incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, observed to exist just 330 million years after the big bang, in images taken by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) as part of the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). Researchers used the galaxy’s brightness in different infrared filters to estimate its redshift, which measures a galaxy’s distance from Earth based on how its light has been stretched out during its journey through expanding space.
Image A: JADES-GS-z13-1 in the GOODS-S field (NIRCam Image)
The incredibly distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the big bang, was initially discovered with deep imaging from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). Now, an international team of astronomers definitively has identified powerful hydrogen emission from this galaxy at an unexpectedly early period in the universe’s history. JADES-GS-z-13 has a redshift (z) of 13, which is an indication of its age and distance. NASA, ESA, CSA, JADES Collaboration, J. Witstok (University of Cambridge/University of Copenhagen), P. Jakobsen (University of Copenhagen), A. Pagan (STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) Image B: JADES-GS-z13-1 (NIRCam Close-Up)
This image shows the galaxy JADES GS-z13-1 (the red dot at center), imaged with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program. These data from NIRCam allowed researchers to identify GS-z13-1 as an incredibly distant galaxy, and to put an estimate on its redshift value. Webb’s unique infrared sensitivity is necessary to observe galaxies at this extreme distance, whose light has been shifted into infrared wavelengths during its long journey across the cosmos. NASA, ESA, CSA, JADES Collaboration, J. Witstok (University of Cambridge/University of Copenhagen), P. Jakobsen (University of Copenhagen), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) The NIRCam imaging yielded an initial redshift estimate of 12.9. Seeking to confirm its extreme redshift, an international team lead by Joris Witstok of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, as well as the Cosmic Dawn Center and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, then observed the galaxy using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument.
In the resulting spectrum, the redshift was confirmed to be 13.0. This equates to a galaxy seen just 330 million years after the big bang, a small fraction of the universe’s present age of 13.8 billion years old. But an unexpected feature stood out as well: one specific, distinctly bright wavelength of light, known as Lyman-alpha emission, radiated by hydrogen atoms. This emission was far stronger than astronomers thought possible at this early stage in the universe’s development.
“The early universe was bathed in a thick fog of neutral hydrogen,” explained Roberto Maiolino, a team member from the University of Cambridge and University College London. “Most of this haze was lifted in a process called reionization, which was completed about one billion years after the big bang. GS-z13-1 is seen when the universe was only 330 million years old, yet it shows a surprisingly clear, telltale signature of Lyman-alpha emission that can only be seen once the surrounding fog has fully lifted. This result was totally unexpected by theories of early galaxy formation and has caught astronomers by surprise.”
Image C: JADES-GS-z13-1 Spectrum Graphic
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected unexpected light from a distant galaxy. The galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the big bang (corresponding to a redshift of z=13.05), shows bright emission from hydrogen known as Lyman-alpha emission. This is surprising because that emission should have been absorbed by a dense fog of neutral hydrogen that suffused the early universe. NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Witstok (University of Cambridge, University of Copenhagen), J. Olmsted (STScI) Before and during the era of reionization, the immense amounts of neutral hydrogen fog surrounding galaxies blocked any energetic ultraviolet light they emitted, much like the filtering effect of colored glass. Until enough stars had formed and were able to ionize the hydrogen gas, no such light — including Lyman-alpha emission — could escape from these fledgling galaxies to reach Earth. The confirmation of Lyman-alpha radiation from this galaxy, therefore, has great implications for our understanding of the early universe.
“We really shouldn’t have found a galaxy like this, given our understanding of the way the universe has evolved,” said Kevin Hainline, a team member from the University of Arizona. “We could think of the early universe as shrouded with a thick fog that would make it exceedingly difficult to find even powerful lighthouses peeking through, yet here we see the beam of light from this galaxy piercing the veil. This fascinating emission line has huge ramifications for how and when the universe reionized.”
The source of the Lyman-alpha radiation from this galaxy is not yet known, but it may include the first light from the earliest generation of stars to form in the universe.
“The large bubble of ionized hydrogen surrounding this galaxy might have been created by a peculiar population of stars — much more massive, hotter, and more luminous than stars formed at later epochs, and possibly representative of the first generation of stars,” said Witstok. A powerful active galactic nucleus, driven by one of the first supermassive black holes, is another possibility identified by the team.
This research was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
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).
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Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Bethany Downer – Bethany.Downer@esawebb.org
ESA/Webb, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Read more about cosmic history, the early universe, and cosmic reionization.
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Last Updated Mar 25, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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