Galaxies

The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is "seeing double." Peering back 10 billion years into the universe's past, Hubble astronomers found a pair of quasars that are so close to each other they look like a single object in ground-based telescopic photos, but not in Hubble’s crisp view.

This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 7678.

Sometime in the far distant future, about 4 billion years from now, our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as illustrated in this artist rendition.

Known as NGC 1947, this galaxy was discovered almost 200 years ago by James Dunlop, a Scottish-born astronomer who later studied the sky from Australia. NGC 1947 can only be seen from the southern hemisphere, in the constellation Dorado (the Dolphinfish).

NGC 2336 is the quintessential galaxy — big, beautiful, and blue — and it is captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to explore even more cosmic questions, thanks to a new near-infrared filter. The upgrade will allow the observatory to see longer wavelengths of light, opening up exciting new opportunities for discoveries from the edge of our solar system to the farthest reaches of space.

This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 4826 — a spiral galaxy located 17 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair).

An orange glow radiates from the center of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar furnace.

Located in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), around 50 million light-years from Earth, the galaxy NGC 4535 is truly a stunning sight to behold.

Soon, through the power of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers will look back to that raucous, early period in a deep-sky survey to trace the formation and evolution of the first galaxies.

First discovered in 1798 by German-English astronomer William Herschel, NGC 613 is a galaxy which lies in the southern constellation of Sculptor 67 million light-years away.

Is our solar system located in a typical Milky Way neighborhood? Scientists have gotten closer to answering this question.

In the last century alone, NGC 6946 has experienced 10 observed supernovae, earning its nickname as the Fireworks Galaxy.

This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, depicts GAL-CLUS-022058s, located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax (the Furnace).

Astronomers are searching for signs of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy cluster Abell 2261. Scientists think this galaxy underwent a merger with another galaxy, which could have caused a newly formed larger black hole to be ejected. Astronomers do not yet know what happened to this giant black hole.