Throughout the week, experts at the NASA Exhibit Booth will deliver science talks about missions including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (also called “Webb” or “JWST”), Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station that will be … Read more
We’re nearing the end of our voyage, having traveled so far through space and time that we can take in the whole universe! We’ve learned a lot about it, but there are still plenty of open questions. Some of its biggest components, dark energy and dark matter (invisible matter seen only via its gravitational influence), … Read more
What inspired you to pursue your career in astrophysics? I grew up with a love of science. From my mother burying chicken bones in my sandbox to inspire my play as a paleontologist to my grandfather purchasing a telescope so we could look at the Moon in his backyard, my ambition was to become a … Read more
6 min read How NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Will Illuminate Cosmic Dawn Today, enormous stretches of space are crystal clear, but that wasn’t always the case. During its infancy, the universe was filled with a “fog” that made it opaque, cloaking the first stars and galaxies. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will probe … Read more
Around this same time in history, astronomer Vesto Slipher observed spiral galaxies using his telescope’s spectrograph, a device that splits light into the colors that make it up, much like the way a prism splits light into a rainbow. He used the spectrograph, a relatively recent invention at the time, to see the different wavelengths … Read more
Beta Pictoris is located about 60 light-years away toward the constellation of Pictor (the Painter’s Easel) and is one of the best-known examples of a star surrounded by a dusty debris disk. Earlier observations showed a warp of the disc, a secondary inclined disc and comets falling onto the star, all indirect, but tell-tale signs … Read more