All about our Universe

On Dec. 11, 2021, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a blast of high-energy light from the outskirts of a galaxy around 1 billion light-years away. The event has rattled scientists’ understanding of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful events in the universe. This burst is called GRB 211211A. Many research groups have delved into the observations collected by Swift, Fermi, the Hubble Space Telescope, and others. Some have suggested the burst’s oddities could be explained by the merger of a neutron star with another massive object, like a black hole. Music Credits: Finished Plate by Airglo and Binary Fission by Tom Kane Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Lead Producer Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Science Writer Aurore Simonet (Sonoma State University): Artist Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle): Animator

Description: Plasma makes up 99.9% of the visible universe, but what is it? This video discusses what plasma is, where it lives, and how NASA studies it. Music: “Artificial Intelligence” by Matteo Pagamici [SUISA], Max Molling [SUISA] via Universal Production Music Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Beth Anthony (KBRwyle): Producer Mara Johnson-Groh (Telophase): Writer Barbara Giles (NASA/GSFC): Scientist Genna Duberstein (ADNET): Writer

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope’s 33rd birthday with an ethereal image of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333. Located approximately 960 light-years away in the Perseus interstellar cloud, Hubble’s colorful view unveils glowing gasses and pitch-black dust stirred up, colliding, and blown around by several hundred forming stars within the dark cloud.

There’s an invisible monster on the loose! It’s barreling through intergalactic space fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. But don’t worry, luckily this beast is very, very far away! This potential supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000 light-year-long trail of newborn stars. The streamer is twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It’s likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes

Nebula N44 contains glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars, and many populations of stars of different ages! The dark, starry gap seen in this image is known as a “superbubble” that stretches across 250 light-years. Its presence is something of a cosmic mystery. One potential explanation is that the expanding shells of old supernovae explosions sculpted the cosmic cavern. Nebula N44 is located about 170,000 light-years away from Earth. Image credits: NASA, ESA, V. Ksoll and D. Gouliermis (Universität Heidelberg), et al.; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) “Thousand Yard Stare” by Joel Goodman [ASCAP] via Medley Lane Music [ASCAP] and Universal Production Music

This colliding pair of spiral galaxies is nicknamed “The Mice” because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy. Otherwise called NGC 4676, this pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy. NGC 4676 is located about 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. Music credit: “Ice Peaks,” Thomas Daniel Bellingham [PRS], Ninja Tune Production Music, Universal Production Music