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By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Universe Uncovered Hubble’s Partners in Science AI and Hubble Science Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Science Operations Astronaut Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities 3D Hubble Models Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Surveys Cloudy Cluster
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the nebula LMC N44C. ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, J. Maíz Apellániz This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a cloudy starscape from an impressive star cluster. This scene is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa. With a mass equal to 10–20% of the mass of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the dozens of small galaxies that orbit our galaxy.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is home to several massive stellar nurseries where gas clouds, like those strewn across this image, coalesce into new stars. Today’s image depicts a portion of the galaxy’s second-largest star-forming region, which is called N11. (The most massive and prolific star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Tarantula Nebula, is a frequent target for Hubble.) We see bright, young stars lighting up the gas clouds and sculpting clumps of dust with powerful ultraviolet radiation.
This image marries observations made roughly 20 years apart, a testament to Hubble’s longevity. The first set of observations, which were carried out in 2002–2003, capitalized on the exquisite sensitivity and resolution of the then-newly-installed Advanced Camera for Surveys. Astronomers turned Hubble toward the N11 star cluster to do something that had never been done before at the time: catalog all the stars in a young cluster with masses between 10% of the Sun’s mass and 100 times the Sun’s mass.
The second set of observations came from Hubble’s newest camera, the Wide Field Camera 3. These images focused on the dusty clouds that permeate the cluster, providing us with a new perspective on cosmic dust.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Sep 11, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Nebulae Star-forming Nebulae Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble’s Nebulae
These ethereal veils of gas and dust tell the story of star birth and death.
Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge
35 Years of Hubble Images
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The SWOT satellite caught the leading edge of the tsunami wave (red) that rolled through the Pacific Ocean on July 30. Sea level data, shown in the highlighted swath, is plotted against a NOAA tsunami forecast model in the background. A red star marks the location of the earthquake that spawned the tsunami.NASA/JPL-Caltech Data provided by the water satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency, is helping to improve tsunami forecast models, benefitting coastal communities.
The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured the tsunami spawned by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 30, 11:25 a.m. local time. The satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), recorded the tsunami about 70 minutes after the earthquake struck.
Disturbances like an earthquake or underwater landslide trigger a tsunami when the event is large enough to displace the entire column of seawater from the ocean floor to the surface. This results in waves that ripple out from the disturbance much like dropping a pebble into a pond generates a series of waves.
“The power of SWOT’s broad, paintbrush-like strokes over the ocean is in providing crucial real-world validation, unlocking new physics, and marking a leap towards more accurate early warnings and safer futures,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, NASA Earth lead and SWOT program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
This visualization depicts the leading edge of the tsunami based on sea surface height data from SWOT looking from south to north, when the leading edge was more than 1.5 feet (45 centimeters) east of Japan in the Pacific Ocean.NASA/JPL-Caltech Data from SWOT provided a multidimensional look at the leading edge of the tsunami wave triggered by the Kamchatka earthquake. The measurements included a wave height exceeding 1.5 feet (45 centimeters), shown in red in the highlighted track, as well as a look at the shape and direction of travel of the leading edge of the tsunami. The SWOT data, shown in the highlighted swath running from the southwest to the northeast in the visual, is plotted against a forecast model of the tsunami produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Tsunami Research. Comparing the observations from SWOT to the model helps forecasters validate their model, ensuring its accuracy.
“A 1.5-foot-tall wave might not seem like much, but tsunamis are waves that extend from the seafloor to the ocean’s surface,” said Ben Hamlington, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “What might only be a foot or two in the open ocean can become a 30-foot wave in shallower water at the coast.”
The tsunami measurements SWOT collected are helping scientists at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research improve their tsunami forecast model. Based on outputs from that model, NOAA sends out alerts to coastal communities potentially in the path of a tsunami. The model uses a set of earthquake-tsunami scenarios based on past observations as well as real-time observations from sensors in the ocean.
The SWOT data on the height, shape, and direction of the tsunami wave is key to improving these types of forecast models. “The satellite observations help researchers to better reverse engineer the cause of a tsunami, and in this case, they also showed us that NOAA’s tsunami forecast was right on the money,” said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer.
The NOAA Center for Tsunami Research tested their model with SWOT’s tsunami data, and the results were exciting, said Vasily Titov, the center’s chief scientist in Seattle. “It suggests SWOT data could significantly enhance operational tsunami forecasts — a capability sought since the 2004 Sumatra event.” The tsunami generated by that devastating quake killed thousands of people and caused widespread damage in Indonesia.
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA JPL, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov
News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
ane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 07, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy cluster Abell 209.ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Postman, P. Kelly A massive, spacetime-warping cluster of galaxies is the setting of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy cluster in question is Abell 209, located 2.8 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Whale).
This Hubble image of Abell 209 shows more than a hundred galaxies, but there’s more to this cluster than even Hubble’s discerning eye can see. Abell 209’s galaxies are separated by millions of light-years, and the seemingly empty space between the galaxies is filled with hot, diffuse gas that is visible only at X-ray wavelengths. An even more elusive occupant of this galaxy cluster is dark matter: a form of matter that does not interact with light. Dark matter does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, effectively making it invisible to us. Astronomers detect dark matter by its gravitational influence on normal matter. Astronomers surmise that the universe is comprised of 5% normal matter, 25% dark matter, and 70% dark energy.
Hubble observations, like the ones used to create this image, can help astronomers answer fundamental questions about our universe, including mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy. These investigations leverage the immense mass of a galaxy cluster, which can bend the fabric of spacetime itself and create warped and magnified images of background galaxies and stars in a process called gravitational lensing.
While this image lacks the dramatic rings that gravitational lensing can sometimes create, Abell 209 still shows subtle signs of lensing at work, in the form of streaky, slightly curved galaxies within the cluster’s golden glow. By measuring the distortion of these galaxies, astronomers can map the distribution of mass within the cluster, illuminating the underlying cloud of dark matter. This information, which Hubble’s fine resolution and sensitive instruments help to provide, is critical for testing theories of how our universe evolved.
Text Credit: ESA/Hubble
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Postman, P. Kelly
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By NASA
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dense and dazzling array of blazing stars that form globular cluster ESO 591-12.NASA, ESA, and D. Massari (INAF — Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) A previously unexplored globular cluster glitters with multicolored stars in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. Globular clusters like this one, called ESO 591-12 or Palomar 8, are spherical collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters generally form early in the galaxies’ histories in regions rich in gas and dust. Since the stars form from the same cloud of gas as it collapses, they typically hover around the same age. Strewn across this image of ESO 591-12 are a number of red and blue stars. The colors indicate their temperatures; red stars are cooler, while the blue stars are hotter.
Hubble captured the data used to create this image of ESO 591-12 as part of a study intended to resolve individual stars of the entire globular cluster system of the Milky Way. Hubble revolutionized the study of globular clusters since earthbound telescopes are unable to distinguish individual stars in the compact clusters. The study is part of the Hubble Missing Globular Clusters Survey, which targets 34 confirmed Milky Way globular clusters that Hubble has yet to observe.
The program aims to provide complete observations of ages and distances for all of the Milky Way’s globular clusters and investigate fundamental properties of still-unexplored clusters in the galactic bulge or halo. The observations will provide key information on the early stages of our galaxy, when globular clusters formed.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Massari (INAF — Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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By Amazing Space
Massive Solar Prominence "The Beast" Threatens Eruption? Space Weather Update July 14 2025 NASA SDO
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