2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar (25 photos)
It’s time once more for one of my favorite holiday traditions: the 17th annual Space Telescope Advent Calendar, featuring remarkable images from both NASA’s Hubble telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. Every day until Wednesday, December 25, this page will present a new, incredible image of our universe from one of these two telescopes. Be sure to come back every day until Christmas, and follow us on social media for daily updates. I hope you enjoy these amazing and awe-inspiring images, as well as the continued efforts of the science teams that bring them to Earth—it is a joy to put this calendar together each December. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and peace on Earth. A Grand Spiral. The spiral galaxy NGC 5248, located 42 million light-years from Earth, is one of the so-called grand-design spirals, with prominent spiral arms that reach from near the core out through the disc. It also has a faint bar structure in the center, which is difficult to see in this visible-light portrait from the Hubble space telescope. Features like these, which break the rotational symmetry of a galaxy, can feed gas from a galaxy’s outer reaches to inner star-forming regions, and even to a galaxy’s central black hole, where it can kick-start an active galactic nucleus. These flows of gas have shaped NGC 5248 in a big way; the spiral has many bright starburst regions of intense star formation spread across its disc, and it is dominated by a population of young stars. ( ESA / Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee, and the PHANGS-HST Team)
It’s time once more for one of my favorite holiday traditions: the 17th annual Space Telescope Advent Calendar, featuring remarkable images from both NASA’s Hubble telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. Every day until Wednesday, December 25, this page will present a new, incredible image of our universe from one of these two telescopes. Be sure to come back every day until Christmas, and follow us on social media for daily updates. I hope you enjoy these amazing and awe-inspiring images, as well as the continued efforts of the science teams that bring them to Earth—it is a joy to put this calendar together each December.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and peace on Earth.
