After nine years in deep space collecting data that revealed our night sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets, more planets even than stars, NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. Illustration depicting the Kepler spacecraft in a sky filled with exoplanets and planetary systems.

iss073e0685684 (Aug. 21, 2025) --- Underneath a starry night sky, the city lights of New Delhi, India, and its surrounding suburbs glitter below Earth's atmospheric glow and at the edge of the Himalayas. This photograph was taken at approximately 2:55 a.m. local time as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above.

The city lights of New Delhi, India, underneath a starry night sky

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iss052e004998 (June 19, 2017) --- The aurora and the starry night are pictured above Earth’s atmosphere in this photograph taken from the space station’s cupola June 19, 2017.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 52 crew

View of Shuttle Endeavour docked to the ISS

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 47 Crewmember.

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iss052e010507 (July 4, 2017) --- This long-exposure photograph of Earth and a starry sky was taken during a night pass by the Expedition 52 crew aboard the International Space Station. The Japanese Kibo module and part of the station’s solar array are visible at the top.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 52 crew

iss064e035812 (Feb. 21, 2021) --- Russia's ISS Progress 77 cargo craft is pictured attached to the Pirs docking compartment as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above the Gulf of Mexico off the southwest coast of Florida. This long duration photograph also shows the city lights of the Yucatan peninsula, Earth's airglow (a faint emission of light in the upper atmosphere), and a starry night sky.

Airglow on the horizon against the starry sky view taken by the Expedition 29 crew

ISS029-E-005853 (17 Sept. 2011) --- This is one of a series of night time images photographed by one of the Expedition 29 crew members from the International Space Station. The image features airglow on the horizon against a starry sky with Russian spacecraft Soyuz and Progress in the foreground. Nadir coordinates are 27.8 degrees south latitude and 137.6 west longitude. The photo was taken at 11:32:37 GMT, Sept. 17, 2011.

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The city lights of Central Asia sparkle underneath a bright yellow airglow

iss073e0920829 (Oct. 20, 2025) --- This celestial view from a window aboard the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft captures the city lights of Central Asia sparkling underneath a bright yellow airglow as an orbital sunrise begins to illuminate Earth's atmosphere underneath a starry night sky. The International Space Station was orbiting 263 miles above Uzbekistan at approximately 4:40 a.m. local time when this long-exposure photograph was taken.

iss073e0982346 (Oct. 25, 2025) --- This serene image of the Moon (upper right) glinting off the Southern Pacific Ocean—beneath a yellow-green airglow and a starry night sky—was taken at approximately 8:59 p.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above Earth, southwest of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France comprising more than 100 islands.

Serene image of the Moon glinting off the Southern Pacific Ocean

The Persian Gulf region is illuminated beneath a bright yellow-green airglow

iss073e0982720 (Oct. 25, 2025) --- The Persian Gulf region—from Oman to the United Arab Emirates, with Iran's southwest coast visible across the geographically important waterway—is illuminated beneath a bright yellow-green airglow. This long-exposure photograph, taken at approximately 11:40 p.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above northwestern India, also captures the starry expanse of the night sky.

Van Gogh from Space

Van Gogh from Space - July 13th, 2005 Description: In the style of Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night," massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form the first link in nearly all ocean food chains. Population explosions, or blooms, of phytoplankton, like the one shown here, occur when deep currents bring nutrients up to sunlit surface waters, fueling the growth and reproduction of these tiny plants. Credit: USGS/NASA/Landsat 7 To learn more about the Landsat satellite go to: <a href="http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/" rel="nofollow">landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a> Join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a>

International Observe the Moon Night

Two beams flash across a starry sky toward the Moon at Optical Site. Goddard's Laser Ranging Facility directs a laser toward the Lunar Reconassaince Orbiter on International Observe the Moon Night. (Sept 18, 2010) Background on laser ranging: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/LRO_lr.html" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/LRO_lr.html</a> Credit: NASA/GSFC/Debbie Mccallum On September 18, 2010 the world joined the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as other NASA Centers to celebrate the first annual International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN). To read more go to: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/features/2010/moon-night.html" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/features/2010/moon-nigh...</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> contributes to NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s endeavors by providing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a> Join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a>

Hubble Helps Find Smallest Known Galaxy Containing a Supermassive Black Hole

This is an illustration of a supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 21 million suns, located in the middle of the ultradense galaxy M60-UCD1. The dwarf galaxy is so dense that millions of stars fill the sky as seen by an imaginary visitor. Because no light can escape from the black hole, it appears simply in silhouette against the starry background. The black hole's intense gravitational field warps the light of the background stars to form ring-like images just outside the dark edges of the black hole's event horizon. Combined observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and Gemini North telescope determined the presence of the black hole inside such a small and dense galaxy. More info: Astronomers using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground observation have found an unlikely object in an improbable place -- a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies ever known. The black hole is five times the mass of the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It is inside one of the densest galaxies known to date -- the M60-UCD1 dwarf galaxy that crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, which is only 1/500th of our galaxy’s diameter. If you lived inside this dwarf galaxy, the night sky would dazzle with at least 1 million stars visible to the naked eye. Our nighttime sky as seen from Earth’s surface shows 4,000 stars. The finding implies there are many other compact galaxies in the universe that contain supermassive black holes. The observation also suggests dwarf galaxies may actually be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with other galaxies rather than small islands of stars born in isolation. “We don’t know of any other way you could make a black hole so big in an object this small,” said University of Utah astronomer Anil Seth, lead author of an international study of the dwarf galaxy published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Seth’s team of astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini North 8-meter optical and infrared telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea to observe M60-UCD1 and measure the black hole’s mass. The sharp Hubble images provide information about the galaxy’s diameter and stellar density. Gemini measures the stellar motions as affected by the black hole’s pull. These data are used to calculate the mass of the black hole. Black holes are gravitationally collapsed, ultra-compact objects that have a gravitational pull so strong that even light cannot escape. Supermassive black holes -- those with the mass of at least one million stars like our sun -- are thought to be at the centers of many galaxies. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy has the mass of four million suns. As heavy as that is, it is less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way’s total mass. By comparison, the supermassive black hole at the center of M60-UCD1, which has the mass of 21 million suns, is a stunning 15 percent of the small galaxy’s total mass. “That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1,” Seth said. One explanation is that M60-UCD1 was once a large galaxy containing 10 billion stars, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy were torn away and became part of M60. The team believes that M60-UCD1 may eventually be pulled to fully merge with M60, which has its own monster black hole that weighs a whopping 4.5 billion solar masses, or more than 1,000 times bigger than the black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black holes in both galaxies also likely will merge. Both galaxies are 50 million light-years away. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington. For images and more information about Hubble, visit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/hubble" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/hubble</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. 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