ESA Top Multimedia

This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features galaxies in great detail that have been warped and multiplied like they’ve stepped into a house of mirrors. The brilliant golden galaxies splashed across this image belong to a galaxy cluster called MACS J0454.1-0300. The orange galaxies concentrated on one side of the cluster are not actually part of the cluster and are much farther away from us.

MACS J0454.1-0300 is itself immensely distant: the light from these galaxies has been travelling to us for so long that we’re seeing the cluster as it was when the Universe was about 8 billion years old. While this galaxy cluster is a valuable scientific target in its own right, the real stars of this image are the galaxies that appear warped and stretched, like a painting that has been smeared by a giant hand.

The way these galaxies look is the result of gravitational lensing, in which the enormous mass of a foreground object such as a galaxy cluster bends and magnifies the light from a more distant object in the background. Gravitational lensing allows astronomers to observe galaxies, star clusters and even individual stars that are too far away for our telescopes to see under normal conditions. While the large, orange galaxies appear obviously distorted, look carefully at some of the small reddish background galaxies throughout this picture: even at the very edges of the frame, there are galaxies whose images have been bent into tiny arcs by MACS J0454.1-0300’s gravity.

The gravitationally lensed areas show multiple images of galaxies from when the Universe was young: a group of galaxies 2 billion years after the Big Bang, and a single galaxy just 800 million years old after the Big Bang. The galaxy group appears to be going through a merger, resulting in an enormous burst of star formation.

Astronomers have also identified individual bright ‘knots’ within the gravitationally lensed areas, corresponding to regions as small as 5 light-years across. These tiny clumps appear magnified by a factor of more than 300, in some cases.

A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of this same cluster was released in 2014. Take a moment to compare the two images; the difference between them is dramatic. The new Webb image reveals hundreds of galaxies missing from the earlier image. These galaxies were there all along, but Webb is much more sensitive to their much redder light.

The data behind this image come from two observing programmes (#5058, PI: Furtak; #6882, PI: Fujimoto) that leverage the ability of massive galaxy clusters to bring distant objects into view.

[Image Description: A massive galaxy cluster, made of many golden elliptical galaxies with the largest, brightest one in the centre. Heavily distorted orange galaxies appear all around the cluster, the largest concentrated in a large arc around the cluster's centre; these are images of very distant galaxies, created by gravitational lensing. A few galaxies are large and bluish-white in colour; bright, nearby stars are the same colour.]

• Release on esawebb.org

ESA’s state-of-the-art FLEX Earth Explorer satellite and the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite have been launched together aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, marking a new milestone in Europe’s Earth Observation Programmes. Flight VV30 lifted off on 15 September at 03:21 (14 September at 22:21 local time).  

FLEX is designed to reveal a phenomenon invisible to the human eye: the faint fluorescence emitted by plants as they photosynthesise. Equipped with a Fluorescence Imaging Spectrometer, FLEX will detect and measure this incredibly weak signal from orbit. Because the fluorescence varies with plant health and environmental conditions, the measurements will provide scientists with new information about photosynthetic activity and vegetation stress on a global scale. 

Sentinel-3C is the third in the Sentinel-3 series.  Carrying a suite of cutting-edge instruments, Copernicus Sentinel-3C will continue the mission’s task of measuring systematically Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics. The mission also provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting.  

Europe’s Vega-C rocket can launch 2300 kg into space, such as small scientific and Earth observation spacecraft. At 35 m tall, Vega-C weighs 210 tonnes on the launch pad and reaches orbit with three solid-propellant-powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over for precise placement of satellites into their desired orbit around Earth. This flight was a first dual launch for Vega-C, using a secondary payload adapter called Vespa. Sentinel-3C was placed on top of Vespa inside the main fairing and once deployed the Vespa adapter opened to reveal FLEX for its injection into orbit.   

This picture was published on social media by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:

Day 224 orbit 3472 — ESTEC, ESA’s technical heart, is opening its doors this weekend! Located in Noordwijk, in the Netherlands, it sits just behind the sand dunes, with the North Sea beyond. Did you know that ESTEC is ESA’s largest establishment? 

There is so much to spot in this part of the Netherlands from above : the geometric patterns of agricultural land, vast expanses of greenhouses filled with ornamental plants, and towns shaped around canals across low-lying land. Earth is so beautiful!

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Jour 224, orbite 3472 – L’ESTEC, le cœur technique de l’ESA, ouvre ses portes ce week-end ! Situé à Noordwijk, aux Pays-Bas, le centre est situé au bord de la mer du Nord, juste de l’autre côté des dunes qui bordent la plage. Le saviez-vous ? L’ESTEC est le plus grand établissement de l’ESA. 

Il y a tant de choses qui attirent l’œil depuis l’espace dans cette région des Pays-Bas : les motifs géométriques des terres agricoles, les vastes étendues de serres où poussent des plantes ornementales, ou encore les villes construites sous le niveau de la mer, organisées autour de canaux. La Terre est si belle!

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will return to Earth on 28 September, with flight controllers guiding the spacecraft close to our home planet to alter its speed and direction en route to Jupiter. 

Juice’s 10 science instruments will be switched on to collect data on Earth and the Moon between 23 September and 3 October. Meanwhile, Juice’s navigation camera – which will ultimately help the spacecraft steer around Jupiter’s moons – will take the opportunity to point towards the horizon of our own Moon. The images it takes will test out a new technique to improve the accuracy of its optical navigation. 

Juice’s two onboard monitoring cameras will be snapping photos throughout the flyby. 

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Animated key art for the Pokémon x ESA collaboration.

Though the spiral galaxy in this new image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret. This galaxy is NGC 4698, and it lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It’s one of over one thousand galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity.

As a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way galaxy, NGC 4698 has spiral arms that curl around within a thin disc of stars, gas and dust. Its centre is dominated by a galactic bulge.

The diffuse off-white glow of the galaxy’s bulge comes from stars smaller, older, and cooler than the massive blue stars that dot the galaxy’s outer disc. These tightly packed stars orbit a supermassive black hole containing millions of times the Sun’s mass. Scientists have found signs that this black hole is actively growing, drawing gas inward with its gravitational pull.

With a flat, starry disc and diffusely glowing centre, NGC 4698 looks a lot like a typical spiral galaxy — but this galaxy is far from normal. NGC 4698 is one of only a few known spiral galaxies with a bulge that extends out from the disc at a right angle. The elongation is faintly visible in this Hubble image, which shows the ghostly glow of the starry bulge peeking above and below the dusty disc. What’s more, the stars and gas nearest the galaxy’s centre rotate perpendicular to the rest of the disc.

What could cause a galaxy to be so out of sync? Astronomers have found that the culprit likely lies outside the galaxy. If NGC 4698 funneled in gas from an outside source, the newly collected gas could have formed a disc of gas and stars in the galaxy’s centre, at an angle relative to the rest of the disc. Some observations suggest that this galaxy once experienced a minor galactic merger, as evidenced by a short ‘tail’ of hydrogen streaming from one side of the galaxy.

The data used to create this image come from an observing programme (#18103; PI: Thilker) focusing on galaxies in the Virgo Cluster.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy viewed at an angle, with a bright central bulge and winding spiral arms. The arms form a ring around the galaxy, without appearing to reach its centre. Prominent red-brown dust lanes weave through the arms, which are also dotted with bright blue and reddish regions of star formation. The galaxy is set against a dark background scattered with stars and faint distant galaxies.]

• Release on esawebb.org

The longest satellite data record of ice-sheet change ever assembled has revealed that Greenland and Antarctica have lost a staggering 11 trillion tonnes of ice since the 1970s, driving global sea level up by more than three centimetres. However, the new findings also highlight that the story is not simply one of ice melting at the surface. The glaciers that drain these vast ice sheets are also flowing faster, channelling enormous quantities of ice directly into the ocean. Together, Greenland and Antarctica are now responsible for around a quarter of global sea-level rise.
The animated graph shows ice losses began to accelerate sharply from the 1990s onwards. Greenland, which was close to balance – meaning ice gains and losses were equal – in the 1970s, saw its annual ice loss increase from around 60 billion tonnes in the 1980s to 264 billion tonnes in the 2010s – a decade marked by repeated episodes of extreme summer melting.

Antarctica followed a similar trajectory, with annual losses increasing from around 48 billion tonnes in the 1980s to 202 billion tonnes in the 2010s. Unlike Greenland, however, Antarctica’s net ice loss was driven entirely by ocean-driven melting and the acceleration of its outlet glaciers. In West Antarctica, ice discharge has increased in every decade of the satellite record, driven in particular by the accelerating Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers.

More recently, between 2020 and 2023, there has been a slowdown in overall ice loss. In Antarctica, unusually high snowfall across East Antarctica added enough ice to offset some of the losses from glaciers elsewhere on the continent. In Greenland, a run of relatively mild summers has substantially reduced surface melting, roughly halving the amount of ice lost in this way.

Read full story: Faster-flowing glaciers fuel decades of polar ice loss

The longest satellite data record of ice-sheet change ever assembled has revealed that Greenland and Antarctica have lost a staggering 11 trillion tonnes of ice since the 1970s, driving global sea level up by more than three centimetres. However, the new findings also highlight that the story is not simply one of ice melting at the surface. The glaciers that drain these vast ice sheets are also flowing faster, channelling enormous quantities of ice directly into the ocean. 

This Copernicus Sentinel-1 animation shows ice flowing from Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland into the Arctic Ocean between 2024 and 2025. This is from after than the research period, and hence for illustrative purposes.

Read full story: Faster-flowing glaciers fuel decades of polar ice loss

The video shows a rendezvous test performed at ESA’s Guidance, Navigation and Control Laboratory using GRALS, the lab’s duo of robotic arms mounted on 33-m long rails. One arm holds the navigation unit of an approaching spacecraft, the other holds a scale model of a spacecraft target or ‘client’. Both are suspended in the centre of a long dark room with only one lamp illuminating the scene, mimicking the Sun. 

The European Space Agency (ESA) and industry are working together to develop and test interfaces that will allow satellites to approach in space, recognise each other and dock. The first hardware tests for this step took place at ESA’s testing facilities at ESTEC, the agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands, evaluating different interfaces and technologies developed by The Exploration Company with Sener, GMV, Almatech and CDS. 

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Watch the full replay of the launch of ESA’s state-of-the-art FLEX Earth Explorer satellite and the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite. Both were launched together aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, marking a new milestone in Europe’s Earth Observation Programmes. Flight VV30 lifted off on 15 September at 03:21 (14 September at 22:21 local time).  

FLEX is designed to reveal a phenomenon invisible to the human eye: the faint fluorescence emitted by plants as they photosynthesise. Equipped with a Fluorescence Imaging Spectrometer, FLEX will detect and measure this incredibly weak signal from orbit. Because the fluorescence varies with plant health and environmental conditions, the measurements will provide scientists with new information about photosynthetic activity and vegetation stress on a global scale. 

Sentinel-3C is the third in the Sentinel-3 series.  Carrying a suite of cutting-edge instruments, Copernicus Sentinel-3C will continue the mission’s task of measuring systematically Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics. The mission also provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting.  

Europe’s Vega-C rocket can launch 2300 kg into space, such as small scientific and Earth observation spacecraft. At 35 m tall, Vega-C weighs 210 tonnes on the launch pad and reaches orbit with three solid-propellant-powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over for precise placement of satellites into their desired orbit around Earth. This flight was a first dual launch for Vega-C, using a secondary payload adapter called Vespa. Sentinel-3C was placed on top of Vespa inside the main fairing and once deployed the Vespa adapter opened to reveal FLEX for its injection into orbit.