Picture of the Month 2026

6 August 2026
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel). Spanning roughly 260 light-years, the nebula is home to an incredible collection of objects, including the Cosmic Cliffs revealed in the first-ever Webb image release. The Carina Nebula is also the nearest high-mass star-forming region that allows astronomers to study the full range of star formation. This nebula houses some of the most massive stars in our galaxy as well as tens of thousands of protostars, offering a valuable opportunity to understand how stars shape their neighbourhoods. The feature highlighted in today’s image, aptly called the Treasure Chest, looks right at home in this celestial sculpture garden. The Treasure …

3 July 2026
In today’s Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope we are taken on a visit to a building site of significant scale. The project is a galaxy cluster named MACS J0553.4-3342, located in the constellation Columba (the Dove). MACS J0553.4-3342 is situated at a redshift of 0.412. Redshift is a measure of how much the cluster’s light has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe over the course of its long journey to Webb’s mirrors; this unassuming number tells us that we are seeing MACS J0553.4-3342 as it was 4.4 billion years in the past. But for a galaxy cluster, this is relatively young. In fact, observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes show a cluster still in the process of being built. MACS J0553.4-3342 is composed of two sub-clusters — roughly equal in mass — that are actively merging. The two …

5 June 2026
For this NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month we return to the constellation Orion (the Hunter), a location familiar to Webb. This area of the sky is replete with star-forming clouds that make up a complex hundreds of light-years across. We find ourselves in the giant molecular cloud Orion A, of which the familiar Orion Nebula (also known as M42) is just a part; Webb has taken both close-up and wide-angle looks at M42 before. The target of these observations, however, requires us to look behind the Orion Nebula. Behind the stars, gas and dust of M42 is a long, massive filament of cold gas and dust called (somewhat confusingly) the Orion Molecular Clouds, which is divided into four parts, OMC-1 through OMC-4. OMC-1 sits immediately behind M42, to the north are OMC-2 and OMC-3, and OMC-4 lies to the south. This image shows just a small, …

7 May 2026
This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This new image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disc and its piercingly bright core like never before. At the heart of M77 is a compact region filled with hot gas that handily outshines the rest of the galaxy put together, even overcoming the light-gathering capacity of Webb’s cameras. This is an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and it’s powered by M77’s central supermassive black hole, which is eight million times as massive as our Sun. Gas in the galaxy’s central regions is pulled by the strong gravity into a tight and rapid …

3 April 2026
This month’s ESA/Webb Picture of the Month offers us a two-for-one on brand new stars — with some potential planets thrown in as well! This visual highlights views from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope of the protoplanetary discs Tau 042021 (left) and Oph 163131 (right), otherwise known by the catalogue numbers 2MASS J04202144+2813491 and 2MASS J16313124-2426281, respectively. Tau 042021 is situated around 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, while Oph 163131 lies about 480 light-years away in Ophiuchus. Protoplanetary discs like these appear around stars that have recently been born. When a clump of gas inside a larger molecular cloud collapses to form a star, unused gas and dust is left orbiting the star in a thick disc. Over time, this dust too collides and collapses, slowly forming planetesimals which can, in turn, develop into planets. The planetesimals which can’t make the jump to being a fully-fledged …

20 February 2026
Two powerful instruments of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope joined forces to create this scenic galaxy view for today’s Picture of the Month. This spiral galaxy is named NGC 5134, and it’s located 65 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Though 65 million light-years may seem like a huge distance — the light that Webb collected to create this image has been journeying to us from NGC 5134 since soon after Tyrannosaurus rex went extinct — NGC 5134 is fairly close by as far as galaxies go. Because of the galaxy’s relative proximity, Webb can spot incredible details in its tightly wound spiral arms. Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust that speckles NGC 5134’s interstellar clouds, tracing clumps and strands of dusty gas. Some of the dust is composed of complex organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which feature interconnected rings …

22 January 2026
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month brings us a scene from the distant Universe. Pictured here is the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223, or MACS J1149 for short, which is located about 5 billion light-years away in the constellation Leo. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe that are held together by gravity. Astronomers have confirmed more than 300 galaxies belonging to the MACS J1149 cluster, and they’ve identified several hundred more possible members. At the cluster’s centre, a huddle of ghostly elliptical galaxies rules over the cluster with their immense gravity. The crushing gravity of this cluster does more than just hold all the galaxies together as they drift through space. As light from galaxies located behind the cluster makes its way toward our telescope, journeying for billions of years, its path through spacetime is bent by the mass of the intervening galaxies. This …