Picture of the Month 2026

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 …