Abstract image of the Earth, with the continents represented by a matrix of dots. ...Read more.

From a NOIRLab press release, for which this image was commissioned. The scene depicts quasars that are poised to merge, after their respective host galaxies have collided. ...Read more.

Artwork of a black hole seen from an orbiting planet. A black hole is a region of spacetime where the gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape them. They are created when massive stars die. This one is surrounded by an accretion disc of material, the light from which is warped by the st ...Read more.

A portion of the cosmic web. The various clumps that are already bound at this time will remain so, but clumps that are not mutually bound together will never become so. ...Read more.

Two white dwarfs are approaching each other on an inbound spiral that can only result in destrucion, sending gravitational waves deep into the cosmos. They will soon collide to form a Type 1a supernova. ...Read more.

Artwork conceptualising the expanding and accelerating Universe. Since the 1990s, astronomers have known that the Universe is not only expanding, but that the rate of expansion itself is accelerating. This is postulated to occur due to a mysterious dark energy. ...Read more.

Artwork of an active galactic nucleus, or AGN. Many, perhaps most large galaxies, are thought to harbour supermassive black holes in their central regions. These enormous gravitational powerhouses can weigh anything from a few hundred thousand to several billion times the mass of a normal star. In s ...Read more.

Artwork of a black hole seen from an orbiting planet. A black hole is a region of spacetime where the gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape them. They are created when massive stars die. This one is surrounded by an accretion disc of material, the light from which is warped by the st ...Read more.

Astronomers from the University of Warwick and Leiden Observatory have observed an even which they believe is the first of its kind detected - the aftermath of a collision between two planets. The collision caused the two bodies to merge into a giant, donut-shaped cloud of hat gas and dust called a ...Read more.

Artwork of a synestia. This is a hypothetical torus of molten rock that is believed to form when two similarly sized rocky bodies collide - one may have arisen when the Earth was struck by a Mars-sized world called Theia, inside of which the Moon was born. As the rapidly rotating structure cools, ma ...Read more.

Artwork depicting a cataclysmic astronomical even called a fast blue optical transient (FBOT). These are epic explosions on a par with supernovae, kilonovae or gamma-ray bursts, but their rise to maximum brightness and their subsequent decline are much faster and concentrated in the blue part of the ...Read more.

Artwork depicting a cataclysmic astronomical even called a fast blue optical transient (FBOT). These are epic explosions on a par with supernovae, kilonovae or gamma-ray bursts, but their rise to maximum brightness and their subsequent decline are much faster and concentrated in the blue part of the ...Read more.

A black hole is an object so compact - usually a collapsed star - that nothing can escape its gravitational pull. Not even light. On Earth an object needs to be launched with a speed of 11 km/s if it is to escape the planet's gravity and go into orbit. But the escape velocity of a black hole exceeds ...Read more.

From a NOIRLab press releases, for which this image was commissioned: 'Astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) with the Gemini South telescope, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, may have detected a never-before-seen way to destroy a star. Unlike most GRBs, which are caused by exploding mass ...Read more.

Conceptual image showing the Universe's galaxies reflected in the mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope. JWST is expected to peer deeper into the cosmos than ever before, potentially revolutionising some of our understanding of it. ...Read more.