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Artist's impression of the NSF Green Bank Telescope gathering data on the center of the Milky Way. The inset image shows the black hole at our Galaxy's center, and a nearby candidate (unconfirmed) pulsar.

Breakthrough Listen, NSF Green Bank Telescope Probe Galactic Heart for Hidden Pulsars

February 9, 2026 at 12:04 pm | News Release

Astronomers from Breakthrough Listen have used the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Green Bank Telescope (NSF…

This is an annotated composite image of Cloud-9, a Reionization-Limited H I Cloud (RELHIC), as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) and the ground-based U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) radio telescope.

The image shows a scale bar, compass arrows, and color key for reference.
The scale bar is labeled in light-years along the top, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 2,000 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.

The scale bar is also labeled in arcseconds, which is a measure of angular distance on the sky. One arcsecond is equal an angular measurement of 1/3600 of one degree. There are 60 arcseconds in an arcminute and 60 arcminutes in a degree. (The full Moon has an angular diameter of about 30 arcminutes.) The actual size of an object that covers one arcsecond on the sky depends on its distance from the telescope.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

This image shows wavelengths of light, including radio waves, that have been translated into visible-light colors. The color key shows the two ACS filters used to collect the light, along with the NSF VLA’s radio-wave contribution. A color key shows F606W in blue, F814W in orange, and Radio NSF VLA in magenta.

NSF NRAO Radio Telescopes Help Reveal Cloud-9, a Starless Dark-Matter “Failed Galaxy” Near M94

January 5, 2026 at 12:14 pm | News Release

Astronomers using a powerful combination of radio and optical telescopes have confirmed that a peculiar gas cloud near the spiral galaxy M94 is a “failed” galaxy; a dark-matter-dominated halo filled with gas but entirely lacking stars.

Astronomers Share Largest Molecular Survey To-date: GOTHAM Legacy Data Goes Public

October 23, 2025 at 12:46 pm | News Release

A groundbreaking new dataset from the U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope (NSF GBT) is now publicly available,…

This collection of images shows the location of the CO-dark molecular gas in the constellation Cygnus X, and NSF Green Bank Telescope data of the gas in the galactic latitude and longitude.

Astronomers Map Mysterious “Dark” Gas in the Milky Way

October 23, 2025 at 12:37 pm | News Release

An international team of astronomers has created the first-ever large-scale maps of a mysterious form of matter, known as…

Astronomers Detect Lowest Mass Dark Object Yet in Distant Universe

October 9, 2025 at 10:00 am | News Release

An international research team, using a worldwide network of radio telescopes, including the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) VLBA and GBT, has detected an enigmatic dark object with a mass about one million times that of our Sun without observing any emitted light. This is the lowest mass dark object ever detected at a cosmological distance using only its gravitational influence, marking a major milestone in the quest to unravel the nature of dark matter.

A Million Reasons to Celebrate: NSF NRAO Hits One Million Citations

September 8, 2025 at 11:07 am | News Release

The U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) is celebrating a historic achievement: research using our…

An artist’s impression of the Long Period Transit, CHIME J1634+44, believed to be the brightest and most polarised LPT ever found.

Space’s Spinning Enigma: A ‘Unicorn’ Object Defies Astrophysics

July 17, 2025 at 2:00 am | News Release

Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery using some of the world’s most advanced radio telescopes. Researchers, led by Fengqiu Adam Dong, a Jansky Fellow at the NSF Green Bank Observatory (NSF GBO), have identified an exceptionally unusual cosmic object known as a Long Period Radio Transient (LPT), named CHIME J1634+44. This object stands out as one of the most polarized LPTs ever discovered, and it is the only one observed to be spinning up (meaning its rotation is speeding up) a phenomenon never seen before in this class of astronomical objects.

The location of the area of focus for this research in the Milky Way Galaxy is shown above, along with a previously unknown maser.

Astronomers Discover Massive Molecular Cloud Hidden in Milky Way

July 16, 2025 at 8:00 am | News Release

An international team of astronomers has discovered a massive cloud of gas and dust located in a little-known region…

An artist's interpretation of the highest-latitude neutral hydrogen clouds ever detected within the Fermi Bubbles in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The cold clouds reside more than 13,000 light-years above the Galactic center, in a region where frigid materials like this were never expected to be discovered.

Galactic Mystery: How “Ice Cubes” Survive in the Milky Way’s Blazing Bubbles

July 7, 2025 at 10:44 am | News Release

A team of astronomers has made a surprising discovery using the U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope (NSF…

An artist's impression of the newly identified, largest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon detected to date, cyanocoronene. This molecule, composed of seven interconnected benzene rings and a cyano group (C₂₄H₁₁CN), was found in the cold, dark molecular cloud TMC-1, a region known for its rich chemistry and as a cradle for new stars.

Cosmic Chemistry Breakthrough: Largest Aromatic Molecule Found in Deep Space

June 9, 2025 at 6:15 pm | News Release

A team of chemists and astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery in the field of astrochemistry: the identification of…

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