Discover how we're driving the Nation's scientific progress through world-class research across Earth and Space sciences at Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate.
Earth Sciences
The Earth Sciences Division is the nation's technical innovator and essential data provider to support national infrastructure, scientific leadership, and economic resilience.
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Astrophysics
The Astrophysics Science Division leads America's quest to answer our most profound scientific questions, developing technologies with transformative applications in medicine, national security, and intelligence.
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Heliophysics
The Heliophysics Science Division advances understanding of the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, providing the foundational science that drives space weather research and solutions in collaboration with government, industry, and academia.
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Planetary Sciences
The Solar System Exploration Division powers space missions and leads human space exploration to the Moon and Mars through revolutionary research that charts the frontiers of our solar system and deepens our understanding of planetary system formation and evolution.
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Red Spider Planetary Nebula from Webb
Oh what a tangled web a planetary nebula can weave. The Red Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can result when a normal star ejects its outer gases and becomes a white dwarf star. Officially tagged NGC 6537, this two-lobed symmetric planetary nebula houses one of the hottest white dwarfs ever observed, probably as part of a binary star system. Internal winds flowing out from the central stars, have been measured in excess of 1,000 kilometers per second. These winds expand the nebula, flow along the nebula's walls, and cause waves of hot gas and dust to collide. Atoms caught in these colliding shocks radiate light shown in the featured false-color infrared picture by the James Webb Space Telescope. The Red Spider Nebula lies toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). Its distance is not well known but has been estimated by some to be about 4,000 light-years.