The Gaia space observatory helped astronomers chart 4,000 light-years worth of our home galaxy. Against a black cosmic backdrop, countless white stars sparkle like scattered diamonds. Parts of the Milky Way's spiral arms are visible at the top of the image. Wisps of reddish-pink nebulas drift across the scene, forming delicate tendrils and cloud-like structures. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A new 3D map can take you 4,000 light years from the sun-without leaving Earth.

Astronomers have found the brightest object in the universe – a'hellish' black hole that consumes a star a day. Described as'the most hellish place in the universe', the black hole is 12 billion light years away and has a mass roughly 17 billion times that of our solar system's sun. Due to their immense gravitational pull, black holes grow in mass by capturing nearby material, whether it's stars, planets and even other black holes. The matter being pulled in toward this black hole, known as J0529-4351, forms a whopping disc that measures seven light-years in diameter. All galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their cores.

The Orion Nebula, which formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, is teeming with different colored gasses, molecular material, dust and scattered starlight and a new image snapped by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the first to look at the cosmic formation's center, allowing researchers to better understand how massive stars are birthed by the colossal cloud of dust and gas. The image shows an open cluster of young massive stars that shape the cloud of dust and gas with its intense radiation and dense filaments that may play a key role in birthing new stars. The nebula was previously photographed by the Hubble Telescope in 2004, but this device uses visible light and its view was obscured by the large amounts of stardust. JWST, however, detects the infrared light of the cosmos, allowing observers to see through these layers of dust and peer into its cosmic center - a region that has just now been seen by human eyes. The Orion Nebula, which sits 1,350 light years from Earth, is said to be similar to our own solar system, which scientists believe could provide clues to what happened in the first million years of our planetary evolution. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image of the Orion Nebula that sits 1,344 light years from Earth, which experts say could provide clues to the first few million years of our own solar system A nebula is the name given to a giant cloud in space made of dust, which are also areas that birth new stars - the Orion Nebula is believed to have created thousands of new stars.