ALT Laser light passing through the transparent crystal and exciting the thorium nucleus

ALT Upward shot of the NSF building and name.

ALT The Starlink terminal, on the roof of the building in the foreground, could one day supply high-performance broadband and connectivity to Antarctic scientists.

ALT NSF logo

ALT Exterior of the National Science Foundation headquarters, featuring a modern brick and glass building with the NSF logo and name prominently displayed above the entrance. Photo credit: NSF/Charlotte Geary.

ALT An artist's impression of the spiral galaxy Andromeda with a bright center that hides a black hole.

ALT The Event Horizon Telescope captured this historic first image of a black hole

ALT Silhouette of woman, a microscope, a rocket and other science elements. Banner reads: International Day of Women and Girls Science

ALT Artistic rendering of fractional excitons. Opposing charges are depicted in red and blue and are shown to be attracted to each other.

ALT A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

ALT The first image of Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Image shows a glowing, orange, donut-shaped hole with three bright patches and a dark center against a dark background.