Black holes aren't stationary in space; in fact, they can be quite active in their movements. But because they are completely dark and can't be observed directly, they're not easy to study. Scientists have finally figured out the precise timing of a complicated dance between two enormous black holes, revealing hidden details about the physical characteristics of these mysterious cosmic objects.

Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed about 400 million years after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

In just a short amount of time, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has bagged thousands of previously unknown dwarf galaxies in a giant cluster of galaxies.

For the first time, NASA scientists have detected light tied to a gravitational-wave event, thanks to two merging neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993, located about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra.

An international team of astronomers, led by Yale University and the University of California scientists, pushed back the cosmic frontier of galaxy exploration to a time when the universe was only 5 percent of its present age of 13.8 billion years. The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past and determined its exact distance from Earth using the combined data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and the Keck I 10-meter telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. These observations confirmed it to be the most distant galaxy currently measured, setting a new record. The galaxy existed so long ago, it appears to be only about 100 million years old.

For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the massive monster.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found the ingredients for life all the way back to a time when the universe was a mere youngster.

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have announced one of the most precise measurements yet of the Hubble constant, or the rate at which our universe is stretching apart.

Astronomers have come across what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known. The discovery, based largely on observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will provide a better understanding of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies and stars came to be.

An intensive survey deep into the universe by NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes has yielded the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack: the farthest galaxy yet seen in an image that has been stretched and amplified by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

Two of NASA's Great Observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, have teamed up to "weigh" the stars in several distant galaxies. One of these galaxies, among the most distant ever seen, appears to be unusually massive and mature for its place in the young universe.

Astronomers have uncovered a burgeoning galactic metropolis, the most distant known in the early universe. This ancient collection of galaxies presumably grew into a modern galaxy cluster similar to the massive ones seen today.

NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have joined forces to discover nine of the smallest, faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant Universe. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.

Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.

Carnegie Institution of Washington

Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope

Through a project dubbed SURFS UP, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope are catching sight of a "wave" of galaxies that emerged in the early universe. Starlight from these primordial galaxies is reckoned to have cleared a fog of hydrogen gas that shrouded the cosmos during a mysterious period known as the Dark Ages.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, in tandem with other major NASA observatories, has recently embarked on a major new mission to glimpse the universe's very first galaxies.

NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes team up to find a small galaxy that appears to be lying at the observable edge of our universe.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, Europe's Herschel Space Observatory, and many ground-based telescopes have pieced together the evolutionary sequence of compact elliptical galaxies that erupted and burned out early in the history of the universe.

NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes are providing a new perspective on the remote universe, including new views of young and distant galaxies bursting with stars.

How and when galactic metropolises cease their opulent ways is the subject of new research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Astronomers using the combined power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array telescope in Chile and NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have discovered a far-flung trio of primitive galaxies nestled inside an enormous blob of primordial gas nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth.

NASA's Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before. With a boost from natural "zoom lenses" found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as much as 100 times fainter than what these three great observatories typically can see.

University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein has led a team that has discovered and measured the distance to the most distant galaxy ever found. The galaxy is seen as it was at a time just 700 million years after the Big Bang.