NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory Maps Interstellar Ice in Milky Way
An observation by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent star birth regions in our Milky Way galaxy. The image was released on April 15, 2026, along with a study detailing the sighting.
One of the main goals of SPHEREx is to map the chemical signatures of different types of interstellar ice. This ice includes molecules like water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, which are essential to the chemistry that allows life to develop. Researchers believe that these reservoirs of ice, attached to the surface of tiny dust grains, are where most of the universe’s water is formed and stored. The water in Earth’s oceans – as well as the ices of comets and other planets and moons in our galaxy – come from these regions.
SPHEREx was launched on March 11, 2025 and has the unique ability to see the sky in 102 colors, each representing a different wavelength of infrared light that offers distinctive information about galaxies, stars, planet-forming regions and other cosmic features.
Learn more about SPHEREx’s findings.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.
