Smog Over New York
7.05.2002

What is not pretty about the above picture? In a word: smog. In 2000 October the orbiting Space Shuttle Discovery photographed update New York just at sunset. Visible is golden sunlight reflecting from two of the Great Lakes (Erie and Ontario), and several of the Finger Lakes.

The Outskirts of M77
7.12.2006

Face-on spiral galaxy M77 lies a mere 60 million light-years away toward the constellation Cetus. Also known as NGC 1068, it's very bright core is well studied by astronomers exploring the mysteries of supermassive black holes in active galaxies.

The Iron Sun
29.09.2001

The ultraviolet light emitted by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Farenheit was used to record the above picture of the Sun on September 22, the date of the autumnal equinox.

A Lonely Neutron Star
26.09.1997

How massive can a star get without imploding into a black hole? These limits are being tested by the discovery of a lone neutron star in space. Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope released...

Antares and Rho Ophiuchi
9.05.2004

Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark.

The Sun Unleashed
10.06.2011

On June 7, the Sun unleashed only a medium sized solar flare as rotation carried active regions of sunpots toward the solar limb. But that flare was followed by an astounding gush of magnetized plasma seen erupting at the Sun's edge in this extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Star Cluster R136 Bursts Out
24.01.2016

In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster containing some of the largest, hottest, and most massive stars known. These stars, known collectively as star cluster R136, were captured in the featured image in visible light by the Wide Field Camera 3 in 2009 peering through the Hubble Space Telescope.

In the Center of Spiral M77
11.09.1996

What is happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? To find out, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the dusty chaos of this active galactic nucleus in 1994.

The Not So Quiet Sun
6.08.2010

After a long solar minimum, the Sun is no longer so quiet. On August 1, this extreme ultraviolet snapshot of the Sun from the Solar Dynanimcs Observatory captured a complex burst of activity playing across the Sun's northern hemisphere.

Dark Dust and Colorful Clouds near Antares
27.08.2019

Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so dusty yet colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae.