Milky Way over Shipwreck
30.11.2016

What happened to this ship? It was carried aground by a giant storm that struck the coast of Argentina in 2002. The pictured abandoned boat, dubbed Naufragio del Chubasco, wrecked near the nearly abandoned town of Cabo Raso (population: 1). The rusting ship provides a picturesque but perhaps creepy foreground for the beautiful sky above.

APOD: 2024 September 15 Б Find the Man in the Moon
15.09.2024

Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia -- imagining familiar icons where they don't actually exist. The textured surface...

APOD: 2025 October 6 Б The Changing Ion Tail of Comet Lemmon
6.10.2025

How does a comet tail change? It depends on the comet. The ion tail of Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) has been changing markedly, as detailed in the featured image sequenced over six days between September 25 and October 4 (left to right) from Texas, USA.

APOD: 2026 June 21 Б Keogram: The Sky in 2025
21.06.2026

What if you could see the entire sky -- all at once -- for an entire year? That, very nearly, is what is pictured here. Every 15 seconds during 2025, an all-sky camera took an image of the sky over the Netherlands.

Pulsar Wind in the Vela Nebula
19.07.2001

The Vela pulsar was born 10,000 years ago at the center of a supernova -- an exploding star. In this Chandra Observatory x-ray image, the pulsar still produces a glowing nebula at the heart of the expanding cloud of stellar debris.

Fresh Tiger Strips on Saturns Enceladus
6.09.2005

The tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus might be active. Even today, they may be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring.

The Host Galaxies of Long Duration GRBs
17.05.2006

What causes the powerful explosions knows as gamma-ray bursts? Astrophysicists still aren't sure, but the longest duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) seem to involve very massive stars. A new clue indicating this was uncovered recently by a series of images taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

Molecular Cloud Barnard 163
21.03.2007

It may look to some like a duck, but it lays stars instead of eggs. In the center of the above image lies Barnard 163, a nebula of molecular gas and dust so thick that visible light can't shine through it.

Our Galaxy s Central Molecular Zone
10.11.2008

The central region of our Milky Way Galaxy is a mysterious and complex place. Pictured here in radio and infrared light, the galaxy's central square degree is highlighted in fine detail. The region is known as the Central Molecular Zone.

Collinder 399: The Coat Hanger
23.12.2008

Is this coat hanger a star cluster or an asterism? This cosmic hang-up has been debated over much of last century, as astronomers wondered whether this binocular-visible object is really a physically associated open cluster or a chance projection. Chance star projections are known as asterisms, an example of which is the popular Big Dipper.