Perseids Around the Milky Way
16.08.2020

Why would meteor trails appear curved? The arcing effect arises only because the image artificially compresses (nearly) the whole sky into a rectangle. The meteors are from the Perseid Meteor Shower that peaked last week.

Gems of a Maldivean Night
27.03.2022

The southernmost part of the Milky Way contains not only the stars of the Southern Cross, but the closest star system to our Sun -- Alpha Centauri. The Southern Cross itself is topped by the bright, yellowish star Gamma Crucis.

Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
3.01.2013

Open clusters of stars can be near or far, young or old, and diffuse or compact. Found near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, they contain from 100 to 10,000 stars, all of which formed at nearly the same time. Bright blue stars frequently distinguish younger open clusters.

Lenticular Cloud, Moon, Mars, Venus
1.03.2015

It is not every day that such an interesting cloud photobombs your image. The original plan was to photograph a rare angular conjunction of Mars and Venus that occurred a week and a half ago, with the added bonus of a crescent Moon and the International Space Station (ISS) both passing nearby.

Mars at Closest Approach 2016
8.08.2016

When does Mars appear the largest? This occurs when Earth sweeps past Mars in their respective orbits around the Sun, creating a momentary Sun-Earth-Mars alignment called opposition. The featured video shows the Mars opposition that occurred earlier this year. All of the images were taken from Earth with a small telescope.

The Helix Nebula in Infrared
19.09.2016

What makes this cosmic eye look so red? Dust. The featured image from the robotic Spitzer Space Telescope shows infrared light from the well-studied Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) a mere 700 light-years away in the constellation of the Water Carrier Aquarius.

The Pencil Nebula Supernova Shock Wave
13.04.2021

This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the middle and moving up in this sharply detailed color composite, thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge-on.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217
20.02.2022

Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar. Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217, featured here, was captured in spectacular detail in this image taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.

Unusual Red Glow Over Minnesota
16.02.2009

What in heaven's blazes is that? When landing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA in 2002, just after his flight descended below cloud level in the early evening, passenger Tyler Blessing saw and photographed "huge...

The Opposing Tails of Comet Garradd
28.02.2012

Why does Comet Garradd have two tails? Visible on the left, Comet Garradd's dust tail is composed of ice and dust bits that trial the comet in its orbit around the Sun. Visible...