M16 Close Up
9.09.2021

A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, M16 is also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region adopts the colorful Hubble palette and includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex.

Pleiades over Half Dome
19.07.2022

Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away, formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another 250 million years.

APOD: 2024 November 4 Б M42: The Great Nebula in Orion
4.11.2024

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away.

APOD: 2025 January 6 Б Colliding Spiral Galaxies from Webb and Hubble
6.01.2025

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars.

APOD: 2026 March 16 Б NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Galaxy
16.03.2026

If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), NGC 1566 presents a gorgeous face-on view.

The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi
3.12.2013

The many spectacular colors of the Rho Ophiuchi (oh'-fee-yu-kee) clouds highlight the many processes that occur there. The blue regions shine primarily by reflected light. Blue light from the star Rho Ophiuchi and nearby stars reflects more efficiently off this portion of the nebula than red light.

Starburst Galaxy M94 from Hubble
31.07.2022

Why does this galaxy have a ring of bright blue stars? Beautiful island universe Messier 94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici).

The Tarantula Nebula
17.11.2018

The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. About 180 thousand light-years away, it's the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies.

A Giant Starspot on HD 12545
12.07.2000

What could cause a star to have such a large spot? Our Sun itself frequently has sunspots, relatively cool dark magnetic depressions that move across its surface. HD 12545, however, exhibits the largest starspots yet observed.

The Hubble 5 Planetary Nebula
19.01.1998

The Hubble Double Bubble Planetary Nebula is bubbling over with excitement. More mundanely known as Hubble 5, this bipolar planetary nebula is being created by a hot wind of particles streaming away from the central star system.