An Unusually Smooth Surface on Saturns Telesto
21.02.2006

Why is Saturn's small moon Telesto so smooth? Possibly Telesto is covered with a type of granular icy material similar to that suspected of covering Pandora, another of Saturn's small moon's. If so, Telesto might be more like a pile of rubble than a solid body.

Seven Dusty Sisters
13.04.2007

Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known in astronomical images for its striking blue reflection nebulae. At visible wavelengths...

Expansive Comet Holmes
20.11.2007

The spherical coma of Comet Holmes has swollen to a diameter of over 1.4 million kilometers, making the tenuous, dusty cloud even bigger than the Sun. Scattering sunlight, all that dust and gas came...

MWC 922: The Red Square Nebula
22.03.2011

What could cause a nebula to appear square? No one is quite sure. The hot star system known as MWC 922, however, appears to be embedded in a nebula with just such a shape. The above image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt.

Tetons and Snake River, Planet Earth
1.08.2014

An alluring night skyscape, this scene looks west across the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA, Planet Earth. The Snake River glides through the foreground, while above the Tetons' rugged mountain peaks the starry sky is laced with exceptionally strong red and green airglow.

M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
29.08.2015

What is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy? Andromeda. In fact, our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it.

2MASS J17554042 6551277
18.03.2022

2MASS J17554042+6551277 doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but that's the name, a coordinate-based catalog designation, of the star centered in this sharp field of view. Fans of the distant universe should get used to its spiky appearance though.

APOD: 2025 April 9 Б HH 49: Interstellar Jet from Webb
8.04.2025

What's at the tip of this interstellar jet? First let's consider the jet: it is being expelled by a star system just forming and is cataloged as Herbig-Haro 49 (HH 49). The star system expelling this jet is not visible -- it is off to the lower right.

The Center of Centaurus A
22.05.1998

A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red light has been processed to present a natural color picture of this cosmic maelstrom.

Orange Moon, Red Flash
22.09.2005

This remarkable telescopic image highlights the deep orange cast of a waning gibbous Moon seen very close to the eastern horizon earlier this week, on September 19. In fact, today's equinox...