NGC 1333: Stellar Nursery in Perseus
30.01.2026

NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud.

Star Factory Messier 17
30.06.2011

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this degree wide field of view spans almost 100 light-years, courtesy of ESO's new VLT Survey Telescope and OmegaCAM.

GRB Fireball Persists
17.09.1997

It's still there. The optical counterpart to the instantly famous gamma-ray burst (GRB) that occurred last February 28th has faded - but not completely. The astronomical community had waited patiently for months...

The Hubble Deep Field
7.06.1998

Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Deep Field - humanity's most distant yet optical view of the Universe. The dimmest, some as faint as 30th magnitude (about four billion times fainter...

Unusual Light Pillars over Latvia
27.12.2014

What's happening over that town? Close inspection shows these strange columns of light occur over bright lights, and so likely are light pillars that involve falling ice crystals reflecting back these lights. The above image and several similar images were taken with a standard digital camera in Sigulda, Latvia in late 2009.

PG 1115+080: A Gravitational Cloverleaf
31.03.1999

All four blue images in the above photograph are the same object. The gravitational lens effect of the red, foreground, elliptical galaxy visible near image center creates a cloverleaf image of the single distant quasar. Light from the quasar is pulled around the massive galaxy in different paths, corresponding to different images.

Venusian Volcano Imagined
27.10.2020

What would an erupting volcano on Venus look like? Evidence of currently active volcanoes on Venus was announced earlier this year with the unexplained warmth of regions thought to contain only ancient volcanoes. Although...

GRB 990123 Host Galaxy Imaged
10.02.1999

Do the powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) originate in galaxies? This subject took on new light yesterday with the release of a Hubble Space Telescope image of the sky surrounding GRB 990123. This burst was first detected only two weeks ago and cataloged as one of the most powerful GRBs ever.

Cooling Neutron Star
5.03.2011

Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cass A) is a comfortable 11,000 light-years away. Light from the Cass A supernova, the death explosion of a massive star, first reached Earth just 330 years ago.

The Galaxy Within Centaurus A
4.03.2006

Peering deep inside Centaurus A, the closest active galaxy to Earth, the Spitzer Space Telescope's penetrating infrared cameras recorded this startling vista in February 2004. About 1,000 light-years across, the twisted cosmic...