A Gegenschein Lunar Eclipse
14.10.2015

Is there anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? One night last month, there were quite a few things. First, the red-glowing orb on the lower right of the featured image is the full moon, darkened and reddened because it has entered Earth's shadow.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
1.11.2024

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo but appears as only a faint smudge in the eyepiece of a small telescope.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
5.12.2019

Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo and appears as only a faint, extended object in small telescopes.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
10.08.2018

Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo and appears as only a faint, extended object in small telescopes. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight.

The Earth-Moon System
29.01.1998

This evocative mosaic image of the Earth-Moon system was recorded by NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft earlier this month. The relative sizes shown are appropriate for viewing both the Earth...

APOD: 2024 June 17 Б Ou4: The Giant Squid Nebula
17.06.2024

Squids on Earth aren't this big. This mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud spans nearly three full moons on planet Earth's sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula's bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms.

Ou4: The Giant Squid Nebula
12.10.2022

A mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth's sky. In the image, composed with 30 hours of narrowband image data, it spans nearly three full moons toward the royal constellation Cepheus.

Cassini Images The Moon
10.09.1999

On August 18, the Cassini spacecraft flew by the Earth and Moon, then continued on its way to the outer solar system. Near its closest approach to the Moon, a distance of about 377,000 kilometers, controllers tested Cassini's imaging systems on this most familiar celestial body.

APOD: 2023 May 9 Б Shadows of Earth
9.05.2023

Can you find two Earth shadows in today's image? It's a bit tricky. To find the first shadow, observe that the top part of the atmosphere appears pink and the lower part appears blue. This is because the top half is exposed to direct sunlight, while the lower part is not.

Flemings Triangular Wisp
27.07.2021

Chaotic in appearance, these tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star.