Cone Nebula Close Up
29.05.2004

Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic winds from newborn stars. A well-known example, the Cone Nebula within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264, was captured in this close-up view from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Raining Perseids
12.08.2007

Tonight is a good night to see meteors. Comet dust will rain down on planet Earth, streaking through dark skies in the annual Perseid meteor shower. While enjoying the anticipated space weather, astronomer Fred...

MESSENGER Approaches Mercury
16.01.2008

Two days ago, the MESSENGER spacecraft became only the second in human history to swoop past Mercury. The last spacecraft to visit the Sun's closest planet was Mariner 10 over 35 years ago. Mariner 10 was not able to photograph Mercury's entire surface, and the images it did send back raised many questions.

Earthgrazer: The Great Daylight Fireball of 1972
2.03.2009

What is that streaking across the sky? A bright earthgrazing meteor. In 1972, an unusually bright meteor from space was witnessed bouncing off Earth's atmosphere, much like a skipping stone can bounce off of a calm lake.

Gravity Probe B Confirms the Existence of Gravitomagnetism
10.05.2011

Does gravity have a magnetic counterpart? Spin any electric charge and you get a magnetic field. Spin any mass and, according to Einstein, you should get a very slight effect that acts something like magnetism. This effect is expected to be so small that it is beyond practical experience and ground laboratory measurement.

100 Million Stars in the Andromeda Galaxy
5.01.2015

What stars compose the Andromeda galaxy? To better understand, a group of researchers studied the nearby spiral by composing the largest image ever taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The result, called the Panchromatic...

Veil Nebula: Wisps of an Exploded Star
19.09.2017

Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova leaving the Veil Nebula. At the time, the expanding cloud was likely as bright as a crescent Moon, remaining visible for weeks to people living at the dawn of recorded history.

The Case of the Backwards Orbiting Asteroid
30.05.2018

Why does asteroid 2015 BZ509 orbit the Sun the backwards? As shown in the featured animation, Jupiter's trojan asteroids orbit the Sun in two major groups -- one just ahead of Jupiter, and one just behind -- but all orbit the Sun in the same direction as Jupiter.

Live: Cosmic Rays from Minnesota
6.08.2018

Cosmic rays from outer space go through your body every second. Typically, they do you no harm. The featured image shows some of these fast moving particles as streaks going through Fermilab's NOvA Far Detector located in Ash River, Minnesota, USA.

The Falcon 9 Nebula
12.10.2018

Not the Hubble Space Telescope's latest view of a distant planetary nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled even casual U.S. west coast skygazers on October 7. Taken about three miles...