Tombaugh 4
21.10.2006

Clyde Tombaugh discovered planet Pluto in 1930 while surveying the skies with the 13-inch Lawrence Lowell Telescope. But the skilled and careful astronomer also went on to discover star clusters, comets, asteroids, and clusters of galaxies. For example, pictured is galactic or open star cluster Tombaugh 4 in the northern constellation Cassiopeia.

The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared
31.12.2018

This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.

M87: Elliptical Galaxy with Jet
20.05.2010

In spiral galaxies, majestic winding arms of young stars, gas, and dust rotate in a flat disk around a bulging galactic nucleus. But elliptical galaxies seem to be simpler. Lacking gas and dust to form new stars, their randomly swarming older stars, give them an ellipsoidal (egg-like) shape. Still, elliptical galaxies can be very large.

UHZ1: Distant Galaxy and Black Hole
9.11.2023

Dominated by dark matter, massive cluster of galaxies Abell 2744 is known to some as Pandora's Cluster. It lies 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation Sculptor. Using the galaxy cluster's enormous...

Abell 2597 s Cosmic Cavities
15.01.2002

Typical of large galaxy clusters billions of light-years away, Abell 2597 features hundreds of galaxies embedded in a cloud of multimillion degree gas which glows in x-rays. This Chandra Observatory x-ray image shows...

Elliptical Galaxy NGC 1132
12.02.2008

NGC 1132 is one smooth galaxy -- but how did it form? As an elliptical galaxy, NGC 1132 has little dust and gas, and few stars have formed in it recently. Although many elliptical galaxies are in clusters of galaxies, NGC 1132 appears as a large, isolated galaxy toward the constellation of the River (Eridanus).

Laniakea: Our Home Supercluster of Galaxies
10.09.2014

It is not only one of the largest structures known -- it is our home. The just-identified Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies contains thousands of galaxies that includes our Milky Way Galaxy, the Local Group of galaxies, and the entire nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.

The Dawn of the Clusters
14.01.1996

What did the universe look like near the beginning? This exciting photo by the Hubble Space Telescope is one of the deepest ever taken, and shows galaxies as far away as ever before photographed. The universe back then - when only one third of its present age - was a strange and violent place.

Catalog Entry Number 1
14.03.2018

Every journey has first step and every catalog a first entry. First entries in six well-known deep sky catalogs appear in these panels, from upper left to lower right in chronological order of original catalog publication.

M15: A Great Globular Cluster
26.07.1995

A globular cluster is a system of about one million stars that together orbit a galaxy. One of the brightest globular clusters in our Milky Way galaxy is the pictured M15, the fifteenth object on Messier's list of diffuse objects on our sky.