Kona Galaxy Garden
18.01.2011

How does your galaxy grow? Quite contrary to a typical galaxy, this one needs water to flourish. Pictured above as it appears at the Paleaku Peace Gardens Sanctuary in Kona, Hawaii, USA, a meticulously planned garden spanning about 30 meters provides a relatively accurate map of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Little Planet Lovejoy
11.01.2012

Once a bright apparition in the southern hemisphere dawn Comet Lovejoy is fading, but its long tail still stretches across skies near the south celestial pole. Captured on the morning of December 30th, the comet appears near edge of this little planet as well.

The Bubble and M52
8.10.2013

To the eye, this cosmic composition nicely balances the Bubble Nebula at the lower left with open star cluster M52 above it and to the right. The pair would be lopsided on other scales, though.

Sprite Lightning in Slow Motion
13.10.2014

What causes sprite lightning? Mysterious bursts of light in the sky that momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish have been recorded for over 25 years, but their root cause remains unknown. Some thunderstorms have them -- most don't. Recently, however, high speed videos are better detailing how sprites actually develop.

Gamma ray Rain from 3C 279
22.07.2015

If gamma-rays were raindrops a flare from a supermassive black hole might look like this. Not so gently falling on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope from June 14 to June 16 the gamma-ray photons, with energies up to 50 billion electron volts, originated in active galaxy 3C 279 some 5 billion light-years away.

Comet Catalina Emerges
7.12.2015

Comet Catalina is ready for its close-up. The giant snowball from the outer Solar System, known formally as C/2013 US10 (Catalina), rounded the Sun last month and is now headed for its closest approach to Earth in January.

Eagle Aurora over Norway
23.10.2016

What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days before this 2012 image was taken, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth.

M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
27.12.2016

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.

Old Moon in the New Moon s Arms
20.01.2018

Also known as the Moon's "ashen glow" or the "Old Moon in the New Moon's arms", earthshine is earthlight reflected from the Moon's night side. This stunning image of earthshine from a young crescent moon was taken from Las Campanas Observatory, Atacama Desert, Chile, planet Earth near moonset on January 18.

Starry Night by Jean Franцois Millet
13.03.2020

A dramatic nocturnal landscape from around 1850, this oil painting is the work of French artist Jean-Francois Millet. In the dark and atmospheric night sky are shooting stars, known too as meteors, above a landscape showing a path through the faintly lit countryside that leads toward trees and a cart in silhouette on the horizon.