The Sun Erupts
13.08.1995

The sun was captured in 1973 throwing one of the largest eruptive prominences ever recorded. Sol, our sun, is a normal star. It formed about 5 billion years ago, and will last about another 5 billion years. The sun will never explode, and a solar flare will never destroy the earth.

Comet Hyakutake and the Milky Way
17.08.1998

Two years ago, the Great Comet of 1996, Comet Hyakutake, inched across our northern sky during its long orbit around the Sun. Visible above as the bright spot with the faint tail near...

Starry Night Castle
19.01.2008

The tantalizing Pleiades star cluster seems to lie just beyond the trees above a dark castle tower in this dramatic view of The World at Night. Recorded earlier this month, the starry sky also...

Spiral Galaxy NGC 3310 in Ultraviolet
17.01.2001

Why is NGC 3310 bursting with young stars? The brightest of these new stars are so hot that they light up this spiral galaxy not only in blue light, but in light so blue humans can't see it: ultraviolet. The Hubble Space Telescope took the above photograph in different bands of ultraviolet light.

Cas A Supernova Remnant in X Rays
24.08.2002

The complex shell of a star seen to explode 300 years ago is helping astronomers to understand how that star exploded. This Chandra Observatory image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) shows unprecedented detail in three x-ray colors.

Aura Launch
22.07.2004

In this alluring time exposure, star trails arc across the night sky above Monterey Bay and the lights of Santa Cruz, California, USA. But since the exposure began around 3:01am PDT on July 15 it also records the long trail of a Delta II rocket lofting NASA's Aura spacecraft into Earth orbit.

Mountains of Creation
11.11.2005

This fantastic skyscape lies at the eastern edge of giant stellar nursery W5, about 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. An infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, it features interstellar clouds...

A Dangerous Sunrise on Gliese 876d
21.05.2008

On planet Gliese 876d, sunrises might be dangerous. Although nobody really knows what conditions are like on this close-in planet orbiting variable red dwarf star Gliese 876, the above artistic illustration gives one impression.

The Tadpoles of IC 410
16.04.2011

This telescopic close-up shows off the otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410 in striking false-colors. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust above and left of center, the tadpoles of IC 410. The picture is a composite of images taken through both broad and narrow band filters.

The Cat s Eye Nebula from Hubble
24.04.2011

Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat's Eye nebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth. A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star.