NGC 6188: Dragons of Ara
7.06.2022

Do dragons fight on the altar of the sky? Although it might appear that way, these dragons are illusions made of thin gas and dust. The emission nebula NGC 6188, home to the glowing...

EUVE Sky Map
31.01.2002

The stars beyond the Sun and the distant galaxies should be undetectable at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. At least that was the conventional wisdom when it was first realized that the space between the stars is filled with hydrogen, a strong absorber of extreme ultraviolet light.

Impact! 65 Million Years Ago
4.06.1996

What killed the dinosaurs? Their sudden disappearence 65 million years ago, along with about 70 percent of all species then living on Earth, is known as the K-T event (Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction event). Geologists and paleontologists often entertain the idea of a large asteroid or comet impacting the Earth as the culprit.

Tonight: A Blue Moon
31.07.2004

How often does a full moon occur twice in a single month? Exactly once in a Blue Moon. In fact, the modern usage of the term "Blue Moon" refers to the second Full Moon in a single month. Tonight's Blue Moon will be the first since November 2001.

Canaries Sky
10.04.1999

This gorgeous view of stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way comes from the dark night sky above the lovely island of La Palma in the Canaries archipelago. The picture was made by a group...

A Total Lunar Eclipse Over Tajikistan
5.10.2014

If the full Moon suddenly faded, what would you see? The answer during the total lunar eclipse of 2011 June was recorded in a dramatic time lapse video from Tajikistan. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the Moon and the Sun, causing the moon to fade dramatically.

NGC 6188 and NGC 6164
30.03.2016

Fantastic shapes lurk in clouds of glowing gas in the giant star forming region NGC 6188. The emission nebula is found about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara.

The South Pole of Mars
13.12.2001

The south pole of Mars is the bright area near the center of the detailed, subtly shaded color image above. Recorded in September of this year by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, the picture shows a region surrounding the 400 kilometer wide martian polar cap in the midst of southern hemisphere spring.

Comet Halleys Nucleus: An Orbiting Iceberg
4.01.2010

What does a comet nucleus look like? Formed from the primordial stuff of the Solar System, comet nuclei were thought to resemble very dirty icebergs. But ground-based telescopes revealed only the surrounding cloud of gas and dust of active comets nearing the Sun, clearly resolving only the comet's coma, and the characteristic cometary tails.

Venus at Night in Infrared from Akatsuki
30.01.2018

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure around the inner Solar System.