NGC 2903: A Missing Jewel in Leo
9.04.2015

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 2903 is only some 20 million light-years distant. Popular among amateur astronomers, it shines in the northern spring constellation Leo, near the top of the lion's head. That part of the constellation is sometimes seen as a reversed question mark or sickle.

Grand Spiral Galaxy NGC 1232
25.12.2017

Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the Very Large Telescopes, is a good example.

APOD: 2025 August 31 Б NGC 7027: The Pillow Planetary Nebula
30.08.2025

What created this unusual planetary nebula? Dubbed the Pillow Nebula and the Flying Carpet Nebula, NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebulas known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027 first started expanding, as visible from Earth, about 600 years ago.

Black Holes and Galactic Centers
13.01.1997

Do all galaxies have black holes at their centers? Although not even a single galaxy has yet been proven to have a central black hole, the list of candidates has increased yet again. Recent...

The Tulip in the Swan
20.09.2019

Framing a bright emission region, this telescopic view looks out across a pretty field of stars along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called...

N49's Cosmic Blast
5.03.2004

Scattered debris from a cosmic supernova explosion lights up the sky in this gorgeous composited image based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Cataloged as N49, these glowing filaments of shocked gas span about 30 light-years in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

NGC 1427A: Galaxy in Motion
3.03.2005

In this tantalizing image, young blue star clusters and pink star-forming regions abound in NGC 1427A, a galaxy in motion. The small irregular galaxy's swept back outline points toward the top of this...

GLIMPSE the Milky Way
15.12.2005

Scroll right and gaze through the dusty plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in infrared light. The cosmic panorama is courtesy of the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) project and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

M81 in Ursa Major
27.04.2007

One of the brightest galaxies in planet Earth's sky and similar in size to the Milky Way, big, beautiful spiral M81 lies 11.8 million light-years away in the northern constellation Ursa Major. This...

The Double Ring Galaxies of Arp 147 from Hubble
3.11.2008

How could a galaxy become shaped like a ring? Even more strange: how could two? The rim of the blue galaxy pictured on the right shows an immense ring-like structure 30,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars.