Dark Skies: Turn on the Night
15.05.2019

Have you ever experienced a really dark night sky? One common and amazing feature is the glowing band of our Milky Way galaxy stretching from horizon to horizon. If you live in or near...

Carina in Perspective
4.05.2020

You need to be in the south, looking south, to see such a sky. And only then if you're lucky. Just above the picturesque tree is the impressive Carina Nebula, one of the few nebulas in the sky that is visible to the unaided eye.

Mercury and Crescent Moon Set
14.04.2016

Innermost planet Mercury and a thin crescent Moon are never found far from the Sun in planet Earth's skies. Taken near dusk on April 8, this colorful evening skyscape shows them both setting toward the western horizon just after the Sun.

APOD: 2024 May 8 Б Visualization: A Black Hole Accretion Disk
7.05.2024

What would it look like to circle a black hole? If the black hole was surrounded by a swirling disk of glowing and accreting gas, then the great gravity of the black hole would deflect light emitted by the disk to make it look very unusual. The featured animated video gives a visualization.

Two Views, Two Crescents
10.11.2010

Venus rose in a glowing dawn sky on November 5th, just before the Sun. For early morning risers, its brilliant crescent phase was best appreciated with binoculars or a small telescope. On that...

La Silla Star Trails North and South
2.02.2012

Fix your camera to a tripod and you can record graceful trails traced by the stars as planet Earth rotates on its axis. If the tripod is set up at ESO's La Silla Observatory, high in the Atacama desert of Chile, your star trails would look something like this.

Summer to Winter Milky Way
18.10.2018

Taken near local midnight, this autumn night's panorama follows the arch of the Milky Way across the northern horizon from the High Fens, Eifel Nature Park at the border of Belgium and Germany.

APOD: 2024 April 1 Б Swirling Magnetic Field around Our Galaxys Central Black Hole
31.03.2024

What's happening to the big black hole in the center of our galaxy? It is sucking in matter from a swirling disk -- a disk that is magnetized, it has now been confirmed. Specifically, the black hole's accretion disk has recently been seen to emit polarized light, radiation frequently associated with a magnetized source.

The Galaxy, the Jet and the Black Hole
26.04.2019

Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant of the Virgo...

Wright Mons in Color
14.01.2016

Informally named Wright Mons, a broad mountain about 150 kilometers across and 4 kilometers high with a wide, deep summit depression is featured in this inset image captured during the New Horizons flyby of Pluto in July 2015.