Ring Around the Galaxy
23.12.1998

It is difficult to hide one galaxy far behind another. The closer galaxy's gravity will act like a huge lens, pulling images of the background galaxy around both sides. This is just...

Abell 2218: A Galaxy Cluster Lens
20.06.2010

What are those strange filaments? Background galaxies. Gravity can bend light, allowing huge clusters of galaxies to act as telescopes, and distorting images of background galaxies into elongated strands. Almost all of the bright objects in this Hubble Space Telescope image are galaxies in the cluster known as Abell 2218.

APOD: 2023 January 11 Б Spiral Aurora over Iceland
11.01.2023

The scene may look like a fantasy, but it's really Iceland. The rock arch is named Gatklettur and located on the island's northwest coast. Some of the larger rocks in the foreground span a meter across. The fog over the rocks is really moving waves averaged over long exposures.

Moon in the Hyades
20.04.2018

Have you seen the Moon lately? On April 18, its waxing sunlit crescent moved through planet Earth's night across a background of stars in the Hyades. Anchored by bright star Aldebaran, the nearby, V-shaped star cluster and complete lunar orb appear in this telephoto image.

NGC 3314: When Galaxies Overlap
15.07.2011

NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust appear to dominate the face-on spiral's structure.

A Dark Seahorse in Cepheus
7.11.2025

Spanning light-years, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula floats in silhouette against a rich background of stars and glowing hydrogen gas. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, dark nebula is part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant.

Unusual Clouds over Hong Kong
2.03.2016

What's that in the sky? Earlier this month, in the sky high above Hong Kong, China, not just one unusual type of cloud appeared -- but two. In the foreground was a long lenticular cloud, a cloud that forms near mountains from uprising air and might appear to some as an alien spaceship.

The X-Ray Moon
29.09.1996

This X-Ray image of the Moon was made by the orbiting Roentgen Observatory Satellite (ROSAT) in 1990. It shows three distinct regions: a bright X-ray sky, a bright part of the Moon, and a relatively dark part of the Moon. The bright X-ray sky is due to the diffuse cosmic X-ray background.

3I/ATLAS Flyby
26.12.2025

Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That's about 900 light-seconds. This deep exposure captures the comet...

Lynds Dark Nebula 43
30.10.2025

Sure, Halloween is an astronomy holiday. But astronomers always enjoy scanning the heavens for spook-tacular galaxies, stars, and nebulae. This favorite is item number 43 from the Beverly Lynds 1962 Catalog of Dark Nebulae, fondly known as the Cosmic Bat nebula.