A Year in Sunsets
21.12.2024

A year in sunsets, from April 2023 to March 2024, track along the western horizon in these stacked panoramic views. The well-planed sequence is constructed of images recorded near the 21st day of the indicated month from the same location overlooking Cairo, Egypt.

APOD: 2025 September 29 Б Two Camera Comets in One Sky
29.09.2025

It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not. Comets C/2025 K1 ATLAS (left) and C/2025 R2 SWAN (right) appeared near each other by chance last week in the featured image taken from France's Reunion Island in the southern Indian Ocean.

Leonids from the Road
26.11.2001

Sometimes you just have to stop and watch the meteors. In the early morning hours of November 18, a band of eleven people searched for a flat and cloudless site to see the 2001 Leonids Meteor Shower.

Moon Over Mongolia
9.02.2002

Fighting clouds and the glow of city lights, a young Moon shines over the western horizon of Mongolia's capital, Ulaan-Baatar. The thin sunlit crescent is about 2 days old and strongly over exposed in this image taken on March 10, 1997.

In the Center of the Whirlpool
25.04.1996

In the center of M51, a spiral galaxy 23 million light-years away, astronomers have identified a dense region of young stars. The graceful swirling arcs of this galaxy's spiral arms have inspired its popular name, "The Whirlpool Galaxy".

Storm Clouds Over Jupiter
27.11.1996

Storm clouds, similar to the familiar cumulonimbus thunderheads of Earth, appear to be present on Jupiter. The mosaic of images above shows the region near the raging edge of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, itself some 2 to 3 Earths wide, as observed by the Galileo spacecraft in June of this year.

The Heart and Soul Nebulas
22.10.2003

Is heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula, officially dubbed IC 1805 and visible above on the right, has a shape reminiscent of a classical heart symbol.

R136: The Massive Stars of 30 Doradus
11.12.2005

In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster of the largest, hottest, most massive stars known. These stars, known as the star cluster R136, and part of the surrounding nebula are captured here in this gorgeous visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Northern Spring on Mars
25.03.2006

Astronomical spring came to planet Earth's northern hemisphere this week (and autumn to the south) with the equinox on March 20th. But on Mars, northern spring began on January 22nd. Still in northern...

The Colorful Orion Nebula
14.09.1999

The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion, this image taken with the Big Throughput Camera shows the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust.