Unusually Strong Cyclone Off the Brazilian Coast
6.04.2004

How did this huge cyclone form? An unusually strong storm -- perhaps the strongest storm in the recorded history of the South Atlantic Ocean -- crossed the coast of Brazil last week. Cyclones this powerful, classified by some as the first ever Category 1 Hurricane, are very rare in the South Atlantic.

NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula
6.11.2005

It's the bubble versus the cloud. NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula, is being pushed out by the stellar wind of massive central star BD+602522. Next door, though, lives a giant molecular cloud, visible above to the lower right.

Hurricane Ivan from the Space Station
12.01.2008

Ninety percent of the houses on Grenada were damaged by the destructive force of Hurricane Ivan. At its peak, Ivan was a Category 5 hurricane, the highest power category on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, and created sustained winds in excess of 200 kilometers per hour.

Auroras over Northern Canada
14.07.2014

Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun resulted in several rewarding nights last December for those anticipating auroras. The above image captured dramatic auroras stretching across a sky near the town of Yellowknife in northern Canada.

The Deep Lagoon
28.07.2015

Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds inhabit the turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, The bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant.

Meteor Misses Galaxy
29.04.2019

The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor. For another, the galaxy is much farther away -- in this instance 3 million light years as opposed to only about 0.0003 light seconds.

Red Sun Streaming
6.01.1997

The Sun is leaking. In fact, it is gushing: particles stream away from the Sun at hundreds of kilometers per second. Some of these particles strike the Earth and cause aurora. Most particles, however, either surround the Sun as a huge solar corona or glide into interstellar space as the solar wind.

NGC 2244: A Star Cluster in the Rosette Nebula
20.02.2021

In the heart of the Rosette Nebula lies a bright open cluster of stars that lights up the nebula. The stars of NGC 2244 formed from the surrounding gas only a few million years ago.

APOD: 2025 August 30 Б A Two Percent Moon
29.08.2025

A young crescent moon can be hard to see. That's because when the Moon shows it's crescent phase (young or old) it can never be far from the Sun in planet Earth's sky.

Young Martian Terrain
1.08.2001

What caused the pits, ridges, and gullies on otherwise smooth Martian terrain? One hypothesis is water. The lack of craters at this mid-latitude location indicates that the terrain is quite young by geological standards, perhaps only 100,000 years old.