Starry Night Scavenger Hunt
18.09.2016

Did you know that van Gogh's painting Starry Night includes Comet Hale-Bopp? Hopefully not, because it doesn't. But the featured image does. Although today's picture may appear at first glance...

APOD: 2025 December 2 Б M77: Spiral Galaxy with an Active Center
2.12.2025

What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster (Cetus). At that estimated distance, this gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across.

Powers of Ten
23.03.2015

How different does the universe look on small, medium, and large scales? The most famous short science film of its generation gives breathtaking comparisons. That film, Powers of Ten, originally created in the 1960s, has now been officially posted to YouTube and embedded above.

Heart and Soul and Double Cluster
24.09.2016

This rich starfield spans almost 10 degrees across the sky toward the northern constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus. On the left, heart-shaped cosmic cloud IC 1805 and IC 1848 are popularly known as the Heart and Soul nebulae.

M13: The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
4.08.2022

In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course...

Hidden Galaxy IC 342
29.01.2016

Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, IC 342 would otherwise...

An Extreme Black Hole Outburst
11.03.2020

Astronomers believe they have now found the most powerful example of a black hole outburst yet seen in our Universe. The composite, false-color featured image is of a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.

M87 s Energetic Jet
11.12.2004

An energetic jet from the core of giant elliptical galaxy M87 stretches outward for 5,000 light-years. This monstrous jet appears in the panels above to be a knotted and irregular structure, detected across the spectrum, from x-ray to optical to radio wavelengths.

Where is Upsilon Andromedae
22.04.1999

Astronomers recently announced the detection of three large planets orbiting the star Upsilon Andromedae - the first planetary system known to orbit a normal star other than our Sun. These planets were not directly photographed but found through a Doppler technique developed to use large telescopes to search nearby stars for wobbling planetary signatures.

APOD: 2023 December 27 Б Rainbow Aurora over Icelandic Waterfall
27.12.2023

Yes, but can your aurora do this? First, yes, auroras can look like rainbows even though they are completely different phenomena. Auroras are caused by Sun-created particles being channeled into Earth's atmosphere by Earth's magnetic field, and create colors by exciting atoms at different heights.