APOD: 2024 January 9 Б Thors Helmet
9.01.2024

Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens. Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across.

APOD: 2024 August 18 Б A Solar Prominence Eruption from SDO
18.08.2024

One of the most spectacular solar sights is an erupting prominence. In 2011, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence erupting from the surface. The dramatic explosion was captured in ultraviolet light in the featured time lapse video covering 90 minutes, where a new frame was taken every 24 seconds.

Mars Engulfed
17.10.2001

For months now, Mars has been engulfed by a great dust storm, the biggest seen raging across the Red Planet in decades. As a result, these two Hubble Space Telescope storm watch images from late June and early September offer dramatically contrasting views of the martian surface.

Ski Enceladus
24.01.2002

A small inner moon of Saturn, Enceladus is only about 500 kilometers in diameter. But the cold, distant world does reflect over 90 percent of the sunlight it receives, giving its surface about the same reflectivity as new-fallen snow.

GL 105C: The Coolest Star?
20.09.1995

Is the dim star to the upper right of this false-color picture the coolest possible normal star? From this recent picture by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have estimated its mass is just high enough for it to fuse hydrogen into helium in its core.

Comet Hyakutake and a Cactus
1.05.1996

Comet Hyakutake is shown photographed the night of March 27 in Arizona, USA, with a cactus in the foreground. Polaris, the north star, is the bright star seen just to the upper right of the comet's head. Today Comet Hyakutake reaches its closest approach to the Sun.

WMAP Resolves the Universe
12.02.2003

Analyses of a new high-resolution map of microwave light emitted only 380,000 years after the Big Bang appear to define our universe more precisely than ever before. The eagerly awaited results from the orbiting Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe resolve several long-standing disagreements in cosmology rooted in less precise data.

The Stars of NGC 1705
23.04.2003

Some 2,000 light-years across, NGC 1705 is small as galaxies go, similar to our Milky Way's own satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. At a much larger distance of 17 million light-years...

HH1/HH2: Star Jets
19.06.1997

A cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapses and a star is born. At its core temperatures rise, a nuclear furnace ignites, and a rotating dusty disk forms surrounding the newborn star. According...

Venus and the Pleiades
15.04.2004

Venus still rules the western skies after sunset as the brilliant evening star. While wandering the ecliptic with its fellow naked-eye planets earlier this month, it passed near the Pleiades star cluster, providing a striking photo opportunity for earthbound skygazers.