NGC 6188 and NGC 6164
1.02.2014

Fantastic shapes lurk in clouds of glowing gas in NGC 6188, about 4,000 light-years away. The emission nebula is found near the edge of a large molecular cloud unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara.

The Pulsar Powered Crab
31.05.1996

In the Summer of 1054 A.D. Chinese astronomers reported that a star in the constellation of Taurus suddenly became as bright as the full Moon. Fading slowly, it remained visible for over a year.

Inside the Eagle Nebula
3.02.2012

In 1995, a now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This remarkable false-color composite image revisits the nearby stellar nursery with image data from the orbiting Herschel Space Observatory and XMM-Newton telescopes.

Hubble's Constant And The Expanding Universe (II)
14.05.1996

In this century, the discovery that the Universe is expanding has produced a revolution in human thought about the Cosmos. American astronomer Edwin Hubble played a major role in this profound discovery, coining the "Hubble constant".

GW170817: A Spectacular Multiradiation Merger Event Detected
16.10.2017

Both gravitational and electromagnetic radiations have been detected in rapid succession for an explosive merging event for the first time. Data from the outburst fit well with a spectacular binary neutron-star death-spiral. The explosive episode was seen on August 17 in nearby NGC 4993, an elliptical galaxy only 130 million light years distant.

COMPTEL Explores The Radioactive Sky
24.07.1996

Diffuse gas clouds laced with radioactive aluminum atoms (Al26) line the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy! How do we see them? Relying on the Compton Effect, the COMPTEL instrument onboard NASA's immense orbiting Compton Gamma Ray Observatory can "see" the 1.8 million electron Volt gamma rays emitted by the radioactive decay.

Downtown Auriga
13.02.2014

Rich in star clusters and nebulae, the ancient constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer, rides high in northern winter night skies. Spanning nearly 24 full moons (12 degrees) on the sky, this deep telescopic mosaic view recorded in January shows off some of Auriga's most popular sights for cosmic tourists.

APOD: 2020 August 31 Б SS 433: Binary Star Micro Quasar
31.08.2020

SS 433 is one of the most exotic star systems known. Its unremarkable name stems from its inclusion in a catalog of Milky Way stars which emit radiation characteristic of atomic hydrogen. Its remarkable behavior stems from a compact object, a black hole or neutron star, which has produced an accretion disk with jets.

Young Suns of NGC 7129
29.08.2016

Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129, some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus. While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is likely that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery some five billion years ago.

ROSAT Explores The X-Ray Sky
8.10.1996

Launched in 1990, the orbiting ROSAT observatory explored the Universe by viewing the entire sky in x-rays - photons with about 1,000 times more energy than visible light. This ROSAT survey produced the sharpest, most sensitive image of the x-ray sky to date.