APOD: 2023 December 10 Б Big Dipper over Pyramid Mountain
10.12.2023

When did you first learn to identify this group of stars? Although they are familiar to many people around the world, different cultures have associated this asterism with different icons and folklore. Known...

Supernova Survivor
12.02.2004

Beginning with a full view of beautiful spiral galaxy M81, follow the insets (left, bottom, then right) to zoom in on a real survivor. Seen at the center of the final field on the right is a star recently identified as the survivor of a cosmic cataclysm -- the supernova explosion of its companion star.

Fireworks Galaxy NGC 6946
1.01.2011

Celebrate the New Year with the Fireworks Galaxy! Also known as NGC 6946, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 10 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation of Cepheus. From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on.

Star Forming Region LH 95
12.03.2008

How do stars form? To better understand this complex and chaotic process, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to image in unprecedented detail the star forming region LH 95 in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.

Inside the Coma Cluster of Galaxies
16.06.2008

Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured above is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies. Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars - just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does.

Comet and Orion
2.10.2009

These colorful panels both feature a familiar northern hemisphere astronomical sight: the stellar nursery known as the Great Orion Nebula. They also offer an intriguing and unfamiliar detail of the nebula rich skyscape -- a passing comet.

Moon behind Lava Fountain
4.09.2018

What's happened to the Moon? Nothing, but something has happened to the image of the Moon. The heat from a volcanic lava fountain in the foreground has warmed and made turbulent the air nearby, causing passing light to refract differently than usual.

A Close Encounter of the Stellar Kind
26.06.1997

The unassuming star centered in this sky view will one day be our next door stellar neighbor. The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf currently 63 light-years away in the constellation Ophiucus was recently discovered to be on a course toward our Solar System.

Herschel s Eagle Nebula
28.07.2016

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 false-color composite image views...

Galaxy NGC 474: Shells and Star Streams
6.02.2018

What's happening to galaxy NGC 474? The multiple layers of emission appear strangely complex and unexpected given the relatively featureless appearance of the elliptical galaxy in less deep images. The cause...