MACSJ0025: Two Giant Galaxy Clusters Collide
17.09.2008

What happens when two of the largest objects in the universe collide? No one was quite sure, but the answer is giving clues to the nature of mysterious dark matter. In the case of MACSJ0025.

M44: The Beehive Cluster
30.04.2022

A mere 600 light-years away, M44 is one of the closest star clusters to our solar system. Also known as the Praesepe or the Beehive cluster its stars are young though, about 600 million years old compared to our Sun's 4.5 billion years.

The Galactic Core in Infrared
7.01.2009

What's happening at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? To help find out, the orbiting Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have combined their efforts to survey the region in unprecedented detail in infrared light.

Fermi Catalogs the Gamma ray Sky
18.03.2010

What shines in the gamma-ray sky? The most complete answer yet to that question is offered by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's first all-sky catalog. Fermi's sources of cosmic gamma-rays feature nature...

ISS Transits Mars
23.09.2020

Yes, but have you ever seen the space station do this? If you know when and where to look, watching the bright International Space Station (ISS) drift across your night sky is a fascinating sight -- but not very unusual.

GRB 060218: A Mysterious Transient
27.02.2006

What is it? Something is happening in a small portion of the sky toward the constellation of Aries and telescopes around the globe are tracking an unusual transient there as it changes day by day. No one is sure what it will do next.

Plasma Jets from Radio Galaxy Hercules A
5.12.2012

Why does this galaxy emit such spectacular jets? No one is sure, but it is likely related to an active supermassive black hole at its center. The galaxy at the image center, Hercules A, appears to be a relatively normal elliptical galaxy in visible light.

APOD: 2023 September 20 Б Methane Discovered on Distant Exoplanet
20.09.2023

Where else might life exist? One of humanity's great outstanding questions, locating planets where extrasolar life might survive took a step forward in 2019 with the discovery of a significant amount of water vapor in the atmosphere of distant exoplanet K2-18b.

Centaurus Radio Jets Rising
13.04.2011

What if you could see the huge radio jets of Centaurus A rising? The Cen A radio jets are not only over a million light years long, they occupy an angular area over 200 times greater than the full Moon in Earth's sky.

A Distant Cluster of Galaxies
7.12.1997

In this 1994 Hubble Space Telescope photograph, every bright object is a galaxy. Oddly - most of them are spiral galaxies. This rich cluster of galaxies, named CL 0939+4713, is almost half way across the visible universe.