M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy
25.01.1997

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 15 million light years distant, M51, also cataloged as NGC 5194, is one of the brighter and more picturesque galaxies on the sky.

Distant Galaxies
7.09.1995

This Hubble Space Telescope image of a group of faint galaxies "far, far away" is a snap shot of the Universe when it was young. The bluish, irregularly shaped galaxies revealed in the image are up to eight billion light years away and seem to have commonly undergone galaxy collisions and bursts of star formation.

Antares
26.07.1998

Antares is a huge star. In a class called red supergiant, Antares is about 700 times the diameter of our own Sun, 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius and one of the brighter stars in all the night sky.

A Mysterious Cone Nebula
1.03.1996

Sometimes the simplest shapes are the hardest to explain. For example, the origin of the mysterious cone-shaped region located just below the center of the above picture remains a mystery. The dark region clearly contains much dust which blocks light from the emission nebula and open cluster NGC 2264 behind it.

Dark Bok Globules in IC 2944
6.10.1995

The dark spots in the above picture are not photographic defects but an unusual type of interstellar cloud known as a Bok globule. Bok globules, named after astronomer Bart Bok who studied them extensively, are small dark clouds made of gas and dust that are typically condensing to form a star or stars.

The Toby Jug Nebula
5.01.1996

Is the only thing unusual about this nebula its shape? Pictured above is the IC 2220 - the Toby Jug Nebula - a reflection nebula surrounding a normal red giant star. Reflection nebulae shine by light reflected from the central star(s).

NGC 5189: A Strange Planetary Nebula
11.12.1995

After a Sun-like star can no longer support fusion in its core, the center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmospheric layers are expelled into space and appear as a planetary nebula. This particular planetary nebula has a quite strange and chaotic structure.

Beijing Ancient Observatory
30.03.2003

Did observatories exist before telescopes? One example that still stands today is the Beijing Ancient Observatory in China. Starting in the 1400s astronomers erected large instruments here to enable them to measure star and planet positions with increasing accuracy.

The Small Cloud of Magellan (SMC)
25.01.1998

Almost unknown to casual observers in the northern hemisphere, the southern sky contains two diffuse wonders known as the Magellanic Clouds. The Magellanic Clouds are small irregular galaxies orbiting our own larger Milky Way spiral galaxy.

Unusual M82: The Cigar Galaxy
15.03.1998

Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? M82 is a nearby galaxy in the group of galaxies dominated by itself, M81, and NGC 3077. M82 is thought by some to be limping away from a close encounter with M81.