Astro 2 In Orbit
17.03.2001

Six years ago, a cluster of three ultraviolet telescopes flew into orbit on the Astro-2 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. Seen here perched in Endeavour's payload bay about 350 kilometers above the Australian desert are the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT), the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT), and the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE).

Spiral Galaxy NGC 7742
26.07.2003

This might resemble a fried egg you've had for breakfast, but it's actually much larger. In fact, ringed by blue-tinted star forming regions and faintly visible spiral arms, the yolk-yellow center of this face-on spiral galaxy, NGC 7742, is about 3,000 light-years across.

The Sombrero Galaxy from HST
15.01.2006

Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge.

The Sombrero Galaxy from VLT
21.10.2001

Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge.

PKS 1127 145: Quasar View
8.02.2002

The quasar known as PKS 1127-145 lies ten billion light-years from our fair planet. A Hubble Space Telescope view in the left panel shows this quasar along with other galaxies as they appear in optical light. The quasar itself is the brightest object in the lower right corner.

Stellar Spectral Types: OBAFGKM
18.04.2004

Astronomers divide stars into different spectral types. First started in the 1800s, the spectral type was originally meant to classify the strength of hydrogen absorption lines. A few types that best describe the temperature of the star remain in use today.

Seyfert Galaxy NGC 7742
23.10.1998

This might resemble a fried egg you've had for breakfast, but it's actually much larger. In fact, ringed by blue-tinted star forming regions and faintly visible spiral arms, the yolk-yellow center of this face-on spiral galaxy, NGC 7742, is about 3,000 light-years across.

Flashes of the Crab Pulsar
9.02.2021

It somehow survived an explosion that would surely have destroyed our Sun. Now it is spins 30 times a second and is famous for the its rapid flashes. It is the Crab Pulsar, the rotating neutron star remnant of the supernova that created the Crab Nebula.

Swift Launches
22.11.2004

Where do gamma ray bursts occur? To help find out, NASA launched the Swift satellite on Saturday, as pictured above. What Swift is designed to do better than any previous satellite is to quickly locate these enigmatic explosions in both sky position and distance.

Hydrogen and Dust in the Rosette Nebula
23.12.2005

At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros, some 3,000 light years away, dark filaments of dust are silhouetted by luminous hydrogen gas. The close up view of the Rosette Nebula...