Ecstatic Solar Eclipse
7.01.2022

A male Adelie penguin performed this Ecstatic Vocalization in silhouette during the December 4 solar eclipse, the final eclipse of 2021. Of course his Ecstatic Vocalization is a special display that male penguins use to claim their territory and advertise their condition.

The Year of Distant Supernovae
31.12.1998

Distant supernovae were among topics at the forefront of astronomy during 1998. Two independent groups raced to deploy large telescopes to scan the sky, discovering and analyzing far-off supernovae with the promise of calibrating the geometry of our universe.

The Cygnus Loop
23.06.2001

The shockwave from a 20,000 year-old supernova in the constellation of Cygnus supernova explosion is still expanding into interstellar space. The collision of this fast moving wall of gas with a stationary cloud...

The Dawn of the Clusters
15.01.1996

What did the universe look like near the beginning? This exciting photo by the Hubble Space Telescope is one of the deepest ever taken, and shows galaxies as far away as ever before photographed. The universe back then - when only one third of its present age - was a strange and violent place.

Open Cluster M8 in the Lagoon
27.01.1996

The large majestic Lagoon Nebula is home for many young stars and hot gas. The Lagoon Nebulae is so large and bright it can be seen without a telescope. Formed only several million years...

The Small Cloud of Magellan
19.07.1997

The southern sky contains wonders almost unknown in the north. These wonders include the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds: small irregular galaxies orbiting our own larger Milky Way spiral galaxy. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), pictured here, is about 250,000 light years away.

The Butterfly Planetary Nebula
21.10.1997

As stars age, they throw off their outer layers. Sometimes a highly symmetric gaseous planetary nebula is created, as is the case in M2-9, also called the Butterfly. Most planetary nebulae show this bipolar appearance, although some appear nearly spherical.

Stars from Eagle's EGGs
12.04.1998

Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars.

White Dwarf Stars Cool
10.09.2000

Diminutive by stellar standards, white dwarf stars are also intensely hot ... but they are cooling. No longer do their interior nuclear fires burn, so they will continue to cool until they fade away. This Hubble Space Telescope image covers a small region near the center of a globular cluster known as M4.

Star Trails in Southern Skies
15.07.2000

As the Earth spins on its axis, the stars seem to rotate around us. This motion produces the beautiful concentric arcs traced out by the stars in this time exposure of the southern hemisphere night sky. In the foreground is the dome of the Anglo-Australian Telescope in central New South Wales, Australia.