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Rima Hyginus
Rima Hyginus is a spectacular fissure, some 220 kilometers long, found near the center of the lunar near side. Easy to spot in telescopic views of the Moon, it stretches top left to bottom right...
Hubble's Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic
The largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral Andromeda Galaxy. With 600 overlapping frames assembled from observations...
Messier 87
rmous elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is about 50 million light-years away. Also known as NGC 4486, the giant galaxy holds trillions of stars compared to the mere billions of stars in our large spiral...
HH 30: A Star System with Planets Now Forming
How do stars and planets form? New clues have been found in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space Telescope in concert with Hubble and the Earth-bound ALMA. The...
Thor's Helmet versus the Seagull
Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging their way across this broad celestial landscape, spanning almost 7 degrees...
SpaceX Rocket Launch Plume over California
What's happened to the sky? Last Monday, the photogenic launch plume from a SpaceX rocket launch created quite a spectacle over parts of southern California and Arizona. Looking at times like a...
Perijove 11: Passing Jupiter
Here comes Jupiter. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its highly elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11 in early 2018,...
Parhelia at Abisko
Three suns seem to hug the horizon in this otherworldly winterscape. But the evocative scene was captured during a February 3rd snowmobile exploration of the mountainous region around Abisko...
A Cosmic Rose: NGC 2237 in Monoceros
The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers, but it is probably the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros...
Reflections on VdB 31
Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue VdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still...
Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life
What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. ...
The Spider and the Fly
Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud in the image center is actually an...
Auroral Hummingbird over Norway
Is this the largest hummingbird ever? Although it may look like a popular fluttering nectarivore, what is pictured is actually a beautifully detailed and colorful aurora, complete with rays...
Milky Way over the Australian Pinnacles
What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells...
A Conjunction of Crescents
A waxing crescent Moon and a waning crescent Venus are found at opposite corners of this twilight telephoto field of view. The close conjunction of the two brightest celestial beacons in planet...
LEDA 1313424: The Bullseye Galaxy
The giant galaxy cataloged as LEDA 1313424 is about two and a half times the size of our own Milky Way. Its remarkable appearance in this recently released Hubble Space Telescope image strongly...
IC 2574: Coddington's Nebula
Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact...
Comet G3 ATLAS Setting over a Chilean Hill
Where is Comet ATLAS going? In the featured time-lapse video, the comet is not itself moving very much, but the Earth's rotation makes it appear to be setting over a hill. The Comet C/2024 G3...
Anticrepuscular Rays: A Rainbow Fan over Spain
Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more interesting display was 180 degrees around -- toward the east. There, not...
Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over...