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Copyright: Fényes Lóránd The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the featured deep image in assigned colors highlighted by emission in oxygen […]
Copyright: What’s that black spot on Jupiter? No one is sure. During one pass of NASA’s Juno over Jupiter, the robotic spacecraft imaged an usually dark cloud feature informally dubbed the Abyss. Surrounding cloud patterns show the Abyss to be at the center of a vortex. Since dark features on Jupiter’s atmosphere tend to run […]
Copyright: Saturn is bright in Earth’s night skies. Telescopic views of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn’s rings and night side just isn’t possible from telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth. Peering out from the inner Solar […]
Copyright: John Hayes Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo but appears as only a faint smudge in the eyepiece of a small telescope. We see the disk of the nearby island universe […]
Copyright: Simone Curzi By starlight, this eerie visage shines in the dark with a crooked profile evoking its popular name, the Witch Head Nebula. In fact, this entrancing telescopic portrait gives the impression that a witch has fixed her gaze on Orion’s bright supergiant star Rigel. More formally known as IC 2118, the Witch Head […]
Copyright: Chad Leader What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The featured striking view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks […]
Copyright: The stars are destroying the pillars. More specifically, some of the newly formed stars in the image center are emitting light so energetic that is evaporating the gas and dust in the surrounding pillars. Simultaneously, the pillars themselves are still trying to form new stars. The whole setting is the star cluster NGC 602, […]
Copyright: Louis LEROUX-GÉRÉ Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. Details of how STEVEs work remain a topic of research, but recent evidence holds that their glow results from a fast-moving river […]
Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller (NASA’s GSFC) What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this […]
Copyright: Christophe Vergnes These brightly outlined flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia, the colorful skyscape features the swept-back, comet-shaped clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren’t actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, under the influence of energetic radiation […]
Copyright: Massimo Di Fusco Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752 follows clusters Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, and Messier 22 as the fourth brightest globular in planet Earth’s night sky. It holds […]
Copyright: Patrick Winkler A mere seven hundred light years from Earth toward the constellation Aquarius, a star is dying. The once sun-like star’s last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula. Also known as NGC 7293, the cosmic Helix is a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final […]
Copyright: SpaceX Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! pic.twitter.com/6R5YatSVJX Courtesy of NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Copyright: These dark pillars may look destructive, but they are creating stars. This pillar-capturing picture of the Eagle Nebula combines visible light exposures taken with the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope to highlight evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The […]
Copyright: Brian Fulda The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was captured near peak impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The globular star cluster M5 […]
