Copyright: Known as nacreous clouds Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color wash across this skyscape from northern Sweden. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds, they are rare. But their unforgettable appearance was captured in this snapshot on January 12 with the Sun just below the local horizon. A type of polar stratospheric […]
Copyright: Tommy Lease The interstellar cloud of dust and gas captured in this sharp telescopic snapshot is seen to change its appearance noticeably over periods as short as a few weeks. Discovered over 200 years ago and cataloged as NGC 2261, bright star R Monocerotis lies at the tip of the fan-shaped nebula. About one […]
Copyright: Pea Mauro Gorgeous spiral galaxy Messier 33 seems to have more than its fair share of glowing hydrogen gas. A prominent member of the local group of galaxies, M33 is also known as the Triangulum Galaxy and lies a mere 3 million light-years away. The galaxy’s central 60,000 light-years or so are shown in […]
Copyright: What are those strange rings? Rich in dust, the rings are likely 3D shells — but how they were created remains a topic of research. Where they were created is well known: in a binary star system that lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) — a system […]
Copyright: Mauricio Salazar Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet’s size usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically spans a few kilometers — smaller than even a small moon. When nearing the Sun, however, this nucleus can eject dust and gas and leave a thin tail […]
Copyright: Dheera Venkatraman Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away, formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another 250 million years. […]
Copyright: Martin Mašek (FZU, Czech Academy of Sciences) & Jakub Kuřák Why does this comet have so many tails? C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) has developed several long and intricate tails visible from Earth’s southern hemisphere over the past two weeks. Many observers reported seeing the impressive comet without any optical aid above the western horizon just […]
Copyright: Jeff Schilling Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape, across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. Dusty nebulae reflecting light from embedded young stars stand out in the nearly 4 degree wide field of view. With a characteristic bluish color reflection nebula NGC 1333 is prominent near center. Hints of contrasting […]
Copyright: Yuri Beletsky Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS has made a dramatic appearance in planet Earth’s skies. A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, […]
Copyright: Mike Selby Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this cosmic expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. NGC 7814 is centered in the sharp field of view that would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its […]
Copyright: Dimitris Valianos The North America nebula on the sky can do what the North America continent on Earth cannot — form stars. Specifically, in analogy to the Earth-confined continent, the bright part that appears as the east coast is actually a hot bed of gas, dust, and newly formed stars known as the Cygnus […]
Copyright: What’s that in the sky? Above the city, above most clouds, far in the distance: it’s a comet. Pictured, the impressive tail of Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) was imaged from Brasília, Brazil four days ago. Last week the evolving comet rounded the Sun well inside the orbit of planet Mercury, going so close there […]
Copyright: Why does Comet ATLAS have such colorful tails? Last week Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) passed its closest to the Sun — well inside the orbit of Mercury — and brightened dramatically. Unfortunately, the comet was then so angularly near the Sun that it was very hard for humans to see. But NASA’s SOHO spacecraft […]
Copyright: What would it look like to land on Saturn’s moon Titan? The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe set down on the Solar System’s cloudiest moon in 2005, and a time-lapse video of its descent images was created. Huygens separated from the robotic Cassini spacecraft soon after it achieved orbit around Saturn in late 2004 […]
Copyright: On January 13 On January 13 a Full Moon and a Full Mars were close, both bright and opposite the Sun in planet Earth’s sky. In fact Mars was occulted, passing behind the Moon, when viewed from some locations in North America and northwest Africa. As seen from Richmond, Virginia, USA, this composite image […]
