Small Star
19.11.1999

A dim double star system cataloged as Gliese 623 lies 25 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Hercules. The individual stars of this binary system were distinguished for the first time when the Hubble Space Telescope's Faint Object Camera recorded this image in June 1994.

A Rare Hybrid Solar Eclipse
3.11.2013

A spectacular geocentric celestial event of 2005 was a rare hybrid eclipse of the Sun - a total or an annular eclipse could be seen depending on the observer's location. For Fred Espenak, aboard...

Journey into the Cosmic Reef
17.05.2020

What would you see if you could fly into the Cosmic Reef? The nebular cloud NGC 2014 appear to some like an ocean reef that resides in the sky, specifically in the LMC, the largest satellite galaxy of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Star Colors in Orion
10.02.2011

What determines a star's color? Its temperature. Red stars are cool, with surface temperatures of around 3,000 kelvins (K), while blue stars are hotter and can have temperatures over 30,000 K. Our own lovely "yellow" Sun's temperature is a comforting 6,000 K.

Comet PanSTARRS is near the Edge
15.02.2018

The comet PanSTARRS, also known as the blue comet (C/2016 R2), really is near the lower left edge of this stunning, wide field view recorded on January 13. Spanning nearly 20 degrees on the sky, the cosmic landscape is explored by well-exposed and processed frames from a sensitive digital camera.

ISS Transits Mars
22.09.2020

Yes, but have you ever seen the space station do this? If you know when and where to look, watching the bright International Space Station (ISS) drift across your night sky is a fascinating sight -- but not very unusual.

Galaxy And Gamma Ray Burst
24.01.1999

Gamma-ray bursts rule the high-energy sky and Saturday another brief, intense flash of gamma-rays from the cosmos triggered space-based detectors. The orbiting Compton Observatory's BATSE instrument quickly relayed the burst's approximate location to fast-slewing, ground-based cameras primed to search for an elusive optical flash.

Fireball!
25.02.1996

On rare but spectacular occasions, fireballs, meteors brighter than the brightest stars, flash through the heavens - sometimes making audible sounds and occasionally surviving to strike the Earth's surface. The path of one such...

Comet Heart and Soul
22.08.2018

The greenish coma of comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner stands out at the left of this telephoto skyscape spanning over 10 degrees toward the northern constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus. Captured on August 17, the periodic comet is the known parent body of the upcoming Draconid meteor shower.

Gamma rays and Comet Dust
19.08.2016

Gamma-rays and dust from periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle plowed through planet Earth's atmosphere on the night of August 11/12. Impacting at about 60 kilometers per second the grains of comet dust produced this year's remarkably active Perseid meteor shower.