Anemic Galaxy NGC 4921 at the Edge
9.02.2009

How far away is spiral galaxy NGC 4921? Although presently estimated to be about 320 million light years distant, a more precise determination could be coupled with its known recession speed to help humanity better calibrate the expansion rate of the entire visible universe.

Virgo Cluster Galaxies
22.04.2011

Well over a thousand galaxies are known members of the Virgo Cluster, the closest large cluster of galaxies to our own local group. In fact, the galaxy cluster is difficult to appreciate all at once because it covers such a large area on the sky.

Jupiter Unpeeled
15.02.2001

Slice Jupiter from pole to pole, peel back its outer layers of clouds, stretch them onto a flat surface ... and for all your trouble you'd end up with something that looks a lot like this. Scrolling right will reveal the full picture, a color mosaic of Jupiter from the Cassini spacecraft.

Asteroid Gaspra's Best Face
20.10.1995

Above is the best yet color image of the asteroid Gaspra based on data returned by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Color variations have been added to high resolution images and enhanced to highlight changes in reflectivity, surface structure and composition. The illuminated portion of the asteroid is about 11 miles long.

Stereo Saturn
7.09.2002

Get out your red/blue glasses and launch yourself into this stereo picture of Saturn! The picture is actually composed from two images recorded weeks apart by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during its visit to the Saturnian System in August of 1981.

The Water Vapor Channel
12.10.1996

What alien planet's bizarre landscape lurks below these fiery-looking clouds? It's only Planet Earth, of course -- as seen on the Water Vapor Channel. Hourly, images like this one (shown in false color) are brought to you by the orbiting GOES 8 satellite's multi-channel imager.

The Frothy Milky Way
2.05.1998

Astronomers have discovered that looking at dust along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy is a bit like looking into a frothy glass of beer. The dust between stars in our galaxy appears...

A Cerro Tololo Sky
13.03.2004

High atop a Chilean mountain lies one of the premier observatories of the southern sky: the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). Pictured above is the dome surrounding one of the site's best known instruments, the 4-meter Blanco Telescope.

The Summer Triangle Over Catalonia
10.08.2011

Can you find the Summer Triangle? It's not hard to find this famous triangle of stars this time of year from northern locations. Just look straight up after sunset and find three of the brightest stars in the sky that nearly form a triangle.

Infrared Trifid
25.07.2015

The Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. But where visible light pictures show the nebula...