Magellanic Mountain
28.04.2018

Flanked by satellite galaxies of the Milky Way a volcanic peak rises from this rugged horizon. The southern night skyscape looks toward the south over Laguna Lejia and the altiplano of the Antofagasta Region of northern Chile.

NGC 5643: Nearby Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
5.10.2020

What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 5643? A swirling disk of stars and gas, NGC 5643's appearance is dominated by blue spiral arms and brown dust, as shown in the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

M100 and the Expanding Universe
9.01.1996

The distance to the swirling grand design spiral M100 is causing quite a stir among astronomers. Many believe that the Hubble Space Telescope's recent distance measurement to this galaxy accurately calibrates the expansion rate of the universe. Others believe this distance measurement is misleading.

Eclipsed Moon Montage
22.05.2003

After watching this month's lunar eclipse, amateur astronomer Sebastien Gauthier carefully composed this montage of telescopic images of the Moon sliding through planet Earth's shadow. While the deepest part of the total...

Hen 1357: New Born Nebula
3.04.1998

This Hubble Space Telescope picture shows Hen-1357, the youngest known planetary nebula. Graceful, gentle curves and symmetry suggest its popular name - The Stingray Nebula. Observations in the 1970s detected no nebular material, but this image from March 1996 clearly shows the Stingray's emerging bubbles and rings of shocked and ionized gas.

NGC 604: Giant Stellar Nursery
9.12.2003

Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.

The Iron Sun
25.09.2004

The ultraviolet light emitted by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Farenheit was used to record the above picture of the Sun on September 22, 2001, the date of that year's autumnal equinox.

Mysterious Pluto and Charon
9.04.2000

Pluto is the only planet in our Solar System remaining unphotographed by a passing spacecraft. Distant Pluto and its moon Charon therefore remain somewhat mysterious. In addition to direct imaging by the Hubble Space...

Aeolian Mars
2.02.2000

Mars' atmosphere is relatively thin, still when martian winds blow they weather and shape its surface. Like familiar aeolian features on Earth, this field of dunes within Mars' Rabe crater exhibits graceful undulating ridges which can shift as windblown material is deposited on the dunes' windward face and falls away down the steeper leeward slopes.

The Cat's Eye Nebula
31.10.1999

Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals The Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known.