Henize 70: A Superbubble in the LMC
30.11.1999

Massive stars -- upwards of tens of times the mass of the Sun - profoundly affect their galactic environment. Churning and mixing the clouds of gas and dust between the stars, they leave their mark on the compositions and locations of future generations of stars and star systems.

A Black Hole Disrupts a Passing Star
24.03.2020

What happens to a star that goes near a black hole? If the star directly impacts a massive black hole, then the star falls in completely -- and everything vanishes. More likely, though, the star...

APOD: 2025 October 19 Б Comet Churyumov Gerasimenko Creates Its Tails
19.10.2025

Where do comet tails come from? There are usually no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. One of the best images of emerging jets...

A Prominent Solar Prominence
27.01.1997

One of the most spectacular solar sights is a prominence. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field. The Earth would easily fit under one of the loops of the prominence shown in the above picture.

Antares
26.07.1998

Antares is a huge star. In a class called red supergiant, Antares is about 700 times the diameter of our own Sun, 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius and one of the brighter stars in all the night sky.

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.

Trifid Pillars and Jets
28.12.2003

Dust pillars are like interstellar mountains. They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are being slowly eroded away by a hostile environment. Visible in the above picture...

The Fox Fur Nebula
14.03.2005

The nebula surrounding bright star S Mon is filled with dark dust and glowing gas. The strange shapes originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways with the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars.

Sun and Prominence
4.03.2014

Dramatic prominences can sometimes be seen looming just beyond the edge of the sun. Such was the case last week as a large prominence, visible above, highlighted a highly active recent Sun. A waving...

N159 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
28.01.2017

Over 150 light-years across, this cosmic maelstrom of gas and dust is not too far away. It lies south of the Tarantula Nebula in our satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud a mere 180,000 light-years distant. Massive stars have formed within.