X-Rays from the Galactic Plane
14.08.2001

In February 2000, the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory spent 27 hours staring into the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Its target was a spot in the small constellation Scutum, within the Milky Way's zone of avoidance where galactic gas and dust clouds block visible light, making a poor window for optical telescopes.

A Black Hole in M87's Center?
5.03.1996

The center of nearby giant galaxy M87 is a dense and violent place. In this 1994 photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope, a disk of hot gas was found to be orbiting at the center of this massive elliptical galaxy. The disk is evident on the lower left of the above photograph.

The Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulfur
11.01.2000

The Rosette Nebula is a large emission nebula located 3000 light-years away. The great abundance of hydrogen gas gives NGC 2237 its red color in most photographs. The wind from the open cluster of stars known as NGC 2244 has cleared a hole in the nebula's center.

NGC 5189: A Strange Planetary Nebula
11.12.1995

After a Sun-like star can no longer support fusion in its core, the center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmospheric layers are expelled into space and appear as a planetary nebula. This particular planetary nebula has a quite strange and chaotic structure.

NGC 6334: The Bear Claw Nebula
6.04.1999

NGC 6334 is a cloud of gas and dust that appears to be forming massive stars. At 5500 light-years away, the Bear Claw Nebula, as it has also been dubbed, is more than three times as distant as the Orion Nebula, but still close enough for detailed study.

M86 in the Central Virgo Cluster
14.08.2018

Is there a bridge of gas connecting these two great galaxies? Quite possibly, but it is hard to be sure. M86 on the upper left is a giant elliptical galaxy near the center of the nearby Virgo Cluster of galaxies.

Young Suns of NGC 7129
16.10.2025

Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129, some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus. While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is likely that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery around five billion years ago.

Loop I in the Northern Sky
3.05.1999

One of the largest coherent structures on the sky is known simply as Loop I and can best be seen in radio and X-ray maps. Spanning over 100 degrees, part of Loop I appears so prominent in northern sky maps that it is known as the North Polar Spur (NPS).

The Fox Fur Nebula
1.07.2002

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

A Solar Prominence from SOHO
9.11.2005

What happened to the Sun? Nothing very unusual: the strange-looking solar appendage on the lower left is actually just a spectacular looking version of a common solar prominence. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field.