MyCn18: An Hourglass Planetary Nebula
7.08.2011

The sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected - its core becoming a cooling, fading white dwarf.

N11: Star Clouds of the LMC
11.02.2013

Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region...

The Big Dipper Enhanced
16.03.2015

Do you see it? This common question frequently precedes the rediscovery of one of the most commonly recognized configurations of stars on the northern sky: the Big Dipper. This grouping of stars is one of the few things that has likely been seen, and will be seen, by every human generation.

The Last Days of Venus as the Evening Star
6.01.2022

That's not a young crescent Moon posing behind cathedral towers after sunset. It's Venus in a crescent phase. About 40 million kilometers away and about 2 percent illuminated by sunlight...

APOD: 2023 June 19 Б The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
19.06.2023

The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a whirlwind of spectacular star formation. Visible near the image center, at least two long funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have been formed by extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight. A tremendously bright nearby star, Herschel 36, lights the area.

APOD: 2026 March 14 Б A Year for K2-315b
14.03.2026

Want to visit a planet that has 3.14 days in a year? Then plan a trip to K2-315b, an earth-sized planet orbiting around a cool, red, M dwarf star about once every 3.14 days.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 3310 Across the Visible
11.09.2001

The party is still going on in spiral galaxy NGC 3310. Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 likely collided with a smaller galaxy causing the large spiral galaxy to light up with a tremendous burst of star formation.

A Higher Dimensional Universe
18.04.2001

Does our universe have higher but unusual spatial dimensions? This idea has been gaining popularity to help explain why vastly separated parts of our universe appear so similar, and why the geometry of our universe does not seem to result naturally from the amounts of matter it

At the Core of M15
20.11.1995

Densely packed stars in the core of the globular cluster M15 are shown in this Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image taken in April of 1994. The stars revealed are contained in an area 1.6 light years across and their colors roughly indicate their temperatures - hot stars appear blue, cooler stars look reddish-orange.

Tracking Saturn's Moons
12.05.1996

These five pairs of Hubble Space Telescope images track some of Saturn's moons as they orbit the ringed planet. A pair of images was taken every 97 minutes on November 21, 1995 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2, the normally bright ring system appearing nearly edge-on.