HESS Telescopes Explore the High Energy Sky
8.01.2019

They may look like modern mechanical dinosaurs but they are enormous swiveling eyes that watch the sky. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) Observatory is composed of four 12-meter reflecting-mirror telescopes surrounding a larger telescope housing a 28-meter mirror.

APOD: 2024 February 18 Б Hoags Object: A Nearly Perfect Ring Galaxy
18.02.2024

Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older.

NGC 1365: Barred Spiral Galaxy
8.10.1999

NGC 1365 is a giant barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter and 60 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Fornax. These three recently released images offer views of this majestic island universe in visible and infrared light.

The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
6.01.1998

Oh what a tangled web a planetary nebula can weave. The Red Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can result when a normal star ejects its outer gases and becomes a white dwarf star.

A Close-Up of the Horsehead Nebula
5.10.1996

1500 light years away lies a nebula of quite peculiar shape. How did the dark dust cloud shown above come to be shaped like a horse's head? Nobody knows! Barnard 33, as this...

An Unusual Globule in IC 1396
19.10.2003

Is there a monster in IC 1396? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms, some nearly human. The only real monster here, however, is a bright young star too far from Earth to hurt us.

Aurora Iowa
20.05.2005

Early last Sunday morning stars were not the only lights in Iowa skies. The northern lights also shone from the heavens, extending across the midwestern USA and other locations not often graced with auroral displays.

The Coma Cluster of Galaxies
28.03.1999

Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies. Each of these galaxies house billions of stars - just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does.

Melotte 15 in the Heart
27.12.2013

Cosmic clouds seem to form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. Of course, the clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster, Melotte 15.

APOD: 2025 October 15 Б Rocket Launch Plume over Tucson
15.10.2025

Yes, but can your sunset do this? Looking west from Tucson, Arizona, USA one day last month, the sunset sky looked strange when it briefly lit up with the plume of a rocket launched from California a few minutes earlier.