June s Young Crescent Moon
7.06.2008

Serene skyviews were enjoyed across planet Earth earlier this week with a young crescent Moon low in the western sky just after sunset. Recorded on June 4, this colorful example includes a quiet beach in the foreground with the city lights of Lisbon, Portugal, and the Sintra Mountains along the horizon.

Aurora Over Norway
20.09.2010

Auroras can make spectacular sights. Photographed above last weekend, flowing multi-colored auroras helped illuminate a busy sky above TromsЬ, Norway. Besides the spectacular aurora pictured above, the photographer caught three satellites streaks, one airplane streak, and a friend trying to capture the same sight.

IC 1396: Emission Nebula in Cepheus
5.08.2012

Stunning emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Energized by the bright, bluish central star seen here, this star forming region sprawls across hundreds of light-years -- spanning over three degrees on the sky while nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth.

Night at the Drive In
20.09.2013

Colorful stars trail through this late summer, night skyscape from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The picture was composed by stacking 12 consecutive 1 minute long digital camera exposures to follow the trails, a reflection of our fair planet's daily rotation.

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...

The Spectre of Veszprem
23.08.2014

The city of Veszprem, Hungary was only briefly haunted by this mysterious spectre. On the morning of August 11, its monstrous form hovered in the mist above municipal buildings near the town center.

NGC 602 in the Flying Lizard Nebula
6.03.2015

Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is just below center in this telescopic field of view with the angular size of the Full Moon on the sky.

Sky Lights in the New Year
2.01.2016

Triggered by the impact of a coronal mass ejection on New Year's eve, a moderate geomagnetic storm brought a celebration of sky lights to planet Earth's high latitudes yesterday. In this New Year's nightscape, the shimmering reddish curtains of aurora australis along a southern horizon are captured over Morgiana, SW Victoria, Australia.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
26.05.2017

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo appearing as a faint, extended object in small telescopes. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight.

A Horizon with Blue and Red
5.12.2017

What's happening on the horizon? The horizon itself, past a spinach field in Guatemala, shows not only trees but a large volcano: the VolcАn de Fuego (Volcano of Fire). The red glow at the top of the volcano is hot lava.