The Hunter, the Bull, and Lovejoy
13.01.2015

Heading north, Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) is putting on its best show for comet watchers now, with moonlight absent from mid-January's early evening skies. An easy binocular target and just visible to the unaided eye from dark sites, the comet sweeps across the constellation Taurus the Bull in this deep night skyscape.

Road to the Galactic Center
25.10.2021

Does the road to our galaxy's center go through Monument Valley? It doesn't have to, but if your road does -- take a picture. In this case, the road is US Route 163 and iconic buttes on the Navajo National Reservation populate the horizon.

Globular Cluster M15 from Hubble
3.05.2011

Stars, like bees, swarm around the center of bright globular cluster M15. This ball of over 100,000 stars is a relic from the early years of our Galaxy, and continues to orbit the Milky Way's center.

Mars Engulfed
17.06.2018

What's happened to Mars? In 2001, Mars underwent a tremendous planet-wide dust storm -- one of the largest ever recorded from Earth. To show the extent, these two Hubble Space Telescope storm watch images from late June and early September (2001) offer dramatically contrasting views of the martian surface.

Good Morning Planets from Chile
17.06.2022

On June 15, innermost planet Mercury had wandered about as far from the Sun as it ever gets in planet Earth's sky. Near the eastern horizon just before sunrise it stands over distant Andes mountain peaks in this predawn snapshot from the valley of Rio Hurtado in Chile.

The Winter Hexagon
6.11.2002

Some of the brightest stars form a large and easily found pattern in the winter sky of Earth's northern hemisphere. Dubbed the Winter Hexagon, the stars involved can usually be identified even in the bright night skies of a big city.

Mars at the Moon s Edge
24.07.2003

What was that bright "star" near the Moon last week? Mars of course, as the Red Planet wandered near the wanning gibbous Moon early last Thursday morning, passing behind the lunar orb when viewed from some locations in South and Central America, the Carribean, and Florida.

RBSP Night Launch
2.09.2012

This graceful arc traces a Delta rocket climbing through Thursday's early morning skies over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA. Snug inside the rocket's Centaur upper stage were NASA's twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), now in separate orbits within planet Earth's Van Allen radiation belts.

The Milky Way Sets
26.08.2016

Under dark skies the setting of the Milky Way can be a dramatic sight. Stretching nearly parallel to the horizon, this rich, edge-on vista of our galaxy above the dusty Namibian desert stretches from bright, southern Centaurus (left) to Cepheus in the north (right).

The Crew 7 Nebula
31.08.2023

Not the James Webb Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 26. The snapshot was taken about...