A Night Sky Vista from Sardinia
21.10.2020

How many famous sky objects can you find in this image? The featured dark sky composite combines over 60 exposures spanning over 220 degrees to create a veritable menagerie of night sky wonders. Visible...

APOD: 2025 September 9 Б Up from the Earth: Gigantic Jet Lightning
9.09.2025

What's that rising up from the Earth? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early in July, astronaut Nicole Ayers saw an unusual type of lightning rising up from the Earth: a gigantic jet. The powerful jet appears near the center of the featured image in red, white, and blue.

Zodiacal Light Vs. Milky Way
20.03.2010

Ghostly Zodiacal light, featured near the center of this remarkable panorama, is produced as sunlight is scattered by dust in the Solar System's ecliptic plane. In the weeks surrounding the March equinox (today...

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
8.08.2014

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. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight.

Gemini Observatory North
15.10.2016

It does look like a flying saucer, but this technologically advanced structure is not here to deliver the wise extraterrestrial from the scifi classic movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. It is here to advance our knowledge of the Universe though.

Orion Nebula: The 2MASS View
20.04.2002

Few astronomical sights excite the imagination like the nearby stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. The Nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away.

APOD: 2026 May 15 Б R3 PanSTARRS: An Orion Comet
15.05.2026

Comet R3 PanSTARRS might be best remembered as an Orion comet. A key reason is because Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) was near its most spectacular -- in terms of tail visibility -- when passing in front of the iconic constellation.

Multicolor Venus
1.03.2012

Brilliant Venus now shines in western skies at twilight. Seen as the prominent evening star, the planet is a tantalizing celestial beacon even for casual skygazers. Venus can offer less than satisfying telescopic views though. The planet is shrouded in reflective clouds that appear bright but featureless at the eyepiece.

APOD: 2025 November 3 Б A Double Helix Lunar Eclipse
3.11.2025

The image was timed to capture a total lunar eclipse -- but it came with quite a twist. First, the eclipse: the fully Earth-shadowed Moon is visible as the orange orb near the top.

Explosions Discovered Near Galactic Center
28.02.1996

Tremendous explosions near the center of our Galaxy were discovered just this past December and are being announced today by a paper in Nature and a press conference at NASA. Bursts like these have...