Aurora over Sweden
30.05.2020

It was bright and green and stretched across the sky. This striking aurora display was captured in 2016 just outside of цstersund, Sweden. Six photographic fields were merged to create the featured panorama spanning almost 180 degrees. Particularly striking aspects of this aurora include its sweeping arc-like shape and its stark definition.

Great Refractor and Lunar Eclipse
25.11.2021

Rain clouds passed and the dome of the Lick Observatory's 36 inch Great Refractor opened on November 19. The historic telescope was pointed toward a partially eclipsed Moon. Illuminated by dim red lighting...

Chamaeleon I Molecular Cloud
16.02.2022

Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation. They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex.

Magellanic Clouds over Chile
10.02.2023

The two prominent clouds in this Chilean Atacama Desert skyscape captured on January 21 actually lie beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Known as the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds they are so named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first circumnavigation of planet Earth.

Lynds Dark Nebula 1251
21.06.2024

Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, LDN 1251 is also less appetizingly known as "The Rotten Fish Nebula." The dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region.

APOD: 2024 August 27 Б Moon Eclipses Saturn
26.08.2024

What if Saturn disappeared? Sometimes, it does. It doesn't really go away, though, it just disappears from view when our Moon moves in front. Such a Saturnian eclipse, more formally called an occultation, was visible along a long swath of Earth -- from Peru, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Italy -- only a few days ago.

M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
17.02.1998

The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of "annoying" diffuse objects not to be confused with "interesting" comets.

M63: The Sunflower Galaxy
27.06.2000

One of the bright spiral galaxies visible in the north sky is M63, the Sunflower Galaxy. M63, also catalogued as NGC 5055, can be found with a small telescope in the constellation of Canes Venaciti.

A Slice of the Universe with 2dF
14.06.2000

What can 100,000 galaxies tell you? Perhaps the structure and composition of the universe. Astronomers using the Two Degree Field (2dF) spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in Australia have now measured the redshifts of over 100,000 galaxies in a thin ribbon of the sky.

The Large Cloud of Magellan
18.09.1995

Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during their famous voyage around the world. As a result, two fuzzy cloud like objects, nestled among the southern constellations of Doradus and Tucana are now known as the Clouds of Magellan.