Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona
13.08.2017

Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the light of the solar corona easily visible. Normally overwhelmed by the bright solar disk, the expansive corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, is an alluring sight.

Wide Field: Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
10.03.2020

What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros). Pictured as a star...

Three Tails of Comet NEOWISE
8.03.2021

What created the unusual red tail in Comet NEOWISE? Sodium. A spectacular sight back in the summer of 2020, Comet NEOWISE, at times, displayed something more than just a surprisingly striated white dust tail and a pleasingly patchy blue ion tail.

Milky Way Galaxy Doomed: Collision with Andromeda Pending
6.06.2022

Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble...

Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies
8.06.2024

This deep field mosaicked image presents a stunning view of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 recorded by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam. Also dubbed Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744 itself appears to be a ponderous merger of three different massive galaxy clusters. It lies some 3.5 billion light-years away, toward the constellation Sculptor.

APOD: 2025 October 5 Б A Long Storm System on Saturn
5.10.2025

It was one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen in late 2010, the featured cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn started larger than the Earth and soon spread completely around the planet.

Saturn at Night
24.10.2025

Saturn is bright in Earth's night skies. Telescopic views of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth.

APOD: 2026 July 22 Б The Corona Australis Cloud and the Chandelier Cluster
22.07.2026

The Southern Crown (Corona Australis) dazzles with young and ancient celestial jewels. The Corona Australis Cloud is a collage of reflection and emission nebulae on the left of todayБs image. At 430 light years away, this cloud is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth.

Jovian Aurora
23.01.1998

These two recently released Hubble Space Telescope close-ups show the Northern and Southern lights ... on Jupiter. Like aurora on Earth, these Jovian aurora are caused by charged particles funneled into the atmosphere above the planet's North (right) and South poles by magnetic fields.

Composite Crab
26.03.2005

(xxxre linkxxx) The Crab Pulsar, a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second, lies at the center of this composite image of the inner region of the well-known Crab Nebula. The spectacular...