Namibian Nights
4.02.2013

Namibia has some of the darkest nights visible from any continent. It is therefore home to some of the more spectacular skyscapes, a few of which have been captured in the above time-lapse video.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in Light and Sound
2.08.2021

Have you heard about the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field? Either way, you've likely not heard about it like this -- please run your cursor over the featured image and listen! The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF)...

Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
29.08.2021

Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth.

Magnetar
27.05.1998

What do you call a neutron star with a super-strong magnetic field? You guessed it ... a Magnetar. Imagine a star with more mass than the sun, the density of a neutron, and a magnetic field about a thousand trillion (a one followed by 15 zeroes) times stronger than Earth's.

Schwassmann Wachmann 3: Fragment B
4.05.2006

Periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has fallen apart before. A cosmic souffle of ice and dust left over from the early solar system, this comet was seen to split into several large pieces during the close-in part of its orbit in 1995.

Nix and Hydra
24.06.2006

Discovered in mid-2005, Pluto's small moons were provisionally designated S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2. They have now been officially christened Nix and Hydra. Compared to Pluto and its large moon Charon...

Solar System Family Portrait
13.07.2024

In 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever Solar System family portrait. The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane.

Centaurus A: X Rays from an Active Galaxy
16.08.2001

Its core hidden from optical view by a thick lane of dust, the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A was among the first objects observed by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. Astronomers were not disappointed, as Centaurus A's appearance in x-rays makes its classification as an active galaxy easy to appreciate.

Mira: The Wonderful Star
5.05.2005

To seventeenth century astronomers, Omicron Ceti or Mira was known as a wonderful star - a star whose brightness could change dramatically in the course of about 11 months. Modern astronomers now recognize an entire class of long period Mira-type variables as cool, pulsating, red giant stars, 700 or so times the diameter of the Sun.

X-Ray Stars Of Orion
4.02.2000

The stars of Orion shine brightly in northern winter skies where the constellation harbors the closest large stellar nursery, the Great Nebula of Orion, a mere 1500 light-years away. In fact, the apparently bright...