APOD: 2025 March 4 Б A Quadruple Alignment over Italy
3.03.2025

Why does this Moon look so unusual? A key reason is its vivid red color. The color is caused by the deflection of blue light by Earth's atmosphere -- the same reason that the daytime sky appears blue. The Moon also appears unusually distorted.

The Protostars within Lynds 483
12.03.2025

Two protostars are hidden in a single pixel near the center of a striking hourglass-shaped nebula in this near-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The actively forming star system lies in a dusty molecular cloud cataloged as Lynds 483, some 650 light-years distant toward the constellation Serpens Cauda.

APOD: 2025 June 19 Б NGC 3521: Galaxy in a Bubble
18.06.2025

Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65.

Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud
16.11.2019

How do stars form? To help find out, astronomers created this tantalizing false-color composition of dust clouds and embedded newborn stars in infrared wavelengths with WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The cosmic canvas...

The Densest Galaxy
4.10.2013

The bright core and outer reaches of giant elliptical galaxy M60 (NGC 4649) loom large at the upper left of this sharp close-up from the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 54 million light-years away and 120,000 light-years across, M60 is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster.

Sirius, Sun, Moon, and Southern Cross
7.07.2000

From left to right are the enclosures of Yepun (ye-poon; Sirius), Antu (an-too; Sun), Kueyen (qua-yen; Moon), and Melipal (me-li-pal; Southern Cross), pictured here as night falls at Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. These are the four 8.2 meter wide telescope units of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

The Great Nebula in Orion
12.02.2002

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 1500 light-years away.

M42: A Mosaic of Orion's Great Nebula
22.05.1999

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulae. Here, 15 pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope have been mosaicked to cover the inner 2.5 light years of the nebula and illustrate its diverse nature.

M42: A Mosaic of Orion's Great Nebula
11.05.1997

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulae. Here, 15 pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope have been mosaicked to cover the inner 2.5 light years of the nebula and illustrate its diverse nature.

NGC 6823: Cloud Sculpting Star Cluster
4.10.2004

Star cluster NGC 6823 is ready for its close-up. The center of the open cluster, visible on the upper right, formed only about two million years ago and is dominated in brightness by a host of bright young blue stars.