Ancients of Sea and Sky
18.06.2018

They may look like round rocks, but they're alive. Moreover, they are modern versions of one of the oldest known forms of life: stromatolites. Fossils indicate that stromatolites appeared on Earth about 3.7 billion years ago -- even before many of the familiar stars in the modern night sky were formed.

Portrait of NGC 281
21.11.2018

Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590. Still, formed within the nebula that cluster's young, massive stars ultimately power the pervasive nebular glow.

NGC 6559: East of the Lagoon
6.10.2021

Slide your telescope just east of the Lagoon Nebula to find this alluring field of view in the rich starfields of the constellation Sagittarius toward the central Milky Way. Of course the Lagoon nebula is also known as M8, the eighth object listed in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright nebulae and star clusters.

Arp 286: Trio in Virgo
9.06.2022

This colorful telescopic field of view features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the constellation Virgo. On the right two spiky, foreground Milky Way stars echo the extragalactic hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy are like those in distant island universes.

Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud
27.06.2023

Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy.

M83: Star Streams and a Thousand Rubies
2.07.2024

Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms.

APOD: 2025 April 15 Б Planetary Nebula NGC 1514 from Webb
14.04.2025

What happens when a star runs out of nuclear fuel? For stars like our Sun, the center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmosphere is expelled into space to appear as a planetary nebula.

The Horsehead Nebula
9.12.2025

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance has assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula, it lies some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.

Cold Wind from the Boomerang Nebula
19.02.2003

A cold wind blows from the central star of the Boomerang Nebula. Seen here in a detailed false-color image recorded in 1998 by the Hubble Space Telescope, the nebula lies about 5,000 light-years away towards the grand southern constellation of Centaurus.

Sagittarius Triplet
9.09.2004

These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the view toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the nebula above and left of center, and colorful M20 at the lower left.