APOD: 2024 May 15 Б AR 3664 at the Suns Edge
15.05.2024

What did the monster active region that created the recent auroras look like when at the Sun's edge? There, AR 3664 better showed its 3D structure. Pictured, a large multi-pronged solar prominence...

APOD: 2025 June 10 Б Enceladus in True Color
10.06.2025

Do oceans under the ice of Saturn's moon Enceladus contain life? A reason to think so involves long features -- some dubbed tiger stripes -- that are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space.

Hale Bopp: A Continuing Tail
20.02.1998

Where is Hale-Bopp now? The Great Comet of 1997, one of the largest and most active comets ever, is outbound about 400 million miles from the sun. Too faint for viewing without telescopes or binoculars, Hale-Bopp is presently positioned in the very southerly constellation of Pictor.

A Scorpio Sky Spectacular
11.09.2007

If Scorpio looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpio more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, color filters, and a digital image processor.

A Beautiful Boomerang Nebula
28.12.2007

This symmetric cloud dubbed the Boomerang Nebula was created by a high-speed wind of gas and dust blowing from an aging central star at speeds of nearly 600,000 kilometers per hour. The rapid...

Saturn at Equinox
30.09.2009

How would Saturn look if its ring plane pointed right at the Sun? Before last month, nobody knew. Every 15 years, as seen from Earth, Saturn's rings point toward the Earth and appear to disappear.

NGC 6960: The Witch s Broom Nebula
29.05.2013

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant.

NGC 6960: The Witchs Broom Nebula
8.04.2018

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 4038 in Collision
23.05.2018

This galaxy is having a bad millennium. In fact, the past 100 million years haven't been so good, and probably the next billion or so will be quite tumultuous. Visible toward the lower...

The Great Carina Nebula
27.12.2018

A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the smaller, more northerly Great...