T Tauri and Hind s Variable Nebula
3.05.2014

The yellowish star near center in this dusty telescopic skyview is T Tauri, prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars. Just next door is the yellow cosmic cloud historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555).

Wolf Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
1.07.2014

Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled by violent stellar winds.

Along the Cygnus Wall
3.07.2014

The prominent ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive shape popularly called The North America Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years along an outline that suggests the western coast of Mexico.

IC 1795: The Fishhead Nebula
23.12.2014

To some, this nebula looks like the head of a fish. However, this colorful cosmic portrait really features glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia.

At the Heart of Orion
12.03.2017

Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait, at the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium. Tightly gathered within a region about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion Nebula Star Cluster.

M33: Triangulum Galaxy
30.11.2017

The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way.

M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab Nebula
19.01.2020

Are your eyes good enough to see the Crab Nebula expand? The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact...

From the Pleiades to the Eridanus Loop
23.03.2020

If you stare at an interesting patch of sky long enough, will it look different? In the case of Pleiades and Hyades star clusters -- and surrounding regions -- the answer is: yes, pretty different. Long...

Cygnus: Bubble and Crescent
17.10.2020

These clouds of gas and dust drift through rich star fields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the high flying constellation Cygnus. Caught within the telescopic field of view are the Soap Bubble (lower left) and the Crescent Nebula (upper right).

North America and the Pelican
16.09.2021

Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds. On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental shape, lending the popular name North America Nebula to the emission region cataloged as NGC 7000.