Northern Equinox Eclipse
20.03.2015

Snowy and cold is weather you might expect at the start of spring for Longyearbyen on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. But that turned out to be good weather for watching the Moon's umbral shadow race across northern planet Earth.

The Da Vinci Glow
3.04.2025

A 26 hour old Moon poses behind the craggy outline of the Italian Dolomites in this twilight mountain and skyscape. The one second long exposure was captured near moonset on March 30. And while...

Moon Venus Mars Skyline
27.02.2015

Taken on February 20, five different exposures made in rapid succession were used to created this tantalizing telephoto image. In combination, they reveal a wide range of brightness visible to the eye on that frigid evening, from the urban glow of the Quebec City skyline to the triple conjunction of Moon, Venus and Mars.

Across the Sun
30.04.2015

A long solar filament stretches across the relatively calm surface of the Sun in this telescopic snap shot from April 27. The negative or inverted narrowband image was made in the light of ionized hydrogen atoms.

Ganymede s Shadow
25.03.2017

Approaching opposition early next month, Jupiter is offering some of its best telescopic views from planet Earth. On March 17, this impressively sharp image of the solar system's ruling gas giant was taken from a remote observatory in Chile.

NGC 289: Swirl in the Southern Sky
5.04.2018

About 70 million light-years distant, gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 289 is larger than our own Milky Way. Seen nearly face-on, its bright core and colorful central disk give way to remarkably faint, bluish spiral arms. The extensive arms sweep well over 100 thousand light-years from the galaxy's center.

The Swirling Center of NGC 4261
5.12.1995

What evil lurks in the hearts of galaxies? The above picture by the Hubble Space Telescope of the center of the nearby galaxy NGC 4261 tells us one dramatic tale. Here gas and dust are seen swirling near this elliptical galaxy's center into what is almost certainly a massive black hole.

The Sagittarius Dwarf Tidal Stream
30.09.2003

Is our Milky Way Galaxy out to lunch? Recent wide field images and analyses now indicate that our home galaxy is actually still in the process of devouring its closest satellite neighbor. This unfortunate...

Elliptical Galaxy M87
20.05.2006

In spiral galaxies, majestic winding arms of young stars and interstellar gas and dust rotate in a flat disk around a bulging galactic nucleus. But elliptical galaxies seem to be simpler. Lacking gas and dust to form new stars, their randomly swarming older stars, give them an ellipsoidal (egg-like) shape.

Galaxies Cluster Toward the Great Attractor
4.01.2000

Galaxies dot the sky like jewels in the direction of a mass so large it is known simply as the Great Attractor. The galaxies pictured above are part of a cluster of galaxies called ACO 3627 near the center of the Great Attractor.