APOD: 2025 May 26 Б Spiral Galaxy NGC 2566 from Webb
26.05.2025

WhatБs happening in the center of spiral galaxy NGC 2566? First, the eight rays that appear to be coming out of the center in the featured infrared image are not real Б they are diffraction spikes caused by the mechanical structure of the Webb space telescope itself.

APOD: 2026 April 29 Б The Moon, Venus, and the Pleiades
29.04.2026

No, Earth did not recently acquire six more moons! TodayБs APOD is a combination of images following the Moon, Venus, and the Pleiades across a southern Sicilian sky as twilight turned to evening on April 19.

Twistin By The Lagoon
25.09.1999

The awesome spectacle of starbirth produces extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight -- bombarding dusty molecular clouds inside the Lagoon Nebula (M8). At least two long funnel shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have apparently been formed by this activity.

The Center of Centaurus A
22.05.1998

A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red light has been processed to present a natural color picture of this cosmic maelstrom.

A Quasar-Galaxy Collision?
22.10.1995

In 1963 astronomers were astounded to discover that certain faint, star-like objects have very large redshifts. The large redshifts imply that these objects, now known as quasars (QUASi-stellAR objects), lie near the edge of the observable Universe.

Blue Jet Lightning
12.11.1995

Recently two new types of lightning have been verified: red sprites and blue jets. These atmospheric discharges occur very high in the Earth's atmosphere - much higher than the familiar form of lightning. Blue jets appear blue in color and go from the tops of clouds to a height of about 50 kilometers.

Greetings from the Pioneers
30.06.1996

Launched in the early 1970s Pioneer 10 and 11 were appropriately named - becoming the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, first to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, and the first human artifacts to venture beyond the solar system.

Twistin by the Lagoon
22.08.1998

The awesome spectacle of starbirth produces extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight -- bombarding dusty molecular clouds inside the Lagoon Nebula (M8). At least two long funnel shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have apparently been formed by this activity.

Spiral Eddies On Planet Earth
16.01.1999

Can you identify this wispy stellar nebula? How many light-years from Earth did you say? Resembling a twisting cloud of gas and dust between the stars this swirling form is actually close by - a spiral eddy formed near the North Atlantic Gulf Stream off the East coast of the U. S.

Io Shadow
23.04.1999

Orbiting Jupiter once every 43 hours, the volcanic moon Io cruises 500,000 kilometers above swirling, banded cloud-tops. Orbiting Earth once every 1.5 hours, the Hubble Space Telescope watched as Io accompanied by its shadow crossed the face of the reigning gas giant planet in 1997.