38 Hours in the M81 Group
9.04.2025

From a garden on planet Earth, 38 hours of exposure with a camera and small telescope produced this cosmic photo of the M81 galaxy group. In fact, the group's dominant galaxy M81 is near the center of the frame sporting grand spiral arms and a bright yellow core.

Hale-Bopp, Jupiter, and the Milky Way
23.07.1996

Shining brightly, the mighty Jupiter rules this gorgeous Kodacolor photo of the Milky Way near Sagittarius. Astronomer Bill Keel took the picture earlier this month (July 7) while standing near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea contemplating the sky in the direction of the center of the Galaxy (right of picture center).

The Densest Galaxy
4.10.2013

The bright core and outer reaches of giant elliptical galaxy M60 (NGC 4649) loom large at the upper left of this sharp close-up from the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 54 million light-years away and 120,000 light-years across, M60 is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster.

Red Moon, Green Beam
18.04.2014

This is not a scene from a sci-fi special effects movie. The green beam of light and red lunar disk are real enough, captured in the early morning hours of April 15. Of course, the reddened lunar disk is easy to explain as the image was taken during this week's total lunar eclipse.

The Dark River to Antares
15.05.2020

A dark river seems to flow through this sky from the horizon toward colorful clouds near red giant star Antares. Murky looking, the dark river is a dusty nebula obscuring background starlight near the central Milky Way, although the dark dust nebula contains mostly hydrogen molecular gas.

Gamma Ray Earth and Sky
6.12.2013

For an Earth-orbiting gamma-ray telescope, Earth is actually the brightest source of gamma-rays, the most energetic form of light. Gamma-rays from Earth are produced when high energy particles, cosmic rays from space, crash into the atmosphere.

A Cosmic Snowball
30.05.1997

Like cosmic snowballs, fluffy comet-like objects the size of houses and composed mostly of water-ice, may be pummeling planet Earth 5 to 30 times a minute. This controversial theory was originally proposed in 1986 by Dr. Louis Frank (U. Iowa) based on data from NASA's Dynamics Explorer 1.

The GRB 110328A Symphony
19.04.2011

A symphony of planet-wide observations began abruptly on March 28 when the Earth-orbiting Swift satellite detected a burst of high-frequency gamma-rays from GRB 110328A. When the same source flared again after a 45 minute pause it was clear this event was not a typical gamma-ray burst.

An ALMA Telescope Array Time Lapse
26.05.2014

It is the most expensive and complex ground-based astronomy project ever -- what will it see tonight? The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) project consists of 66 dishes, many the size of a small house, situated in the high altitude Atacama Desert in Northern Chile.

Exploring The Universe With IUE (1978-1996)
30.09.1996

How do planets, stars, and galaxies form? How do they evolve? The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite was launched in 1978 and operated by NASA/ ESA/ PPARC to help provide answers to some of the most fundamental questions about the contents of our universe.