Hen 1357: New Born Nebula
6.10.2001

This Hubble Space Telescope snapshot shows Hen-1357, the youngest known planetary nebula. Graceful, gentle curves and symmetry suggest its popular name - The Stingray Nebula. Observations in the 1970s detected no nebular material, but this image from March 1996 clearly shows the Stingray's emerging bubbles and rings of shocked and ionized gas.

Partial Eclipse, Cloudy Day
21.12.2001

Welcome to the December Solstice, first day of winter in the north and summer in the southern hemisphere of planet Earth. Today the Sun reaches its southernmost declination in the sky at 19:21 Universal Time.

Ring of Fire from Cape Wrath
5.06.2003

If the Moon's apparent diameter is not quite large enough to cover the Sun during a solar eclipse, an annular eclipse can be the result -- a spectacle of silhouetted Moon surrounded by a solar "ring of fire".

PKS285 02: A Young Planetary Nebula
22.06.1999

How do planetary nebulae acquire their exquisite geometrical shapes? To investigate this, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to image several young planetary nebulae. These nebulae are the outer envelopes of stars like our Sun that have recently been cast away to space, leaving behind a core fading to become a white dwarf.

APOD: 2023 June 12 Б The Largest Satellites of Earth
12.06.2023

WhatБs that near the Moon? ItБs the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS may appear to be physically near the Moon, it is not Б it is physically near the Earth.

Cold Wind from the Boomerang Nebula
20.02.2003

A cold wind blows from the central star of the Boomerang Nebula. Seen here in a detailed false-color image recorded in 1998 by the Hubble Space Telescope, the nebula lies about 5,000 light-years away towards the grand southern constellation of Centaurus.

The Extraordinary Spiral in LL Pegasi
8.07.2018

What created the strange spiral structure on the upper left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase, when its outer atmosphere is ejected.

NGC 7027: A Dying Star's Nebula
17.01.1996

This pseudo-color composite of two recent Hubble Space Telescope images is a picture of a Sun-like star nearing the end of its lifetime. The exquisite details visible in this planetary nebula indicate that when...

SOHO Composite: Coronal Mass Ejection
20.08.1998

This complex composite image of an ominous and spectacular event - an expanding storm of energetic particles from the Sun - was constructed using data recorded by the SOHO spacecraft on November 6, 1997. Four images...

Phoenix at Mars
27.05.2008

The Phoenix lander's footpads are about the size of a dinner plate. One of three is shown at the right, covered with Martian soil after a successful soft landing on the Red Planet on May 25.