Multicolor Venus
1.03.2012

Brilliant Venus now shines in western skies at twilight. Seen as the prominent evening star, the planet is a tantalizing celestial beacon even for casual skygazers. Venus can offer less than satisfying telescopic views though. The planet is shrouded in reflective clouds that appear bright but featureless at the eyepiece.

At the Heart of Orion
11.03.2017

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.

Saturnian Aurora
17.09.2000

Girdling the second largest planet in the Solar System, Saturn's Rings are one of the most spectacular sights for earthbound telescopes. This image from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope's STIS instrument, offers a striking view of another kind of ring around Saturn - pole encircling rings of ultraviolet aurora.

TRACE and the Active Sun
15.05.1998

This dramatic high resolution picture looking across the edge of the Sun was taken April 24th by a telescope on board the newly launched Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite. It shows graceful arcs of intensely hot gas suspended in powerful looping magnetic fields which soar above a solar active region.

NGC 6302: Big Bright Bug Nebula
5.05.2004

The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees...

Sun Storm: A Coronal Mass Ejection
5.02.2007

What's happening to our Sun? Another Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)! The Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft has imaged many erupting filaments lifting off the active solar surface and blasting enormous bubbles of magnetic plasma into space.

Scorpius in Red and Blue
25.05.2012

Cosmic dust clouds dim the light of background stars. But they also reflect the light of stars nearby. Since bright stars tend to radiate strongly in the blue portion of the visible spectrum, and the interstellar dust scatters blue light more strongly than red, the dusty reflection nebulae tend to be blue.

Biomarker Phosphine Discovered in the Atmosphere of Venus
14.09.2020

Could there be life floating in the atmosphere of Venus? Although Earth's planetary neighbor has a surface considered too extreme for any known lifeform, Venus' upper atmosphere may be sufficiently mild for tiny airborne microbes. This usually disfavored prospect took an unexpected upturn yesterday with the announcement of the discovery of Venusian phosphine.

Bright Spiral Galaxy M81 from Hubble
29.05.2007

The Hubble Space Telescope has resolved individual stars in a spectacular new image of nearby spiral galaxy M81. The feat is similar to Edwin Hubble's historic images with the Mt. Wilson 100-inch Hooker Telescope in the 1920s that resolved stars in neighboring galaxy M31.

A Swift Look at Tempel 1
3.07.2005

Comet Tempel 1 is targeted for a collision with the impactor probe from NASA's Deep Impact Spacecraft at about 1:52am EDT on July 4th (other time zones). Cameras on the impactor probe...