NGC 1365: A Nearby Barred Spiral Galaxy
13.04.2003

Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a bar, but perhaps not so prominent as the one in NGC 1365, shown above. The persistence and motion of the bar imply relatively massive spiral arms.

Night Hides the World
16.10.2015

Stars come out as evening twilight fades in this serene skyscape following the Persian proverb "Night hides the world, but reveals a universe." The scene finds the Sun setting over northern Kenya and the night will soon hide the shores of Lake Turkana, home to many Nile crocodiles.

Open Cluster M8 in the Lagoon
27.01.1996

The large majestic Lagoon Nebula is home for many young stars and hot gas. The Lagoon Nebulae is so large and bright it can be seen without a telescope. Formed only several million years...

White Dwarf Stars Cool
10.09.2000

Diminutive by stellar standards, white dwarf stars are also intensely hot ... but they are cooling. No longer do their interior nuclear fires burn, so they will continue to cool until they fade away. This Hubble Space Telescope image covers a small region near the center of a globular cluster known as M4.

Columbia Waits, Discovery Launches
8.08.1995

Space Shuttle Discovery launches while the Space Shuttle Columbia is readied for a future mission. Space shuttles are launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At this date there are four operating space shuttles: Atlantis, Columbia, Discovery, and Endeavour. This mission is most famous for carrying the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.

Our Story in One Minute
26.11.2017

Do you have a minute -- to see the entire backstory of human existence? This thrilling video culls together multiple teasing video snippets in an attempt to succinctly summarize our history. And sets it to music.

The Millennium that Defined Earth
31.12.2000

When the second millennium began, people generally knew that the Earth was round, but few saw much of it beyond their local village. As the millennium progressed, humans mapped the continents, circumnavigated the globe, and determined the composition of the Earth.

Uranus' Moon Ariel: Valley World
3.03.1996

What formed Ariel's valleys? This question presented itself when Voyager 2 passed this satellite of Uranus in January 1986. Speculation includes that heating caused by the ancient tides of Uranus caused moonquakes and massive shifting of the moon's surface.

Astro 1 In Orbit
4.05.1996

In December of 1990, the Space Shuttle Columbia carried an array of astronomical telescopes high above the Earth's obscuring atmosphere to observe the Universe at ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. The telescopes, known...

The Galaxy and the Quasar
7.10.2002

Is the galaxy in the center connected to the quasar on the upper right? Disagreements about systems like this have raged for decades and have been used to challenge the foundations of modern cosmology.