Animation: Black Hole Star Shredder
27.04.2021

What happens if a star gets too close to a black hole? The black hole can rip it apart -- but how? It's not the high gravitational attraction itself that's the problem -- it's the difference in gravitational pull across the star that creates the destruction.

Aurora Over White Dome Geyser
20.02.2022

Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. Colorful auroras erupted unexpectedly a few years ago, with green aurora appearing near the horizon and brilliant bands of red aurora blooming high overhead. A bright Moon lit the foreground of this picturesque scene, while familiar stars could be seen far in the distance.

APOD: 2024 September 4 Б NGC 6995: The Bat Nebula
4.09.2024

Can you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star.

APOD: 2026 March 19 Б Launch Plume: SpaceX Jellyfish
19.03.2026

Even if you live with your head in the clouds, you wonБt find a jellyfish like this one very often. The featured image shows a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on March 4.

Blue Flash
9.01.2002

Difficult to observe, the momentary green flash above the rising or setting sun has been documented as a phenomenon caused by the atmospheric bending or refraction of sunlight. Like a weak prism, the Earth's atmosphere breaks white sunlight into colors, bending red colors slightly and green and blue colors through increasingly larger angles.

The Milky Way's Center
15.03.1997

Although the Earth is round, our Galaxy appears truly flat. This was shown in dramatic fashion by the COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite which produced this premier view of the central region of our own Milky Way Galaxy in infrared light in1990.

APOD: 2006 January 1- The Largest Rock in the Solar System
1.01.2006

There, that faint dot in the center - that's the largest rock known in our Solar System. It is larger than every known asteroid, moon, and comet nucleus. It is larger than any other local rocky planet.

A Giant Gouge on Asteroid Eros
21.02.2000

Asteroid 433 Eros is posing several riddles. NASA's robot spacecraft NEAR began orbiting the 30-kilometer space rock last week, and new pictures are now being beamed back to Earth regularly. As usual in science, when you arrive at a place you've never been before, you see things you don't immediately understand.

NGC 1818: A Young Globular Cluster
6.08.2008

Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way. Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. Today, there are perhaps 200 left. Many globular clusters were destroyed over the eons by repeated fateful encounters with each other or the Galactic center.

Three Galaxies in Draco
1.07.2009

This intriguing trio of galaxies is sometimes called the Draco Group, located in the northern constellation of (you guessed it) Draco. From left to right are edge-on spiral NGC 5981, elliptical galaxy NGC 5982...