Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse
22.01.1996

Betelgeuse (sounds a lot like "beetle juice"), a red supergiant star about 600 lightyears distant, is shown here in this Hubble Space Telescope image which represents the first direct picture of the surface of a star other than the Sun.

The Large Cloud of Magellan
10.05.2006

Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible for southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan.

NGC 2359: Thor s Helmet
15.02.2014

This helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages is popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is more...

NGC 6995: The Bat Nebula
25.11.2019

Do 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.

A Crescent Nebula Star Field
15.04.2003

What caused the Crescent Nebula? Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible on the right, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago.

NGC 3372: The Great Nebula in Carina
19.07.1999

In one of the brightest parts of the Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebula.

The N44 Superbubble
25.06.2017

What created this gigantic hole? The vast emission nebula N44 in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud has a large, 250 light-year hole and astronomers are trying to figure out why. One possibility is particle winds expelled by massive stars in the bubble's interior that are pushing out the glowing gas.

Elusive Jellyfish Nebula
8.04.2004

Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in the net of this spectacular wide-field telescopic view. Flanked by two yellow-tinted stars at the foot of a celestial twin - Mu and Eta Geminorum - the Jellyfish Nebula is the brighter arcing ridge of emission with dangling tentacles just right of center.

The W4 Chimney
7.02.2000

A huge chimney venting hot clouds of gas out from the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy has recently been imaged in radio waves. The Canadian Galactic Plane Survey team used an array of radio telescopes to survey an ionized gas region known as W4.

Barnards Loop around the Horsehead Nebula
24.02.2009

Why is the Horsehead Nebula surrounded by a bubble? Although hard to make out above, the famous Horsehead Nebula is the slight dark indentation in the bright streak just to the left of the image center. Glowing like an emission nebula, the origin of the bubble, known as Barnard's Loop, is currently unknown.