APOD: 2023 March 15 Б Jupiter and Venus Converge over Germany
14.03.2023

This was a sky to show the kids. Early this month the two brightest planets in the night sky, Jupiter and Venus, appeared to converge. At their closest, the two planets were separated by only about the angular width of the full moon.

APOD: 2023 June 12 Б The Largest Satellites of Earth
11.06.2023

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.

M83: Star Streams and a Thousand Rubies
2.07.2024

Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
31.10.2024

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo but appears as only a faint smudge in the eyepiece of a small telescope.

APOD: 2025 February 2 Б Comet G3 ATLAS Disintegrates
1.02.2025

What's happening to Comet G3 ATLAS? After passing near the Sun in mid-January, the head of the comet has become dimmer and dimmer. By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) had become a headless wonder -- even though it continued to show impressive tails after sunset in the skies of Earth's Southern Hemisphere.

The Horsehead Nebula
9.12.2025

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance has assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula, it lies some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.

The T Tauri Star Forming System
4.06.2001

What did the Sun look like before there were planets? A prototype laboratory for the formation of low mass stars like our Sun is the T Tauri system, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of Taurus. In young systems, gravity causes a gas cloud to condense.

A Dust Jet From Hale-Bopp
29.07.1996

Approaching the inner Solar System, comet Hale-Bopp's icy nucleus is heated by sunlight, accelerating its production of dust and gas. Shrouded in the resulting cloud, known as the coma, the cometary nucleus remains hidden from direct view.

Cold Wind from the Boomerang Nebula
19.02.2003

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.

Spiral Eddies On Planet Earth
20.10.1997

Can you identify this stellar nebula? How many light-years from Earth did you say? Looking like a twisting cloud of gas and dust between the stars this wispy nebulosity is actually close by - a spiral eddy formed near the North Atlantic Gulf Stream off the East coast of the US.