I Zwicky 18: The Case of the Aging Galaxy
17.10.2007

How old is this galaxy? The galaxy on the left, I Zwicky 18, was once thought to be one of the youngest galaxies on record since its bright stars indicated an age of only 500 million years.

Cometary Globules
12.10.2013

Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the boarders of the nautical southern constellations Pupis and Vela. Composed of interstellar gas and dust, the grouping of light-year sized cometary globules is about 1300 light-years distant.

Lucy Launches to Eight Asteroids
20.10.2021

Why would this mission go out as far as Jupiter -- but then not visit Jupiter? Lucy's plan is to follow different leads about the origin of our Solar System than can be found at Jupiter -- where Juno now orbits.

APOD: 2023 August 22 Б The Pistachio Nebula
22.08.2023

This nebula had never been noted before. Newly discovered nebulas are usually angularly small and found by professionals using large telescopes. In contrast, the Pistachio Nebula was discovered by dedicated amateurs and, although faint, is nearly the size of the full Moon.

Twistin By The Lagoon
25.09.1999

The awesome spectacle of starbirth produces extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight -- bombarding dusty molecular clouds inside the Lagoon Nebula (M8). At least two long funnel shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have apparently been formed by this activity.

Greetings from the Pioneers
30.06.1996

Launched in the early 1970s Pioneer 10 and 11 were appropriately named - becoming the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, first to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, and the first human artifacts to venture beyond the solar system.

Twistin by the Lagoon
22.08.1998

The awesome spectacle of starbirth produces extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight -- bombarding dusty molecular clouds inside the Lagoon Nebula (M8). At least two long funnel shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have apparently been formed by this activity.

North North Temperate Zone Little Red Spot
4.08.2017

On July 11, the Juno spacecraft once again swung near the turbulent Jovian cloud tops. On its seventh orbital closest approach this perijove passage brought Juno within 3,500 kilometers of the Solar System's largest planetary atmosphere.

Leonids Above Torre de la Guaita
26.11.2000

Last year, the 1999 Leonids Meteor Shower came to a tremendous crescendo. Observers in Europe observed a sharp peak in the number of meteors visible around 0210 UTC during the early morning hours of November 18. Meteor counts then exceeded 1000 per hour - the minimum needed to define a true meteor storm.

Dim World, Dark Nebula
8.07.2010

Dim, distant, dwarf planet Pluto can be hard to spot, especially in recent months as it wanders through the crowded starfields of Sagittarius and the central Milky Way. But fortunately for backyard Pluto hunters, it crossed in front of a dark nebula in early July.