Sun, Moon, Hot Air Balloon
6.06.2003

Anticipating the celestial shadow play of a solar eclipse, sky gazers across Germany watched the Sun rise on May 31. In Bonn, astrophotographer Thilo Kranz had set up his small refractor telescope and camera on the Kennedy Bridge across the Rhein river to get a good view to the northeast.

A Superwind from the Cigar Galaxy
23.11.2003

What's lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82, as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas, however.

Stars and the Bubble Nebula
28.03.2004

Seemingly adrift in a cosmic sea of stars and gas, this delicate, floating apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635 -- The Bubble Nebula. In this wide-angle view, the Bubble nebula lies at the center of a larger complex of shocked glowing gas about 11,000 light-years distant in the fair constellation Cassiopeia.

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.

NGC 7822 in Cepheus
28.08.2009

Pillars of gas, dust, and young, hot stars fill the center of NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region lies about 3,000 light-years away. Within the nebula, bright edges and tantalizing shapes are highlighted in this colorful skyscape.

NGC 2683: Spiral Edge On
11.10.2010

Does spiral galaxy NGC 2683 have a bar across its center? Being so nearly like our own barred Milky Way Galaxy, one might guess it has. Being so nearly edge-on, however, it is hard to tell.

IC 1848: The Soul Nebula
28.02.2016

Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, who Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river.

Long Stem Rosette Nebula
14.02.2021

Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, at the top of the image, atop a long stem of glowing hydrogen gas.

APOD: 2023 May 10 Б Milky Way over Egyptian Desert
10.05.2023

For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt's Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formations sculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind.