XMM-Newton First Light: X-Rays From The LMC
11.02.2000

Recently the European Space Agency released this and other spectacular "first light" pictures from its new orbiting x-ray observatory, christened XMM-Newton. A churning region of star birth and death in our small neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), this field was one of several chosen to test out XMM-Newton's x-ray imaging capabilities.

Arp 299: Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies
1.11.2016

Is only one black hole spewing high energy radiation -- or two? To help find out, astronomers trained NASA's Earth-orbiting NuSTAR and Chandra telescopes on Arp 299, the enigmatic colliding galaxies expelling the radiation.

Canaries Sky
10.04.1999

This gorgeous view of stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way comes from the dark night sky above the lovely island of La Palma in the Canaries archipelago. The picture was made by a group...

Canaries Sky
5.03.1998

This gorgeous view of stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way comes from the dark night sky above the lovely island of La Palma in the Canaries archipelago. The picture was made by a group...

X Ray Jet From Centaurus A
28.10.1999

Spanning over 25,000 light-years, comparable to the distance from the Sun to the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, a cosmic jet seen in X-rays blasts from the center of Centaurus A. Only 10 million light-years away, Centaurus A is a giant elliptical galaxy - the closest active galaxy to Earth.

The Sombrero Galaxy from HST
8.10.2003

Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge.

The Sombrero Galaxy from VLT
21.10.2001

Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge.

The Sombrero Galaxy from VLT
28.02.2000

Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge.

APOD: 2025 August 4 Б Blue Arcs Toward Andromeda
4.08.2025

What are these gigantic blue arcs near the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)? Discovered in 2022 by amateur astronomers, the faint arcs -- dubbed SDSO 1 -- span nearly the same angular size as M31 itself. At first, their origin was a mystery: are they actually near the Andromeda Galaxy, or alternatively near to our Sun?

A Furious Sky over Mount Shasta
28.09.2022

Is the sky angry with Mount Shasta? According to some ancient legends, the spirits of above and below worlds fight there, sometimes quite actively during eruptions of this enormous volcano in California, USA. Such drama can well be imagined in this deep sky image taken in late June.