Polar Ring Galaxy NGC 660
7.11.2014

NGC 660 is featured in this cosmic snapshot, a sharp composite of broad and narrow band filter image data from the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea. Over 20 million light-years away and swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, NGC 660's peculiar appearance marks it as a polar ring galaxy.

Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble
22.06.2019

How do violent stars affect their surroundings? To help find out, astronomers created a 48-frame high-resolution, controlled-color panorama of the center of the Carina Nebula, one of the largest star forming regions on the night sky. The featured image, taken in 2007, was the most detailed image of the Carina Nebula yet taken.

APOD: 2023 November 8 Б Perseus Galaxy Cluster from Euclid
7.11.2023

There's a new space telescope in the sky: Euclid. Equipped with two large panoramic cameras, Euclid captures light from the visible to the near-infrared. It took five hours of observing for Euclid...

Sagittarius Triplet
4.08.2007

These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the nebula below and right of center, and colorful M20 at the upper right.

Two Million Galaxies
7.10.2007

Our universe is filled with galaxies. Galaxies -- huge conglomerations of stars, gas, dust -- and mysterious dark matter are the basic building blocks of the large-scale universe. Although distant galaxies move away from each other...

Planck Maps the Microwave Background
21.07.2018

What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite from 2009 to 2013 to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest optical surface known -- the background sky when our universe first became transparent to light.

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
4.12.2022

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city.

Microwave Hotspots: The Oldest Structures Known
29.10.2000

These spots are the oldest, most distant structures known. They are seen on the above two images of the microwave sky, north and south of our galaxy's equator, based on four-year's worth of data from NASA's COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite (1989-1993). The spots represent temperature variations in the early universe.

Reflections on the 1970s
1.02.2023

The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers, like this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - usually overlooked in favor of the substantial glow from the nearby stellar nursery better known as the Orion Nebula.

Unicorn, Fox Fur and Christmas Tree
24.12.2025

A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, this beautiful but complex arrangement of interstellar gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen...