Luminous Salar de Uyuni
15.04.2017

A scene in high contrast this thoughtful night skyscape is a modern composition inspired by M. C. Escher's lithograph Phosphorescent Sea. In it, bright familiar stars of Orion the Hunter and Aldebaran, eye of Taurus the Bull, hang in clear dark skies above a distant horizon.

Pillars of the Eagle Nebula in Infrared
20.06.2018

Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. Gravitationally contracting in pillars of dense gas and dust, the intense radiation of these newly-formed bright stars is causing surrounding material to boil away. This image...

The Helix Nebula from Blanco and Hubble
23.08.2020

How did a star create the Helix nebula? The shapes of planetary nebula like the Helix are important because they likely hold clues to how stars like the Sun end their lives. Observations...

Alnitak and the Flame Nebula
12.04.2021

What lights up the Flame Nebula? Fifteen hundred light years away towards the constellation of Orion lies a nebula which, from its glow and dark dust lanes, appears, on the left, like a billowing fire. But fire, the rapid acquisition of oxygen, is not what makes this Flame glow.

Rubin's Galaxy
18.09.2021

In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant.

Horsehead and Flame
29.12.2022

The Horsehead Nebula, famous celestial dark marking also known as Barnard 33, is notched against a background glow of emission nebulae in this sharp cosmic skyscape. About five light-years "tall" the Horsehead lies some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation of Orion.

Rubin s Galaxy
5.04.2023

In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant.

Galactic Cirrus: Mandel Wilson 9
21.07.2023

The combined light of stars along the Milky Way are reflected by these cosmic dust clouds that soar 300 light-years or so above the plane of our galaxy. Known to some as integrated flux nebulae and commonly found at high galactic latitudes, the dusty galactic cirrus clouds are faint.

APOD: 2026 May 17 Б NGC 1300: Barred Spiral Galaxy
17.05.2026

Across the center of this spiral galaxy is a bar. And at the center of this bar is smaller spiral. And at the center of that spiral is a supermassive black hole. This...

NGC 6960: The Witch's Broom Nebula
23.08.2000

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula.