A Year in Sunsets
A year in sunsets, from April 2023 to March 2024, track along the western horizon in these stacked panoramic views. The well-planed sequence is constructed of images recorded near the 21st day of the indicated month from the same location ...
The Long Night Moon
On the night of December 15, the Full Moon was bright. Known to some as the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon, it was the closest Full Moon to the northern winter solstice and the last Full Moon of 2024. This Full Moon was also at a major lunar ...
Messier 2
After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our ...
NGC 660: Polar Ring Galaxy
What kind of strange galaxy is this? This rare structure is known as a polar ring galaxy, and it seems to have two different rings of stars. In this galaxy, NGC 660, one ring of bright stars, gas, and dark dust appears nearly vertical, while ...
Near to the Heart Nebula
What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen, but this ...
A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet...
This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a comet. It was discovered on the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA, which orbited the comet from 2014 to 2016. The ragged ...
Geminid Meteors over a Snowy Forest
Meteors have been flowing out from the constellation Gemini. This was expected, as mid-December is the time of the Geminid Meteor Shower. Pictured here, over two dozen meteors were caught in successively added exposures taken over several hours ...
Apollo 17's Moonship
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows ...
M51: Tidal Streams and H-alpha Cliffs
An intriguing pair of interacting galaxies, M51 is the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with whirlpool-like spiral structure seen nearly face-on is also cataloged as NGC ...
Phaethon's Brood
Based on its well-measured orbit, 3200 Phaethon (sounds like FAY-eh-thon) is recognized as the source of the meteoroid stream responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower. Even though most meteor shower parents are comets, 3200 Phaethon is a ...
