Comet and Aurora Over Alaska
Can you spot the comet? Flowing across the frozen Alaskan landscape is an easily visible, colorful aurora. Just to the lower left, however, well in the background, is something harder to spot: Comet Ikeya-Zhang, the brightest comet of recent ...
The Center of Centaurus A
A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red ...
Orion Nebula: The 2MASS View
Few astronomical sights excite the imagination like the nearby stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. The Nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away. This ...
The Old Moon in the New Moon's Arms
Also known as the Moon's "ashen glow" or "the old Moon in the new Moon's arms", Earthshine is Earthlight reflected from the Moon's night side. This dramatic image of Earthshine and a young crescent Moon was taken by astrophotographer and APOD ...
Planets in the West
Have you seen any bright planets lately? Chances are if you've been outside under clear skies just after sunset, then you have. Now shining in the west as bright "stars" in the night sky, are all five planets of the solar system known to ancient ...
The Glory
Looking out the window of an airplane, you might be lucky enough to see "the glory" in the direction directly opposite the Sun. Before airplanes, the phenomenon, known to some as the heiligenschein or the Specter of the Brocken, was sometimes ...
Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri
Pictured above is the largest ball of stars in our Galaxy. About 10 million stars orbit the center of this globular cluster - named Omega Centauri - as this giant globular cluster orbits our Galactic center. Recent evidence indicates that Omega ...
A New Truss for the International...
The International Space Station (ISS) is being fitted with a backbone. During the present visit of Space Shuttle Atlantis, astronauts are installing a huge truss on the growing space outpost. The truss is over 13 meters long and about 4.5 ...
RX J185635-375: Candidate Quark Star
Is RJX J185635-375 really so small? Previously, this compact star held claim to being the closest neutron star -- only 150 light-years away. Now new observations and analysis indicate not only a larger distance, roughly 450 light-years, but a ...
Pwyll: Icy Crater of Europa
The impact crater Pwyll (a name from Celtic Mythology) is thought to represent one of the youngest features on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. A combination of color and high resolution black and white data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft ...
