Ciemne mgławice Chamaeleon

2024-07-22 Chang Lee

Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon. Normally too faint to see, dark dust is best known for blocking visible light from stars and galaxies ...

King of Wings Hoodoo pod Drogą Mleczną

2024-07-21 Wayne Pinkston (LightCrafter Photography)

This rock structure is not only surreal -- it's real. Perhaps the reason it's not more famous is that it is smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few meters. Even so, the King of Wings outcrop, located in ...

Panorama lądowania Apollo 11

2024-07-20

Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility. The ...

Anticrepuscular Rays na Planet Festival

2024-07-19 Pavel Gabzdyl

For some, these subtle bands of light and shadow stretched across the sky as the Sun set on July 11. Known as anticrepuscular rays, the bands are formed as a large cloud bank near the western horizon cast long shadows through the atmosphere at ...

Messier 24: Obłok Gwiezdny Strzelca

2024-07-18 Christopher Freeburn

Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the ...

Wulkan Villarrica na tle nieba

2024-07-17 Gabriel Muñoz; Text: Natalia Lewandowska (SUNY Oswego)

When Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, swings his blacksmith's hammer, the sky is lit on fire. A recent eruption of Chile's Villarrica volcano shows the delicate interplay between this fire -- actually glowing steam and ash from melted ...

Globule kometarne

2024-07-16 Mark Hanson & Martin Pugh, Observatorio El Sauce

What are these unusual interstellar structures? Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the borders of the nautical southern constellations Pupis and Vela. Composed of interstellar gas and dust, the ...

Galaktyka Kijanki z Hubble'a

2024-07-15

Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a ...

Meteor mija galaktykę

2024-07-14 Aman Chokshi

The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor. For another, the galaxy is much farther away -- in this instance 3 million light years as ...

Portret rodzinny w Układzie Słonecznym

2024-07-13

In 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever Solar System family portrait. The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic ...