A darkened and mysterious north polar region known to some as Mordor Macula caps this premier view of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. The high-resolution image was captured by the interplanetary space probe New Horizons near its closest ...
Within our own Milky Way galaxy, two bright, spiky stars stand like sentinels in the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Far beyond them are the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years ...
What is happening inside this unusual nebula? Planetary nebula Tc 1, captured here in exquisite detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, is the celestial site where buckyballs were first identified in 2010. Buckminsterfullerene — as ...
Over 1000 years ago, Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi published humanity’s oldest known record of the Andromeda Galaxy in "The Book of Fixed Stars" (Bodleian Library MS. Marsh 144 p. 167). 800 years later, Andromeda became the ...
The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About twelve thousand years ago, a relatively normal star in the constellation Vela suddenly exploded, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of ...
Telescopic views of Saturn and its beautiful rings often make it the star of star parties. But this stunning view of the outer gas gaint planet's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth. ...
Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. They are 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, taken with ...
What is so micro about tonight's blue micromoon? Just after sunset, a full moon will appear slightly smaller and dimmer than usual. The reason is that the Moon's fully illuminated phase occurs within a short time of apogee - when the ...
A gorgeous spiral galaxy, Messier 104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like ...
What do you see in this crystal ball? The featured image shows NGC 1514, known as the Crystal Ball Nebula, observed by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, in Hawai'i. NGC 1514 is 1,500 light-years away and was discovered by William ...