Messier 2

2026-05-23

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 ...

The Nebulous Realm of WR 134

2026-05-22 Luigi Morrone

This cosmic snapshot covers a field of view over twice as wide as the full Moon within the boundaries of the high-flying constellation Cygnus. Made using astronomical narrowband filters, the image highlights the bright edge of a ring-like nebula ...

A Collision of Galaxy Clusters

2026-05-21

This big beautiful spiral shines in X-ray light. It is about 20 times larger than our Galaxy. It belongs to Abell 2029, a galaxy cluster one billion light-years away. (To see only the galaxies, hover your cursor over the image, or follow this ...

The Dark Wolf Nebula

2026-05-20 William Vrbasso Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

A dark wolf lies in gum. No, this isn’t a riddle! Today's image features the Dark Wolf Nebula (Sandqvist–Lindroos 17), a spooky dust cloud embedded within the Gum 55 (RCW 113) Nebula in the Scorpius constellation. While dust is a pest to us, ...

NGC 2170: The Angel Nebula

2026-05-19 Jason Marriott

Is this a painting or a photograph? In this celestial abstract art composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines just above the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is ...

Unraveling NGC 3169

2026-05-18 Simone Curzi

Spiral galaxy NGC 3169 looks to be unraveling like a ball of cosmic yarn. It lies some 70 million light-years away, south of bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans. Wound up spiral arms are pulled out into sweeping tidal tails ...

NGC 1300: Barred Spiral Galaxy

2026-05-17

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 all happens in the big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy cataloged as NGC ...

Aurora Slathers Up the Sky

2026-05-16

Like salsa verde on your favorite burrito, a green aurora slathers up the sky in this 2017 June 25 snapshot from the International Space Station. About 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth, the orbiting station is itself within the upper realm ...

R3 PanSTARRS: An Orion Comet

2026-05-15 Chester Hall-Fernandez

Comet R3 PanSTARRS might be best remembered as an Orion comet. A key reason is because Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) was near its most spectacular -- in terms of tail visibility -- when passing in front of the iconic constellation. Although rare, ...

Messier Catalog at Uniform Scale

2026-05-14

What are some of the most interesting astronomical objects you can see in the night sky? Armed with a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you can look for the very popular objects in the Messier ...