Passing Jupiter

2018-02-26

Here comes Jupiter! NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its 53-day, highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11, the eleventh time Juno has passed near Jupiter since it ...

AE Aurigae and the Flaming Star Nebula

2018-02-25 Martin Pugh

Why is AE Aurigae called the flaming star? For one reason, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula because the region seems to harbor smoke, even though nothing is on fire, including interior star AE Aurigae. Fire, ...

Facing NGC 6946

2018-02-24

From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 10 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation of Cepheus. ...

Apollo 17: A Stereo View from Lunar...

2018-02-23

Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this awesome stereo view of another world. The scene was recorded by Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan on December 11, 1972, one orbit before descending to land on the Moon. The stereo anaglyph ...

When Roses Aren't Red

2018-02-22 Eric Coles

Not all roses are red of course, but they can still be very pretty. Likewise, the beautiful Rosette Nebula and other star forming regions are often shown in astronomical images with a predominately red hue, in part because the dominant emission ...

Jupiter in Infrared from Hubble

2018-02-21

Jupiter looks a bit different in infrared light. To better understand Jupiter's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the Hubble Space Telescope is being directed to regularly image the entire Jovian giant. The ...

A Partial Solar Eclipse over Buenos...

2018-02-20 Fefo Bouvier

What's happened to top of the Sun? Last week, parts of Earth's southern hemisphere were treated to a partial solar eclipse, where the Moon blocks out part of the Sun. The featured image was taken toward the end of the eclipse from the coast of ...

Galaxy Formation in a Magnetic Universe

2018-02-19

How did we get here? We know that we live on a planet orbiting a star orbiting a galaxy, but how did all of this form? To understand details better, astrophysicists upgraded the famous Illustris Simulation into IllustrisTNG -- now the most ...

LL Ori and the Orion Nebula

2018-02-18

Stars can make waves in the Orion Nebula's sea of gas and dust. This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative ...

Manhattan Skylines

2018-02-17 Stan Honda

City lights shine along the upper east side of Manahattan in this dramatic urban night skyscape from February 13. Composed from a series of digital exposures, the monochrome image is reminiscent of the time when sensitive black and white film was ...