Big Dipper Above and Below Chilean...
Do you see it? This common question frequently precedes the rediscovery of one of the most commonly recognized configurations of stars on the northern sky: the Big Dipper. This grouping of stars is one of the few things that has likely been ...
Ancient Ogunquit Beach on Mars
This was once a beach -- on ancient Mars. The featured 360-degree panorama, horizontally compressed, was taken by the robotic Curiosity rover currently exploring the red planet. Named Ogunquit Beach after its terrestrial counterpart, evidence ...
Star Formation in the Tadpole Nebula
What's all of the commotion in the Tadpole nebula? Star formation. Dusty emission in the Tadpole nebula, IC 410, lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The cloud of glowing gas is over 100 ...
Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 and Beyond
Some 4 billion light-years away, massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 only appears to be dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies and infested with faint arcs in this sharp Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. The fainter, scattered bluish arcs along ...
The Bull's Eye and the Young Moon
Aldebaran, eye of Taurus the Bull, and a young crescent Moon shared an early evening sky last Friday. The lovely celestial pairing could be enjoyed around planet Earth, but from some locations the Moon was even seen to pass in front of Aldebaran, ...
The Perseus Cluster Waves
The cosmic swirl and slosh of giant waves in an enormous reservoir of glowing hot gas are traced in this enhanced X-ray image from the Chandra Observatory. The frame spans over 1 million light-years across the center of the nearby Perseus Galaxy ...
NGC 3628: The Hamburger Galaxy
No, hamburgers are not this big. What is pictured is a sharp telescopic views of a magnificent edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep galactic portrait puts some astronomers in ...
Approach above Sunset
There it is! The Cygnus supply ship was a welcome sight to the astronauts on the International Space Station just over a week ago. Launched three days before on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Orbital ATK's ...
Cooling Neutron Star
The bright source near the center is a neutron star, the incredibly dense, collapsed remains of a massive stellar core. Surrounding it is supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a comfortable 11,000 light-years away. Light from the Cas A ...
Cassini Looks Out from Saturn
This is what Saturn looks like from inside the rings. Last week, for the first time, NASA directed the Cassini spacecraft to swoop between Saturn and its rings. During the dive, the robotic spacecraft took hundreds of images showing unprecedented ...
