The Keyhole in the Carina Nebula
The dark dusty Keyhole Nebula gets its name from its unusual shape. The looping Keyhole, in this featured classic image by the Hubble Space Telescope, is a smaller region inside the larger Carina Nebula. Dramatic dark dust knots and complex ...
Perseid from Torralba del Burgo
Perseid meteors rained on planet Earth last night. This year the stream of dust from periodic comet Swift-Tuttle has produced a stunningly active shower of bright cosmic streaks. In this 25 second long exposure, one luminous Perseid trail, fast ...
The Easterbunny Comes to NGC 4725
At first called "Easterbunny" by its discovery team, officially named Makemake is the second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt. The icy world appears twice in this astronomical image, based on data taken on June 29 and 30 of the bright ...
Perseid, Aurora, and Noctilucent Clouds
Night skies over northern Sweden can hold some tantalizing sights in August. Gazing toward the Big Dipper, this beautiful skyscape captures three of them in a single frame taken last August 12/13. Though receding from northern skies for the ...
Colliding Galaxies in Stephan's Quintet
Will either of these galaxies survive? In what might be dubbed as a semi-final round in a galactic elimination tournament, the two spirals of NGC 7318 are colliding. The featured picture was created from images taken by the Hubble Space ...
Mars at Closest Approach
When does Mars appear the largest? This occurs when Earth sweeps past Mars in their respective orbits around the Sun, creating a momentary Sun-Earth-Mars alignment called opposition. The featured image shows the Mars opposition that occurred ...
Perseid Meteors over Mount Shasta
Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Perseus. That is why the meteor shower that peaks later this week is known as the Perseids -- the meteors all appear to ...
Io: Moon over Jupiter
How big is Jupiter's moon Io? The most volcanic body in the Solar System, Io (usually pronounced "EYE-oh") is 3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of planet Earth's single large natural satellite. Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the ...
Las Campanas Moon and Mercury
Last Thursday the view toward sunset from the 2.5 kilometer summit of Cerro Las Campanas in the remote Chilean Andes was amazing. Bright but fading Mercury stood very close to a two day old Moon. Both a sunlit lunar crescent and earthlit lunar ...
Apollo 15 Panorama
On July 31, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts Jim Irwin and Dave Scott deployed the first Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon. Using it to explore their Hadley-Apennine landing site they spent nearly three days on the Moon while Al Worden orbited above. ...
