Irregular Dwarf Galaxy Sextans A

2025-05-29 Franz Hofmann

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the attention, flaunting young, bright, blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along graceful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like irregular dwarf galaxy Sextans ...

Herbig-Haro 24

2025-05-28

This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you. Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope image data, the stunning scene spans about half a light-year across ...

Zeta and Rho Ophiuchi with Milky Way

2025-05-27 Ireneusz Nowak

Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the bottom-left corner, while the colorful Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is visible just right of ...

Spiral Galaxy NGC 2566 from Webb

2025-05-26

What’s happening in the center of spiral galaxy NGC 2566? First, the eight rays that appear to be coming out of the center in the featured infrared image are not real — they are diffraction spikes caused by the mechanical structure of the Webb ...

Beneath Jupiter

2025-05-25 NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & License: Gerald Eichstädt & Seán Doran

Jupiter is stranger than we knew. NASA's Juno spacecraft has now completed over 70 swoops past Jupiter as it moves around its highly elliptical orbit. Pictured from 2017, Jupiter is seen from below where, surprisingly, the horizontal bands ...

Deimos Before Sunrise

2025-05-24

Deimos takes 30 hours and 18 minutes to complete one orbit around the Red Planet. That's a little more than one Martian day or sol which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes long, so Deimos drifts westward across the Martian sky. About 15 ...

NGC 6366 vs 47 Ophiuchi

2025-05-23 Massimo Di Fusco

Most globular star clusters roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy, but globular cluster NGC 6366 lies close to the galactic plane. About 12,000 light-years away toward the constellation Ophiuchus, the cluster's starlight is dimmed and ...

Curly Spiral Galaxy M63

2025-05-22 Alberto Pisabarro

A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, Messier 63 is nearby, about 30 million light-years distant toward the loyal constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the majestic island universe is nearly 100,000 light-years across, ...

International Space Station Crosses...

2025-05-21 Pau Montplet Sanz

Typically, the International Space Station is visible only at night. Slowly drifting across the night sky as it orbits the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen as a bright spot about once a month from many locations. The ISS ...

Milky Way over Maunakea

2025-05-20 Marzena Rogozinska

Have you ever seen the band of our Milky Way Galaxy? In a clear sky from a dark location at the right time, a faint band of light becomes visible across the sky. Soon after your eyes become dark adapted, you might spot the band for the first ...