Star Factory Messier 17
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this 1/3 degree wide field of view spans over 30 light-years. The sharp ...
The Large Cloud of Magellan
The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible to southern hemisphere ...
HESS Telescopes Explore the...
They may look like modern mechanical dinosaurs, but they are enormous swiveling eyes that watch the sky. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) Observatory is composed of four 12-meter reflecting-mirror telescopes surrounding a larger ...
Blue Supermoon Beyond Syracuse
The last full moon was doubly unusual. First of all, it was a blue moon. A modern definition of a blue moon is a second full moon to occur during one calendar month. Since there are 13 full moons in 2023, one month has to have two -- and that ...
Cygnus: Bubble and Crescent
As stars die, they create clouds. Two stellar death clouds of gas and dust can be found toward the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) as they drift through rich star fields in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Caught here within the ...
Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 Fragments
Periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has broken up at least twice. A cosmic souffle of ice and dust left over from the early solar system, this comet was first seen to split into several large pieces during the close-in part of its orbit in ...
NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off ...
The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course, M13 is now less modestly recognized as the Great Globular ...
The Crew-7 Nebula
Not the James Webb Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 26. The snapshot was taken about 2 minutes after the launch of of a ...
Full Moons of August
Near perigee, the closest point in its almost moonthly orbit, a Full Moon rose as the Sun set on August 1. Its brighter than average lunar disk was captured in this dramatic moonrise sequence over dense cloud banks along the eastern horizon from ...
