NGC 1097: Spiral Galaxy with Supernova
What's happening in the lower arm of this spiral galaxy? A supernova. Last month, supernova SN 2023rve was discovered with UAE's Al-Khatim Observatory and later found to be consistent with the death explosion of a massive star, possibly ...
Hidden Orion from Webb
The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red ...
A Distorted Sunrise Eclipse
Yes, but have you ever seen a sunrise like this? Here, after initial cloudiness, the Sun appeared to rise in two pieces and during a partial eclipse in 2019, causing the photographer to describe it as the most stunning sunrise of his life. The ...
Plane, Clouds, Moon, Spots, Sun
What's that in front of the Sun? The closest object is an airplane, visible just below the Sun's center and caught purely by chance. Next out are numerous clouds in Earth's atmosphere, creating a series of darkened horizontal ...
The Once and Future Stars of Andromeda
This picture of Andromeda shows not only where stars are now, but where stars will be. The big, beautiful Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is a spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. Image data from space-based and ground-based observatories ...
Ring of Fire over Monument Valley
Tracking along a narrow path, the shadow of a new moon will race across North, Central, and South America, on October 14. When viewed from the shadow path the apparent size of the lunar disk will not quite completely cover the Sun though. ...
IC 2118: The Witch Head Nebula
Does this nebula look like the head of a witch? The nebula is known popularly as the Witch Head Nebula because, it is said, the nebula's shape resembles a Halloween-style caricature of a witch's head. Exactly how, though, can be a topic ...
MyCn 18: The Engraved Hourglass...
Do you see the hourglass shape -- or does it see you? If you can picture it, the rings of MyCn 18 trace the outline of an hourglass -- although one with an unusual eye in its center. Either way, the sands of time are running out for the central ...
Sprite Lightning in High Definition
Sometimes lightning occurs out near space. One such lightning type is red sprite lightning, which has only been photographed and studied on Earth over the past 25 years. The origins of all types of lightning remain topics for research, and ...
A Desert Eclipse
A good place to see a ring-of-fire eclipse, it seemed, would be from a desert. In a desert, there should be relatively few obscuring clouds and trees. Therefore late December of 2019, a group of photographers traveled to the United Arab Emirates ...
