Tombaugh 4
Clyde Tombaugh discovered planet Pluto in 1930 while surveying the skies with the 13-inch Lawrence Lowell Telescope. But the skilled and careful astronomer also went on to discover star clusters, comets, asteroids, and clusters of galaxies. For ...
IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula
South of Antares, in the tail of the nebula-rich constellation Scorpius, lies emission nebula IC 4628. Nearby hot, massive stars, millions of years young, radiate the nebula with invisible ultraviolet light, stripping electrons from atoms. The ...
SWAN Meets Galaxy
This cosmic portrait recorded October 9th features the lovely blue-green coma of Comet SWAN posing with spiral galaxy NGC 5005 in the northern constellation Canes Venatici. At the time the comet (center) was in the close foreground, a mere 9 ...
NGC 7635: The Bubble
What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, ghostly apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Astronomer Eric Mouquet's striking view utilizes a long exposure with ...
Clouds and Sand on the Horizon of Mars
If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? Like the robotic Opportunity rover rolling across the red planet, you might well see vast plains of red sand, an orange tinted sky, and wispy light clouds. The Opportunity rover captured just ...
In the Shadow of Saturn
In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. ...
An Orion Deep Field
Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, the glowing Orion Nebula and the dark Horsehead Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. They both appear in this stunning composite digital image assembled ...
Full Moon Crossing
On October 6th, a nearly full perigee Moon shone in Earth's night sky. The bright moonlight, accurate planning, and proper equipment resulted in this amazing composite featuring sharp silhouettes of the International Space Station (ISS) as it ...
The Hubble SWEEPS Field
This crowded star field towards the center of our Milky Way Galaxy turns out to be a great place to search for planets beyond our solar system. In fact, repeatedly imaging about 180,000 stars in the field over a one week period, the Hubble Space ...
Saturn's Infrared Glow
Known for its bright ring system and many moons, gas giant Saturn looks strange and unfamiliar in this false-color view from the Cassini spacecraft. In fact, in this Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) mosaic the famous rings are ...
