South Celestial Tree
If you live in the northern hemisphere, you may have learned how to locate the North Star, Polaris, in the night sky. It can be used to find north, and it approximately marks the northern celestial pole. If you live in the southern hemisphere, ...
The ISS Transits the Moon
Nope, that is not an alien spaceship landing on the Moon! This is an image of the International Space Station (ISS) as it begins to transit in front of the Moon. The ISS is in low-Earth orbit (LEO) where it wizzes around the Earth every 90 ...
The Long Wispy Tail of Comet R3...
Why does Comet R3 (PanSTARRS) have a wispy tail? The newest bright member of the inner Solar System, Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) is already extending an impressive stream of glowing gas. This tail starts from an unseen central nucleus of dirty ...
NGC 602 and Beyond
The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls, but look beyond. Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded ...
Comet R3 (PanSTARRS) Brightens
Comet R3 is brightening rapidly -- will it survive? C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) has been slowly brightening and extending an ion tail since its discovery last year. This shedding mountain of dirty ice puts on its best sky show this month, though, ...
Artemis II: Flight Day 6
On flight day 6 (April 6) the Artemis II mission achieved a historic lunar flyby. Rounding the lunar far side, the deep space maneuver marked humanity's first venture to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Orion spacecraft Integrity ...
Exploring the Antennae
Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies are colliding. Stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the ponderous cataclysm that lasts for ...
Destruction of Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS)
As the crew of Artemis II travelled towards the Moon this week, Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was expected to have its closest approach to the Sun on Monday. At this point, comet and Sun would be closer than half the distance separating the Earth and ...
IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead...
Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex ...
The Path of Artemis II
Why doesn't Artemis II land on the Moon? The main reason is that Artemis II is primarily a test mission designed to make a future Artemis missions -- which will land humans on the Moon -- better prepared. Similarly, NASA's Apollo 8 and ...
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