How well do you know the night sky? OK, but how well can you identify famous sky objects in a very deep image? Either way, here is a test: see […]

Fans of the western sky after sunset have lately enjoyed this month’s remarkable array of bright planets. Witnessed from some locations, on February 18 planet Mercury even appeared to slide […]

Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in this alluring telescopic field of view. Floating in the interstellar sea, the nebula is anchored right and left by two […]

What does the universe look like through infrared goggles? Our eyes can only see visible light, but astronomers want to see more. Today’s APOD shows spiral galaxyIC 5332 as seen […]

Ever wonder what it would look like to crack open the Sun? The Egg Nebula, a dying Sun-like star, can unscramble this question. Pictured is a combination of several visible […]

Only two days after the February New Moon’s annular eclipse of the Sun, a slender lunar crescent poses above the western horizon after sunset in this wintry twilight skyscape. Its […]

“A ghost in the Milky Way…” says Christian Bertincourt, the astrophotographer behind this striking image of Barnard 93 (B93). The 93rd entry in Barnard’s Catalogue of Dark Nebulae, B93 lies […]

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In […]

Cradled in red-glowing hydrogen gas, stars are being born in Orion. These stellar nurseries lie at the edge of the giant Orion molecular cloud complex, some 1,500 light-years away. This […]

Some comets are regular guests of our solar neighborhood; others come by only once, never to return. We won’t have another chance to see Comet C/2024 E1 (Wierzchoś), which is […]