What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the side? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has […]

If you could stand on Venus — what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick […]

This picture from July 1997 shows a ramp from the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner robot rover, deflated landing airbags, a couch, Barnacle Bill and Yogi Rock appear together in this […]

Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier’s famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be […]

How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast — it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to […]

The first to orbit inner planet Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury’s surface on April 30, 2015. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter […]

What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that […]

Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, […]

This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting […]

The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images […]