These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the […]

The dark-floored, 95 kilometer wide crater Plato and sunlit peaks of the lunar Alps (Montes Alpes) are highlighted in this this sharp telescopic snapshot of the Moon’s surface. While the […]

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one […]

What’s happening to this meteor? It is shedding its outer layers as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and heats up. The sudden high temperatures not only cause the bright […]

This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy — or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest […]

Jupiter reaches its 2026 opposition today, January 10. That puts our Solar System’s most massive planet opposite the Sun and near its closest and brightest for viewing from planet Earth. […]

Both Moon and Sun create beautiful ice halos in planet Earth’s sky. In fact, the two brightest celestial beacons are each surrounded by a complex of ice halos in these […]

Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant toward the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, […]

Most galaxies have a single nucleus — does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible […]

The Full Moon is the brightest lunar phase, and tonight you can stand in the light of the first Full Moon of 2026. In fact, the Moon’s full phase occurs […]