What created this unusual planetary nebula? Dubbed the Pillow Nebula and the Flying Carpet Nebula, NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebulas known. […]

A young crescent moon can be hard to see. That’s because when the Moon shows it’s crescent phase (young or old) it can never be far from the Sun in […]

The diffuse hydrogen-alpha glow of emission region Sh2-27 fills this cosmic scene. The field of view spans nearly 3 degrees across the nebula-rich constellation Ophiuchus toward the central Milky Way. […]

This well-composed telescopic field of view covers over a Full Moon on the sky toward the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Of course the brighter stars show diffraction spikes, the commonly seen […]

That yellow spot — what is it? It’s a young planet outside our Solar System. The featured image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile surprisingly captures a distant scene […]

Sometimes even the sky surprises you. To see more stars and faint nebulosity in the Pleiades star cluster (M45), long exposures are made. Many times, less interesting items appear on […]

At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the […]

How big is planet Earth’s Moon? Compared to other moons of the Solar System, it’s number 5 on the largest to smallest ranked list, following Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Saturn’s moon […]

Over 500,000 light years across, NGC 6872 (bottom left) is a truly enormous barred spiral galaxy. At least 5 times the size of our own large Milky Way, NGC 6872 […]

This galaxy is not only pretty — it’s useful. A gorgeous spiral some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). […]