Aphelion for 2021 occurred on July 5th. That’s the point in Earth’s elliptical orbit when it is farthest from the Sun. Of course, the distance from the Sun doesn’t determine […]

What would it look like to fly into the Orion Nebula? The exciting dynamic visualization of the Orion Nebula is based on real astronomical data and adept movie rendering techniques. […]

How many moons does Saturn have? So far 82 have been confirmed, the smallest being only a fraction of a kilometer across. Six of its largest satellites can be seen […]

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 […]

Wouldn’t it be fun if clouds were castles? Wouldn’t it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair was a superhero? Wouldn’t it be fun if rock mesas on […]

You can’t walk along the Milky Way. Still, under a dark sky you can explore it. To the eye the pale luminous trail of light arcing through the sky on […]

Awash in a sea of incandescent plasma and anchored in strong magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Found in […]

On sol 46 (April 6, 2021) the Perseverance rover held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm […]

How did the first stars form? To help find out, the SPHINX computer simulation of star formation in the very early universe was created, some results of which are shown […]

Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula’s glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular […]