What created an unusual dark streak in Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas’s tail? Some images of the bright comet during mid-October not only caught its impressively long tail and its thin anti-tail, but […]

The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much […]

Drifting near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy these dusty molecular clouds seem to extend a helping hand on a cosmic scale. Part of a local complex of star-forming […]

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of […]

What’s that black spot on Jupiter? No one is sure. During one pass of NASA’s Juno over Jupiter, the robotic spacecraft imaged an usually dark cloud feature informally dubbed the […]

Saturn is bright in Earth’s night skies. Telescopic views of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning […]

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo but […]

What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The […]

Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. […]

These brightly outlined flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia, the colorful skyscape features the swept-back, comet-shaped clouds IC 59 (left) and […]