What blue flower grows in this field of dark interstellar dust? The Iris Nebula. The striking blue color of the Iris Nebula is created by light from the bright star […]

What lies beneath the layered south pole of Mars? A recent measurement with ground-penetrating radar from ESA’s Mars Express satellite has detected a bright reflection layer consistent with an underground […]

What wonders lie at the center of our Galaxy? In Jules Verne’s science fiction classic A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers encounter […]

Taken on the same night, from the same place, with the same telescope and camera, these postcards from our Solar System are shown at the same scale to provide an […]

Look opposite the Sun in the sky tonight and you’ll see Mars at its brightest. Also within days of its closest approach Mars rises at sunset, near its brightest and […]

These dark markings on the sky can just be found in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the southern constellation of Lupus the Wolf, the dusty, […]

What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy — but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, pictured here, […]

If you go high enough, you may find yourself on a picturesque perch between the water clouds of the Earth and the star clouds of the Milky Way. Such was […]

The Fermi Science Playoffs celebrate 10 years of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope’s exploration of the high-energy universe. Surviving all early rounds of voting, these two finalists in the competion […]

Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Apollo 11 landing […]