NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was launched into orbit on June 11th, 2008. Its instruments detect gamma-rays — light that is thousands to hundreds of billions of times more energetic […]

Marked by an unusually bright central region, swirling dust lanes, and far flung tidal tails, peculiar NGC 3256 is the aftermath of a truly cosmic collision. The 500 million year […]

How complex is Jupiter? NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter’s magnetic field has been discovered to be much different […]

These people are not in danger. What is coming down from the left is just the Moon, far in the distance. Luna appears so large here because she is being […]

Volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawaii has increased since this Hawaiian night skyscape was recorded earlier this year. Recent vents and lava flows are about 30 kilometers to […]

Since the distance from Earth to Mars changes drastically as the planets orbit the Sun, Mars’ appearance changes dramaticaly. Mars is bright now, and it’s getting closer and brighter still […]

Why does asteroid 2015 BZ509 orbit the Sun the backwards? As shown in the featured animation, Jupiter’s trojan asteroids orbit the Sun in two major groups — one just ahead […]

How many of these can you find in today’s featured photograph: an aurora, airglow, one of the oldest impact craters on the Earth, snow and ice, stars, city lights, and […]

Does it rain on the Sun? Yes, although what falls is not water but extremely hot plasma. An example occurred in mid-July 2012 after an eruption on the Sun that […]

This stunning group of galaxies is far, far away, about 450 million light-years from planet Earth and cataloged as galaxy cluster Abell S0740. Dominated by the cluster’s large central elliptical […]