The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls, but look beyond. Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years […]

What’s happened since the universe started? The time spiral shown here features a few notable highlights. At the spiral’s center is the Big Bang, the place where time, as we […]

About 12 seconds into this video, something unusual happens. The Earth begins to rise. Never seen by humans before, the rise of the Earth over the limb of the Moon […]

Rising opposite the setting Sun, June’s Full Moon occurred within about 28 hours of the solstice. The Moon stays close to the Sun’s path along the ecliptic plane and so […]

Not a paradox, Comet 13P/Olbers is returning to the inner Solar System after 68 years. The periodic, Halley-type comet will reach its next perihelion or closest approach to the Sun […]

Jets of material blasting from newborn stars, are captured in this James Webb Space Telescope close-up of the Serpens Nebula. The powerful protostellar outflows are bipolar, twin jets spewing in […]

What’s happening in the sky this unusual night? Most striking in the featured 4.5-hour 360-degree panoramic video, perhaps, is the pink and purple aurora. That’s because this night, encompassing May […]

What is that strange brown ribbon on the sky? When observing the star cluster NGC 4372, observers frequently take note of an unusual dark streak nearby running about three degrees […]

What if we could see back to the beginning of the universe? We could see galaxies forming. But what did galaxies look like back then? These questions took a step […]

What creates Saturn’s colors? The featured picture of Saturn only slightly exaggerates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The image was taken in […]