To some it looks like a cat’s eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of the brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula […]

You couldn’t really be caught in this blizzard while standing by a cliff on periodic comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Orbiting the comet in June of 2016, the Rosetta spacecraft’s narrow angle camera […]

Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait, at the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium. Gathered within a region about 1.5 […]

Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, […]

What is that unusual red halo surrounding this aurora? It is a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc. SAR arcs are rare and have only been acknowledged and studied since 1954. […]

Can a rocket make the Moon ripple? No, but it can make a background moon appear wavy. The rocket, in this case, was a SpaceX Falcon Heavy that blasted off […]

Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the Very Large Telescopes, is […]

For a brief moment, this brilliant fireball meteor outshone Jupiter in planet Earth’s night. The serendipitous image was captured while hunting meteors under cold Canadian skies with a camera in […]

Yes, but can your aurora do this? First, yes, auroras can look like rainbows even though they are completely different phenomena. Auroras are caused by Sun-created particles being channeled into […]

Why is this jellyfish swimming in a sea of stars? Drifting near bright star Eta Geminorum, seen at the right, the Jellyfish Nebula extends its tentacles from the bright arcing […]