Nebulas are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat’s Paw […]

About 1,300 images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft’s wide angle camera were used to compose this spectacular view of a familiar face – the lunar nearside. But why is […]

The sixth object in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of things which are not comets, Messier 6 is a galactic or open star cluster. A gathering of 100 stars or so, […]

This month, bright planet Saturn rises in evening skies, its rings oriented nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. And in the early morning hours on July 6, it posed […]

What is going on with this galaxy? NGC 2685 is a confirmed polar ring galaxy – a rare type of galaxy with stars, gas and dust orbiting in rings perpendicular […]

As the Sun set, a bright Full Moon rose on July 10. Its golden light illuminates clouds drifting through southern hemisphere skies in this well-composed telephoto image from Conceição do […]

Transfusing sunlight as the sky grew darker, this exceptional display of noctilucent clouds was captured on July 10, reflected in the calm waters of Vallentuna Lake near Stockholm, Sweden. From […]

Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, LDN 1251 is also less appetizingly known […]

The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region […]

If you have looked at the sky and seen a group of stars about the size of the full Moon, that’s the Pleiades (M45). Perhaps the most famous star cluster […]