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, the Spindle […]

Is this a painting or a photograph? In this celestial abstract art composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines just above […]

What’s happening across that field? Pictured here are not auroras but nearby light pillars, a phenomenon typically much closer. In most places on Earth, a lucky viewer can see a […]

Murriyang, the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope points toward a nearly Full Moon in this image from New South Wales, Australia, planet Earth. Bathed in moonlight, the 64 meter dish is […]

In 46 BC Julius Caesar reformed the calendar system. Based on advice by astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria, the Julian calendar included one leap day every four years to account for […]

How does the sky turn dark at night? In stages, and with different characteristic colors rising from the horizon. The featured image shows, left to right, increasingly late twilight times […]

All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland, on a quiet September night, much of that night’s auroras had died down. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a […]

Intuitive Machines’ robotic lander Odysseus has accomplished the first U.S. landing on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Launched on a SpaceX rocket on February 15, the […]

This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Centered and moving upward in the sharply detailed color composite its thin, bright, braided filaments are […]

Big, bright, beautiful spiral, Messier 106 dominates this cosmic vista. The nearly two degree wide telescopic field of view looks toward the well-trained constellation Canes Venatici, near the handle of […]