Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In […]

Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more interesting display was 180 degrees […]

Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over […]

What’s happening to Comet G3 ATLAS? After passing near the Sun in mid-January, the head of the comet has become dimmer and dimmer. By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) […]

Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color wash across this skyscape from northern Sweden. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds, they are rare. But their unforgettable appearance was […]

The interstellar cloud of dust and gas captured in this sharp telescopic snapshot is seen to change its appearance noticeably over periods as short as a few weeks. Discovered over […]

Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet’s size usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically spans a few kilometers — smaller […]

Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The Pleiades […]

Why does this comet have so many tails? C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) has developed several long and intricate tails visible from Earth’s southern hemisphere over the past two weeks. Many observers […]

Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape, across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. Dusty nebulae reflecting light from embedded young stars stand out in the nearly […]