Braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula’s popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years […]

Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries. Some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy, […]

Massive stars can blow bubbles. The featured image shows perhaps the most famous of all star-bubbles, NGC 7635, also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the […]

What if you could see the entire sky — all at once — for an entire year? That, very nearly, is what is pictured here. Every 15 minutes during 2021, […]

What’s that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east – west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets […]

2MASS J17554042+6551277 doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but that’s the name, a coordinate-based catalog designation, of the star centered in this sharp field of view. Fans of the distant […]

Bluish reflection nebulae seem to fill this dusty expanse. The sharp telescopic frame spans over 1 degree on the sky toward the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen […]

A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy also known as NGC 5128, is […]

How far can you see? Everything you can see, and everything you could possibly see, right now, assuming your eyes could detect all types of radiations around you — is […]

Pictured — a very scenic road to the stars. The road approaches La Silla Observatory in Chile, with the ESO’s 3.6-meter telescope just up ahead. To the left are some […]