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 […]

Where do stars form? One place, star forming regions known as “EGGs”, are being uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula […]

Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however — like […]

Northern winter constellations and a long arc of the Milky Way are setting in this night skyscape looking toward the Pacific Ocean from Point Reyes on planet Earth’s California coast. […]

Want to see a rainbow smile? Look near the zenith (straight up) when the sun is low in the sky and you might. This example of an ice halo known […]

Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 […]

It is one of the more unusual rocks yet found on Mars. Smaller than a penny, the rock has several appendages that make it look, to some, like a flower. […]

Which moon is this? It’s Earth’s moon — but in inverted colors. Here, the pixel values corresponding to light and dark areas have been translated in reverse, or inverted, producing […]

Yes, but can you see the lion? A deep exposure shows the famous dark indentation that looks like a horse’s head, visible just left and below center, and known unsurprisingly […]

This was a very unusual type of solar eclipse. Typically, it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the Sun. In 2012, though, the planet Venus took a turn. Like a […]