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What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the side? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has […]
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If you could stand on Venus — what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick […]
Yogi and Friends in 3D
This picture from July 1997 shows a ramp from the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner robot rover, deflated landing airbags, a couch, Barnacle Bill and Yogi Rock appear together in this […]
M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab
Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier’s famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be […]
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How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast — it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to […]
MESSENGER s Last Day on Mercury
The first to orbit inner planet Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury’s surface on April 30, 2015. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter […]
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What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that […]
NGC 6164: A Dragon s Egg
Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, […]
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This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting […]
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The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images […]