Starburst Galaxy Messier 94 - Astronomy daily picture for March 05 (2025)
Beautiful island universe Messier 94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the hunting dogs, Canes Venatici. A popular target...
Blue Ghost to the Moon - Astronomy daily picture for February 28 (2025)
With spacecraft thrusters at top center, the rugged surface of the Moon lies below the Blue Ghost lander in this space age video frame. The...
Athena to the Moon - Astronomy daily picture for February 27 (2025)
Planet Earth hangs in the background of this space age selfie. The snapshot was captured by the IM-2 Nova-C lander Athena, just after stage separation...
Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158 - Astronomy daily picture for February 26 (2025)
Framed in this single, starry, telescopic field of view are two open star clusters, M35 and NGC 2158. Located within the boundaries of the constellation...
Hubble s Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic - Astronomy daily picture for February 20 (2025)
The largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral Andromeda Galaxy. With 600 overlapping frames...
Messier 87 - Astronomy daily picture for February 19 (2025)
Enormous elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is about 50 million light-years away. Also known as NGC 4486, the giant galaxy holds trillions of stars compared to...
Parhelia at Abisko - Astronomy daily picture for February 14 (2025)
Three suns seem to hug the horizon in this otherworldly winterscape. But the evocative scene was captured during a February 3rd snowmobile exploration of the...
A Cosmic Rose: NGC 2237 in Monoceros - Astronomy daily picture for February 13 (2025)
The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers, but it is probably...
Reflections on VdB 31 - Astronomy daily picture for February 12 (2025)
Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue VdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae....
A Conjunction of Crescents - Astronomy daily picture for February 07 (2025)
A waxing crescent Moon and a waning crescent Venus are found at opposite corners of this twilight telephoto field of view. The close conjunction of...
LEDA 1313424: The Bullseye Galaxy - Astronomy daily picture for February 06 (2025)
The giant galaxy cataloged as LEDA 1313424 is about two and a half times the size of our own Milky Way. Its remarkable appearance in...
IC 2574: Coddington's Nebula - Astronomy daily picture for February 06 (2025)
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...
The Variable Nebula NGC 2261 - Astronomy daily picture for January 30 (2025)
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...
Comet G3 ATLAS: a Tail and a Telescope - Astronomy daily picture for January 23 (2025)
Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS has made a dramatic appearance in planet Earth's skies. A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet reached its perihelion...
NGC 7814: Little Sombrero - Astronomy daily picture for January 22 (2025)
Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this cosmic expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. NGC 7814...
M83: The Southern Pinwheel - Astronomy daily picture for January 15 (2025)
Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral...
An Evening Sky Full of Planets - Astronomy daily picture for January 10 (2025)
Only Mercury is missing from a Solar System parade of planets in this early evening skyscape. Rising nearly opposite the Sun, bright Mars is at...
Young Stars, Dark Nebulae - Astronomy daily picture for January 09 (2025)
An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in multiple star systems are forming within...
Welcome to Perihelion - Astronomy daily picture for January 03 (2025)
Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a circle, it's an ellipse. The point along its elliptical orbit where our fair planet is closest to...