What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in

What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through Earth's busy skies and with

On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The bright and colorful meteor trail was captured next

Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it's

The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary image. It was acquired at Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco with approximately 200 hours of observations and shows a large patch of the sky, equivalent

A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and

This shot captured an unexpected silhouette. Which is it? It isn't the sunspots, the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic fields visible around the Sun's bright disk. Sunspots typically last

When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. A compact star

If you went outside at the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun's position change? A visual answer to that question is an analemma, a composite image taken from

Also known as the false dawn, a luminous band of zodiacal light is captured in this dark night skyscape. The serene view was recorded just before the beginning of astronomical twilight during September's

The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, Messier 33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000

This treasure chest is full of stars. The featured image was obtained with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and shows a dust pilar in the Carina Nebula inside our Galaxy, roughly 7500 light-years away.

Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright

There was something behind the clouds. Upon close inspection, it was the Moon, which was hard to see yesterday around noon above the small village of Cessy, France. But soon, it was not only the Moon.

Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue

What does this image look like to you? Many see a giraffe facing right, with neck stretched high and long legs mid-stride (but some may see a squirrel instead). The featured image shows LDN 1295, also

Why are Saturn’s poles geometric? Saturn’s North Pole has been known to be surrounded by a hexagonal (6 sides) cloud since discovery in 1987 in data taken by NASA’s Voyager spacecrafts, which quickly flew

The Pelican Nebula is slowly being transformed. IC 5070 (an official designation) is divided from the larger North America Nebula by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust. The deep featured picture from

Pluto is more colorful than we can see. Color data and high-resolution images of our Solar System's most famous dwarf planet, taken by the robotic New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in 2015 July,

Chasing the shadow of a New Moon, NASA’s WB-57F high altitude research aircraft took to the skies off the coast of Iceland on August 12 to observe a total solar eclipse. At 50,000 feet the aircraft was