Is this one galaxy or two? Although it looks like one, the answer is two. One path to this happening is when a small galaxy collides with a larger galaxy and ends up in the center. But in the featured

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 like this, however, show

In late March, the comet now designated C/2025 F2 SWAN was found independently by citizen scientists Vladimir Bezugly, Michael Mattiazzo, and Rob Matson while examining publicly available image data from

Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster are scattered across this nearly 4 degree wide telescopic field of view. About 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to our

What created the unusual halo around the Cat's Eye Nebula? No one is sure. What is sure is that the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae on the sky. Although haunting

What happens when a star runs out of nuclear fuel? For stars like our Sun, the center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmosphere is expelled into space to appear as a planetary nebula. The

What's happening at the center of our galaxy? It's hard to tell with optical telescopes since visible light is blocked by intervening interstellar dust. In other bands of light, though, such as radio,

Most of us watch the Moon at night. But the Moon spends nearly as many daylight hours above our horizon, though in bright daytime skies the lunar disk looks pale and can be a little harder to see. Of course

Made with a telescope shaded from bright sunlight by an umbrella, on April 5 a well-planned video captured a crescent Venus shining in clear daytime skies from Shoreline, Washington, USA at 11:57AM Pacific

From a garden on planet Earth, 38 hours of exposure with a camera and small telescope produced this cosmic photo of the M81 galaxy group. In fact, the group's dominant galaxy M81 is near the center of

What's at the tip of this interstellar jet? First let's consider the jet: it is being expelled by a star system just forming and is cataloged as Herbig-Haro 49 (HH 49). The star system expelling this jet

Sometimes, the Moon visits the Pleiades. Technically, this means that the orbit of our Moon takes it directly in front of the famous Pleiades star cluster, which is far in the distance. The technical term

How much mass do flocculent spirals hide? The featured image of flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to help answer this question. Flocculent spirals -- galaxies

Why are there so many moonquakes? Analyses of seismometers left on the moon during the Apollo moon landings reveal a surprising number of moonquakes occurring within 100 kilometers of the surface. In fact,

In dramatic silhouette against a cloudy daytime sky over Paris, France, gargoyles cast their monstrous gaze outward from the west facade of Notre Dame Cathedral. Taken on March 29, this telephoto snapshot

Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies

A 26 hour old Moon poses behind the craggy outline of the Italian Dolomites in this twilight mountain and skyscape. The one second long exposure was captured near moonset on March 30. And while only a

Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter

What if the Sun and Moon rose together? That happened yesterday over some northern parts of planet Earth as a partial solar eclipse occurred shortly after sunrise. Regions that experienced the Moon blocking

Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to Helene, small, icy moon of Saturn. Appropriately named, Helene is a Trojan moon, so called because it orbits at a Lagrange point. A Lagrange point is a