About 1,300 images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft's wide angle camera were used to compose this spectacular view of a familiar face - the lunar nearside. But why is there a lunar nearside?

This month, bright planet Saturn rises in evening skies, its rings oriented nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. And in the early morning hours on July 6, it posed very briefly with the International

Discovered on July 1 with the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert, System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS is so designated as the third known interstellar object

Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, as captured by

What is going on with this galaxy? NGC 2685 is a confirmed polar ring galaxy - a rare type of galaxy with stars, gas and dust orbiting in rings perpendicular to the plane of a flat galactic disk. The bizarre

Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that

As the Sun set, a bright Full Moon rose on July 10. Its golden light illuminates clouds drifting through southern hemisphere skies in this well-composed telephoto image from Conceição do Coité, Bahia,

Transfusing sunlight as the sky grew darker, this exceptional display of noctilucent clouds was captured on July 10, reflected in the calm waters of Vallentuna Lake near Stockholm, Sweden. From the edge

The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane

If you have looked at the sky and seen a group of stars about the size of the full Moon, that's the Pleiades (M45). Perhaps the most famous star cluster in the sky, its brightest stars can be seen even

It came from outer space. An object from outside our Solar System is now passing through at high speed. Classified as a comet because of its gaseous coma, 3I/ATLAS is only the third identified macroscopic

Why is there a spiral around the North Pole of Mars? Each winter this pole develops a new outer layer about one meter thick composed of carbon dioxide frozen out of the thin Martian atmosphere. This fresh

Difficult to capture, this mysterious, squid-shaped interstellar cloud spans nearly three full moons in planet Earth's sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula's

If you know where to look, you can see a thermonuclear explosion from a white dwarf star. Possibly two. Such explosions are known as novas and the detonations are currently faintly visible with the unaided

What do you see when you look into this sky? In the center, in the dark, do you see a night sky filled with stars? Do you see a sunset to the left? Clouds all around? Do you see the central band of our

It's raining stars. What appears to be a giant cosmic umbrella is now known to be a tidal stream of stars stripped from a small satellite galaxy. The main galaxy, spiral galaxy NGC 4651, is about the size

Are these trees growing on Mars? No. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost. The featured image was

Big beautiful barred spiral galaxy Messier 109 is the 109th entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright Nebulae and Star Clusters. You can find it just below the Big Dipper's bowl in the northern

An interstellar expanse of glowing gas and obscuring dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker, the Seagull Nebula. This broadband portrait of the

This interstellar skyscape spans over 4 degrees across crowded starfields toward the constellation Sagittarius and the central Milky Way. A First Look image captured at the new NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin