75 and Counting!
The 200-inch Hale Telescope peers out from its massive dome, with the Pleiades star cluster and the bright star Aldebaran…
Brimmed Galaxy
A dark lane of dust outlines the disk of Messier 104, giving the galaxy a festive nickname: the Sombrero. The…
Headed for Trouble
Skylab, the first American space station, headed for orbit 50 years ago, on May 14, 1973. It was designed to…
Missed Opportunity
When NASA cancelled the final three planned Apollo missions, in the early 1970s, it abandoned three possible landing sites. Although…
Nicer Astronomy
NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope, has been operating aboard the International Space Station since 2017. Its…
Defying Gravity
This simulation depicts the merger of two neutron stars, which are the ultra-dense corpses of massive stars that exploded as…
Livelier Sun
This ultraviolet image shows the Sun in 2019, during solar minimum, a period during which it produces few sunspots or…
First Views
Stars twirl above the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory. A project known as HETDEX uses the telescope to probe the…
Danger Zone
This artist's concept shows a cutaway view of the Van Allen radiation belts, which are wide zones that trap charged…
Inconvenient Ring
This artist's concept depicts a recently discovered ring encircling the dwarf planet Quaoar, which is in the Kuiper Belt, far…