Taking the Plunge
The InSight lander blazes through the Martian atmosphere in this artist’s concept. The craft is scheduled to touch down on…
Old Stars
A few of the stars of NGC 6791, one of the oldest star clusters in the galaxy, shine brightly in…
Looking Down a Barrel
This false-color image shows the Helix Nebula, which is the last gasp of a dying star. The nuclear reactions in…
Icy Goodness
Blue spots indicate likely deposits of ice at the south (left) and north poles of the Moon. Most of the…
New Observatory
Cincinnati Observatory, the first public observatory in the United States, was dedicated on November 9, 1843. In his last public…
Galactic Ring
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows what could be the result of a celestial bullseye. Hoag’s Object is a ring…
Step Up to the Bar
A long bar of stars highlights NGC 1073, a galaxy about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus. The…
Twisted Galaxy
Messier 101 is one of the most beautiful of all spiral galaxies. It consists of a bright core that contains…
Home to a Black Hole?
Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of NGC 6624, a globular star cluster in Sagittarius. Observations over the past quarter-century…
Blue-Green Giant
Uranus, the solar system’s third-largest planet, is an almost featureless ball in this 1986 image from Voyager 2, the only…