Asteroid DonaldjohansonMain belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is about 8 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers across. On April 20, this sharp close-up of the asteroid was captured at a distance of about 1100 kilometers by the Lucy spacecraft’s long range camera during its second asteroid encounter. Named after American paleoanthropologist Donald…Read More

NGC 6164: A Dragon’s EggBeautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million years old. In another three to four million years the massive star will end its life in a supernova explosion. Spanning around 4…Read More

An Almost Everything SkyThis surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting down from the upper right and high in Earth’s atmosphere is a bright meteor. The dim band of light across the central diagonal is zodiacal light:…Read More

Terminator Moon: A Moonscape of ShadowsWhat’s different about this Moon? It’s the terminators. In the featured image, you can’t directly see any terminator — the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night. That’s because the featured image is a digital composite of many near-terminator lunar strips over a full Moon. Terminator…Read More

Galaxy Lenses Galaxy from WebbIs 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 image, something more rare is going on. Here, the central light-colored elliptical galaxy is much closer than the blue…Read More