The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaughtComet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, grew a spectacularly long and filamentary tail. The magnificent tail spread across the sky and was visible for several days to Southern Hemisphere observers just after sunset. The amazing ion tail showed its greatest extent on long-duration, wide-angle camera…Read More

**Halo of the Cat's Eye**
The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color picture, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material, over three light-years across, which surrounds the…Read More

**A Halo for NGC 6164**
Beautiful 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

**The Sun Today**
Our Sun shows a different face every day. The above picture was taken on May 15, but a similar picture of the Sun actually taken today can be found here. The above picture was taken in red light and so is shown in red. The bright spots to the right of center are active regions known as plages. Currently, the Sun is showing very…Read More

**Aurora Over Raufarh�fn**
It was all lined up even without the colorful aurora exploding overhead. If you follow the apex line of the recently deployed monuments of Arctic Henge in Raufarh�fn in northern Iceland from this vantage point, you will see that they point due north. A good way to tell is to follow their apex line to the line con…Read More