Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5335This stunning portrait of NGC 5335 was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 170,000 light-years across and over 200 million light-years away toward the constellation Virgo, the magnificent spiral galaxy is seen face-on in Hubble’s view. Within the galactic disk, loose streamers of star forming regions lie…Read More

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