NGC 147 and NGC 185Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this deep telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellite galaxies of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view toward the constellation…Read More

The Bay of RainbowsDark, smooth regions that cover the Moon’s familiar face are called by Latin names for oceans and seas. That naming convention is historical, though it may seem a little ironic to denizens of the space age who recognize the Moon as a mostly dry and airless world, and the smooth, dark areas as lava-flooded impact basins. For…Read More

A Year of SunspotsHow many sunspots can you see? The central image shows the many sunspots that occurred in 2025, month by month around the circle, and all together in the grand central image. Each sunspot is magnetically cooled and so appears dark — and can last from days to months. Although the featured images originated from NASA’s Solar…Read More

In Green Company: Aurora over NorwayRaise your arms if you see an aurora. With those instructions, two nights went by with, well, clouds — mostly. On the third night of returning to same peaks, though, the sky not only cleared up but lit up with a spectacular auroral display. Arms went high in the air, patience and experience paid off, and the…Read More

Miranda RevisitedWhat is Miranda really like? Visually, old images from NASA’s Voyager 2 have been recently combined and remastered to result in the featured image of Uranus’s 500-kilometer-wide moon. In the late 1980s, Voyager 2 flew by Uranus, coming close to the cratered, fractured, and unusually grooved moon — named after a character from…Read More