Explore the Cosmos

Campo Imperatore e la sua Via Lattea. Abruzzo , Italy .    

Mountains of Dust in the Carina Nebula

read more at APOD/NASA; NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI)

Star cluster Westerlund 1

via APOD/NASA; credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Elliptical Galaxy NGC 4696

read more at APOD/NASA; credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, A. Fabian

Marked by an unusually bright central region, swirling dust lanes, and far flung tidal tails, peculiar NGC 3256 is the aftermath of a truly cosmic collision. The 500 million year old clash of two separate galaxies spans some 100 thousand light-years in this sharp Hubble view. Read more at APOD/NASA

Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Space Telescope

Dark-sky Milky Way

John Fowler via Flickr

Milky Way Over Sand Beach, Acadia

Geoff Livingston via Flickr

Stars above Ohio, USA.

Erik Drost on Flickr

Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our very own sun, is nestled in the Alpha Centauri star system. Read more at APOD/NASA; credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stephen Rahn on Flickr

NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula

read more at APOD/NASA; NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team, Reprocessing by Maksim Kakitsev

Spiral galaxy NGC 3344

via APOD/NASA; Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

A Solar Filament Erupts

via APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA’s GSFC, SDO AIA Team

“This telescopic close-up shows off the otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust below and left of center, the tadpoles of IC 410. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young galactic cluster of stars.”

Read more at APOD/NASA; Credit: Juan Ignacio Jimenez

Veil Nebula

via APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Star cluster Westerlund 1

via APOD/NASA; credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

NGC 5033 spans about 100,000 light years and is so far away that we see it only as it existed about 40 million years ago.

via APOD/NASA; credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, MAST - Processing: Judy Schmidt

A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center

read more at APOD/NASA; Credit: Yuri Beletsky (ESO)

“Like on Earth, Saturn’s auroras make total or partial rings around magnetic poles. Unlike on Earth, however, Saturn’s auroras persist for days, as opposed to only minutes on Earth.”

via APOD/NASA; Credit: J. Clarke (Boston U.) & Z. Levay (STScI), ESA, NASA

The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away. 

Read more at APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; Composition: Giuseppe Donatiello