Backyard stargazers get a monthly guide to the northern hemisphere's skywatching events with "Tonight's Sky." In February, Orion strides across the night, sporting red giant Betelgeuse on his shoul...
This animation starts with a flat projection of the entire sky. In this projection the sky is bisected by the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope target locations over the 21 year...
This slow pan of the Butterfly or Bug Nebula captures the detail available in the Hubble image of the planetary nebula, located 3,800 light-years away from Earth. The nebula's gas is tearing across...
This image of rose-shaped galaxy pair Arp 273 was released in celebration of Hubble's 21st anniversary. Curious what it might look like to a passing space traveler? This video takes you in close to...
A 3-D model of the Helix Nebula shows a structure much more complex than suspected. The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula, created when gas is expelled by a dying, Sun-sized star. The star becomes...
The galaxy cluster Abell 2052 is found some 480 million light years from Earth. At the center of Abell 2052 is a giant elliptical galaxy, and within that is a supermassive black hole.
Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes have discovered an extraordinary galaxy cluster some 7.2 billion light years from Earth.
Higgs search status. In a seminar held at CERN today, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Their results are based on the analysi...
This simulation uses a flux-limited diffusion solver to explore the radiation hydrodynamics of early galaxies, in particular, the ionizing radiation created by Population III stars. At the time of ...
"Micro-robots", which are really collections of particles animated by magnetic fields, pick up a glass bead and move it around the screen. Each movement is precisely controlled. The "asters" were d...
In July 2011, a team of researchers from Parks Canada explored the recently discovered wreck of HMS Investigator, a polar ship that was lost in 1853 while on a rescue mission in the Northwest Passa...
Afterschool Universe is an out-of-school-time astronomy program for middle school students that explores basic astronomy concepts through engaging hands-on activities and then takes participants on...
Centaurus A is a giant elliptical active galaxy 12 million light years away. Radio and X-ray images reveal features associated with jets emanating from near the galaxy's central supermassive black ...
Having a fleet of spacecrafts looking at the Sun from different locations gives scientists a very unique opportunity to study and learn about our Star.
SOHO watched as a fairly bright comet dove towards the Sun in a white streak and was not seen again after its close encounter (May 10-11, 2011). The comet, probably part of the Kreutz family of com...
Astronomers using ESO instruments have discovered a remarkable extrasolar planetary system that has some striking similarities to our own Solar System. At least five planets are orbiting the Sun-li...
Deep within this optical image lies an intriguing system known as CH Cyg. CH Cyg is a binary star system containing a white dwarf that feeds from the wind of a red giant star.
See asteroid Vesta spin before your very eyes. In this movie, strung together from a series of images provided by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft, we see a full rotation of Vesta, whi...
Evidence from Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes in Chile suggest that a star has been torn apart by an intermediate-mass black hole.