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The constellation Taurus the Bull is an easy one to find in the Northern Hemisphere's fall and winter skies. It stands opposite the Sun at the beginning of December. The […]

Do you remember the first time you truly discovered the universe? When I was a teenager, many moons ago, I bought my first telescope, a Celestron 8. I remember excitedly [...]

However, the sky offers ample opportunities to capture beautiful images of regions of darkness that actually are something: dark nebulae. This class of celestial object receives scant attention from astroimagers, [...]

In the pioneering days of long-exp osure astrophotography in the late 19th century, the use of dry plates over wet collodion plates simplified the photographic process. The increased light sensitivity [...]

Turn your eyes toward the night sky and you will see a bright, hazy band of light cutting across the sky. For millennia, observers speculated about the Milky Way's true [...]

In his 1888 book Astronomy With an Opera-Glass, Garrett Serviss wrote: 'The Milky Way, streaming down out of the northeast, pours, in a luminous flood, through Sagittarius, inundating that whole [...]

>>After more than two decades and $10 billion--and surviving a 2011 Congressional effort to kill the project--the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally delivered its first batch of science [...]

The deep-sky observer's neighborhood is kind of like yours. You know the house, grocery store, movie theater, beach, and mountain closest to your home. Deep-sky observers know the closest stars, [...]

Think of your favorite nebula. The odds are high it has a nickname describing its shape. When we look at the diverse shapes of glowing gas and dark dust in [...]

Because astronomy is a science, we must test it on a regular basis. Through such means, we understand the universe. One class of objects that illustrates this process is dark [...]

Charles Messier was a French comet-hunter who occasionally spied objects masquerading as comets due to their fuzzy appearance through his small scope. But they didn't move against the starry background [...]

IN SUMMER, ONE OF THE easiest star patterns to find is the Summer Triangle. The constellation Aquila (pronounced ACK-will-uh) the Eagle is one of the three groups whose Alpha stars--in [...]

Fall is a season of change, it happens on Earth and also in the sky. The marvelous summer Milky Way disappears, and huge numbers of nebulae and clusters give way [...]

Asa child growing up in rural Utah, I was blessed with a relatively unspoiled view of a dark night sky. I looked up often, fascinated by space itself and by [...]

When scanning the Milky Way on a summer night, you'll probably come across various 'voids' in the bright star clouds of our galaxy. But these dark shapes aren't areas to [...]

French comet hunter Charles Messier's list, the initial version of which appeared in 1774, has the distinction of being among the first celestial catalogs based on telescopic observations. But it [...]

Ultraviolet radiation pouring from the hot, young stars in this cloud of gas and dust excites its hydrogen atoms into incandescence. Cataloged as N159, the glowing nebula belongs to the [...]

PARTY ON. The Hubble Space Telescope captured photos of two emission nebulae in the Small Magellanic Cloud in September 2015. The nebulae, which joined together and now look like one, [...]

Deep in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula--a vast stellar nursery in the Milky Way's largest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud--lurks the massive star cluster R136. Astronomers recently used [...]

STELLAR DESTRUCTION. Astronomers studying the Carina Nebula with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope observed a clear relationship between the pillars of the nebula dissipating and the ionizing radiation [...]

Looking at the StarDome, I notice only two planetary nebulae (M27 and M57) during any month. Why is this so? Are they uncommon? How do they form, and can you [...]

Stars, whether white dwarfs or a black holes, progress toward an inevitable ending. Few stars fall back in time, but that's exactly what happened to SAO 244567, a star in [...]

Cygnus the Swan flies high in the western sky during the early evening hours this month. The Milky Way is especially bright in this area of the sky, often defying [...]

Boosting the magnification on your scope brings out a multitude of tiny planetary nebulae, the refuse of dead stars. CRANK UP THE POWER. When most people hear that, they think [...]

If you're out in the backyard preparing an evening barbecue, or taking a road trip this summer, remember to take along a pair of binoculars. Star clouds, globular clusters, our [...]

By studying the diverse and beautiful menagerie of bipolar nebulae, astronomers reconstruct the final stages of stellar life. What are the most impressive structures in the night sky? The rainbow [...]

Comet Hale-Bopp presents a pre-Christmas treat this month and offers a strong hint of things to come next spring. Early December brings a fine opportunity to view this long-anticipated comet [...]

Autumn is a transitional time of year. summer's heat slowly yields to a winter's chill, while all the richness of life hunkers down for leaner times. This time of change [...]

It's instantly familiar on practically any clear night. The bright W-shape of Cassiopeia the Queen (or M-shape, depending on when you see it) consists of five bright naked-eye suns nearly [...]

Skywatchers look forward to August for its warm weather and stunning skies. In addition, the wonderful Tears of St. Lawrence, popularly known as the Perseid meteor shower, fall from the [...]

Everyone knows the Lagoon. Visible to the naked eye as a cloudy spot, the much-observed emission nebula lies smack dab in the center of the Sagittarius Milky Way, forming one [...]

From naked-eye star clouds to telescopic challenges, the summer Milky Way is a must-see attraction for every skywatcher. Sure, the summer Milky Way has been sneaking around in the early [...]

Startling new photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 reveal newborn stars emerging from giant pillar-like structures in the Eagle Nebula, M16, a star-forming [...]

A myriad of beasts circles the sky each night, offering sights that will delight the most jaded skywatcher. Visible to the eye alone, in binoculars, and in telescopes, is an [...]

The summer sky presents outstanding nebulae, star clusters, a pinwheel galaxy - great showpieces. The nights are warm. The skies are clear. It's summertime again and the stars are out. [...]

The arch of our Galaxy's center rises each evening, offering wondrous views in Cygnus, Aquilla, and Sagittarius. We owe a lot to the Milky Way: Its disk, 100,000 light-years long [...]

Use your small or medium-sized telescope to gaze at translucent clouds of gas ejected by dying stars. Winter offers deep-sky observers a marvelous selection of galaxies, star clusters, and emission [...]

Step right up and meet some of the most glorious sights in the summer sky. Summertime is magic for amateur astronomers. A few steps outside, a look skyward, and you [...]

It happens every time you go out on a dark winter night. It's cold outside. You bundle up and brave the chill. You stretch (trying not to think about your [...]

The Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) is a vast complex of emission and reflection nebulae soaring along our galaxy's spine. The nebula lies on the border between Canis Major and Monoceros, [...]

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the remnants of a dying star in the constellation Gemini the Twins several times. Because of its unique bilobed appearance, astronomers once thought the [...]

Floating like a giant space butterfly, the nebula W40 is composed of two glowing bubbles of hot gas puffed up by radiation from the massive stars forming within its core. [...]

This month, let's try something a little different. Rather than looking for visible objects, we are going to look for the invisible. We are hunting for dark nebulae. Due to [...]

TEMPER TANTRUM. At just over 150,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is bursting with newly formed stars. In a paper published January 24 in Nature, astronomers homed [...]

Like birds of a feather, the Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) flocks together with Cygnus the Swan. This small piece of the Pelican lies just 2[degrees] southeast of the 1st-magnitude star [...]

OFF THE CHARTS. In a paper published August 17 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers used the highest-frequency receivers of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submiNimeter Array (ALMA) to look for emissions [...]

Captured with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, this image shows the bright glow of IC 63, also called the Ghost Nebula, 550 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This massive cloud [...]

MEOW! This infrared image, captured with the Infrared Array Camera and Multiband Imaging Photometer instruments on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, shows the Cat's Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) in stunning detail. [...]

This vivid but ominous image--taken with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS2) instrument on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope--shows NGC 2467, otherwise known as the [...]