ISS Over Mont-Megantic Observatory - 2007-08-18
On August 1st, a time exposure created this surreal view that looks up into the early morning sky over southern Quebec. Only the light from a nearly Full Moon brightens the sky and highlights the dome of the 1.6 meter telescope at Mont-Megantic Observatory. Shadowy figures on the catwalk are astronomers who have interrupted their work to glimpse the International Space Station (ISS) streaking overhead. The brightest "star" in the moonlit sky, the ISS was easy to spot moving through a background of stars in the high-flying constellation Pegasus.  
A Cerro Tololo Sky - 2002-11-09
High atop a Chilean mountain lies one of the premier observatories of the southern sky: the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). Pictured above is the dome surrounding one of the site's best known instruments, the 4-meter Blanco Telescope. Far behind the dome are thousands of individual stars and diffuse light from three galaxies: the Small Magellanic Cloud (upper left), the Large Magellanic Cloud (lower left), and our Milky Way Galaxy (right). Visible just to Blanco's right is the famous superposition of four bright stars known as the Southern Cross. A single 20 second exposure, this digital image was recorded with a sensitive detector intended for astronomical imaging. The observatory structures are lit solely by starlight.  
IC 1805: Light from the Heart - 2014-02-14
Sprawling across almost 200 light-years, emission nebula IC 1805 is a mix of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds about 7,500 light-years away in the Perseus spiral arm of our galaxy. Stars were born in this region whose nickname, the Heart Nebula, derives from its Valentine's-Day-appropriate shape. The clouds themselves are shaped by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster Melotte 15 about 1.5 million years young. This deep telescopic image maps the pervasive light of narrow emission lines from atoms in the nebula to a color palette made popular in Hubble images of star forming regions. The field of view spans about two degrees on the sky or four times the diameter of a full moon. The cosmic heart is found in the constellation of Cassiopeia, the boastful mythical Queen of Aethiopia .  
Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center - 2025-02-26
Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that you can easily see, that is magnifying and distorting the image of a distant galaxy into a complete circle. To create a complete Einstein ring there must be perfect alignment of the nearby galaxy's center and part of the background galaxy. Analysis of this ring and the multiple images of the background galaxy help to determine the mass and fraction of dark matter in NGC 6505's center, as well as uncover previously unseen details in the distorted galaxy. The featured image was captured by ESA's Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope in 2023 and released earlier this month.  
A 2001 Leonids Meteor Shower Fireball - 2001-11-19
The 2001 Leonids Meteor Shower gave quite a show to many parts of the world yesterday during the early morning hours. Many sleepy observers venturing into their own backyards were treated to several bright meteors per minute streaking across the sky. This rate made the 2001 Leonids the most active meteor shower in over three decades. Pictured above is a bright Leonid fireball that briefly lit up Hawaii yesterday morning. A CONCAM nighttime all-sky monitor on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano, caught the bright meteor, seen as the very bright streak across the lower part of the fisheye image. The meteor track crossed the Galactic plane (the faint glow that runs from the lower left to upper right), passed below the planet Jupiter, and through the constellation Orion. CONCAMs in Hawaii, Arizona, and California all recorded numerous bright meteors during this year's Leonids.