13+ hour, 30+ min ago  (159+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls, but look beyond. Near the outskirts of the >Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million…...

2+ day, 13+ hour ago  (159+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper…...

4+ day, 13+ hour ago  (158+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: The party is still going on in spiral galaxy NGC 3310. Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 likely collided with a smaller galaxy causing the large spiral galaxy to light up with a tremendous…...

5+ day, 10+ hour ago  (42+ words) NASA (. gov) Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply. NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices; A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U....

6+ day, 10+ hour ago  (43+ words) NASA (. gov) Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply. NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices; A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U....

1+ week, 1+ day ago  (153+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: What unexpected things do you see when you look up at the night sky? Today's image resembles an abstract painting, with large swaths of color strewn across a cosmic canvas seemingly without…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago  (166+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: What's happened to the center of this galaxy? Dramatic dust lanes run across the center of unusual elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. These dust lanes are so thick they almost completely obscure the galaxy's…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago  (44+ words) NASA (. gov) Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply. NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices; A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U....

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (208+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic…...

2+ week, 11+ hour ago  (157+ words) NASA (. gov) Astronomy Picture of the Day Explanation: What is the sound of two black holes merging in deep space? Sound waves don't propagate in vacuum, but gravitational waves do. In 2015 we were able to "hear" them for the first…...