Image: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Massey/T. A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NOIRLab)/M. Zamani and D. de Martin (NOIRLab). This cavernous nebula is home to a bundle of young stars, specifically a triple system of T-Tauri stars. These are stars that are young, less than 100 million years old, and which haven’t yet ignited nuclear fusion reactions within their core. Instead, their light comes from the heat of gravitational contraction. T-Tauri stars are named after the eponymous protostar, which is found in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. By coincidence, these T-Tauri stars, colle ..read more

Image: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava). There’s an almost 3D quality to this image of a portion of the Milky Way, with the illusion that the nebulae are far more distant when in fact they are much closer than the dark dust lanes that meander through the Milky Way. The red nebula is the Sharpless 2-27 (Sh2-27) emission nebula in Scorpius, the Scorpion, which is some 550 light years distant, while the multicoloured clouds below it are the Rho Ophiuchi complex of reflection nebulae about 460 light years away. This huge, 170-megapixel image was photographed on Cerro Pac ..read more

Messier 4 is one of largest and loosest globular clusters in the Messier catalogue. Image: Adam Block. The night sky in early summer is packed with so many great globular clusters that it’s hard to know where to look first. Messier 13 and Messier 5 are clear favourites, and the Messier hoards in Ophiuchus beckon, but why not head south for a change to the mighty southern constellation of Scorpius to explore Messier 4 and Messier 80, a pairing that provides interesting and contrasting observing and physical characteristics. Messier 4: a top-drawer globular Messier 4 (NGC 6121) is the more famou ..read more

Sunspots were widely spread on the Sun on 1 August 2023. Image: Sheri Lynn Karl. The Sun is our very own special star, which we rely on totally for our continued existence. The long summer days, hopefully blessed with the year’s best weather conditions, when the Sun rides high in the sky, are ideal for becoming better acquainted with our life-giver. When thinking of astronomy, the Sun isn’t the first thing that springs to mind but you would be missing out on glimpsing an extremely dynamic world. How is it possible to see anything when the Sun is so intensively hot and bright and what will I be ..read more

Image: ESA/Hubble/NASA/A. Sarajedini/F. Niederhofer. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way at about 159,000 light years, is home to about 60 globular clusters. Pictured here is one of these great balls of stars, namely NGC 2210, which shines in the night sky at magnitude +11 in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Doradus. Imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is packed with hundreds of thousands of stars. NGC 2210 is a bit of an outlier. In 2017 astronomers led by Rachel Wagner-Kaiser of the University of Florida measured the ages of six globula ..read more

Image: ESA/Hubble/NASA/J. Dalcanton/Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. This line of galaxies is a cosmic coincidence behind the interacting system Arp-Madore 2105-332, which is a pair of galaxies 200 million light years away in the suitably small constellation of Microscopium. Gravitational tendrils from each galaxy reach out to one another, pulling stars and galaxies out and unravelling both galaxies. It’s all fairly standard as far as interacting galaxies go, but what is remarkable is that line of numerous galaxies in the background. These galaxies are completely unrelated to Arp ..read more

Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University)/T. Temim (Princeton University)/I. De Loose (University of Gent). This is the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST’s) second view of the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant – its first was captured by its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in April 2023. This new image was taken by the JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and shows significant differences in the details compared to the MIRI image. Cas A is the remains of a massive star that exploded in the late 17th century, although no one noticed it at the time. Located 11,000 light ..read more

Arcturus (alpha Boötis) is the brightest star north of the celestial equator and only Sirius outshines it from UK shores. Dominating the short, late-spring nights is Arcturus, the brightest star of the northern hemisphere sky and the sentinel of spring. It’s the brilliant leader of the constellation of Boötes, the Herdsman, or Bear Keeper, an area of the night sky that’s bereft of bright deep-sky objects, including no Messier-designated targets. Don’t you think then that it’s rather fitting that otherwise uninspiring Boötes has been handed the distinct honour of hosting Arcturus, as well as se ..read more

Messier 3 is a great globular cluster of the late-spring sky. Image: Adam Block. During late spring or early summer – which term you choose being likely dependant on how fine the weather’s been – is the best time to seek out and observe globulars clusters, which are among the most striking and impressive categories of deep-sky object.  Globular clusters are densely-packed, near spherical collections of ancient stars that populate mainly the extended outer halo of our galaxy. They are believed to have formed in the very early life of our Galaxy, over 11 billions years ago; Messier 3 is tho ..read more

This image of the Horsehead Nebula from the James Webb Space Telescope focuses on a portion of the horse’s “mane” that is about 0.8 light-years in width. It was taken with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-infrared Camera). Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (IAS, CNRS). The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of a zoomed-in portion of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. The observations show the top of the “horse’s mane” or edge of this iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing th ..read more