As we continue to break new ground in the field of cosmology, the importance of carefully categorizing the objects we see comes into focus. Part of this stems from the fact that, increasingly, we find ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured variable stars and circumstellar disks in NGC 1333, showing protostars, Orion variable stars, and reflection nebulae in the Perseus Molecular Cloud.

A disparate collection of young stellar objects bejewels a cosmic panorama in the star-forming region NGC 1333 in this new ...

This Hubble Space Telescope image captures a portion of the reflection nebula IC 2631, which contains a protostar, the hot, dense core of a forming star that is accumulating gas and dust. Eventually, ...

The Trifid Nebula (M20) is the trifecta of deep-sky objects: It combines a blue reflection nebula with an emission nebula glowing in red Hydrogen-alpha (Hα) light, all divvied up by opaque lanes of ...

Many scientific terms are very specific, but the term nebula is, well, nebulous. In a very generic sense, it simply means a fuzzy thing. But there are a wide variety of astronomical objects that can ...

The space between stars is dotted with twisting towers studded with stars, unblinking eyes, ethereal ribbons, and floating bubbles. These fantastical shapes, some of the universe’s most visually ...

A billowing pair of nearly symmetrical loops of dust and gas mark the death throes of an ancient red-giant star. The resulting structure, said to resemble an old style of English jug, is a rarely seen ...

This spectacular image of the Orion Nebula, complete with its incredibly rich star-formation region, was obtained from multiple exposures using the HAWK-I infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope ...