2021 May 8

Nature photographers and other fans of planet Earth always look forward to the blue hour.

These cosmic dust clouds drift some 1,300 light-years away along the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus.

Is this a painting or a photograph?

Massive stars spend their brief lives furiously burning nuclear fuel.

When did these big galaxies first begin to dance?

Cosmic dust clouds are draped across a rich field of stars in this broad telescopic panorama near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown.

There's even a California in space. Drifting through the Orion Arm of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, this cosmic cloud by chance echoes the outline of California on the west coast of the United States.