Is this galaxy jumping through a giant ring of stars?

They are not alive -- but they are dying.

The next few months will be the best for seeing this familiar constellation as it rises continually earlier in the night.

The center of our Milky Way galaxy can be found some 26,000 light-years away toward the constellation Sagittarius.

Framing a bright emission region, this telescopic view looks out across a pretty field of stars along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Delicate in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas, are draped across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus.