R136a
Sharpest Image Ever of R136a1, Largest Known Star
Nestled in the center of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest star yet discovered. With the help of the Zorro imager and the power of the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have produced the sharpest image ever of this star. This new image...
NGC 6540
Hubble Spies a Scintillating Globular Cluster
This scintillating image showcases the globular cluster NGC 6540 in the constellation Sagittarius, which was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. These two instruments have slightly different fields of view — which determines how...
M33
Destined to Collide
The Triangulum Galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 33, lies almost 3 million light-years from Earth, and is a near neighbor of the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is imaged here by the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope, located at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF’s...
NGC 7727
NGC 7727’s spectacular galactic dance as seen by the VLT
The galaxy NGC 7727 was born from the merger of two galaxies that started around a billion years ago. The cosmic dance of the two galaxies has resulted in the spectacular wispy shape of NGC 7727. At the heart of the galaxy, two supermassive black holes are spiralling closer to each other,...
NGC 4567
The merging galaxy pair NGC 4568 and NGC 4567
This image from the Gemini North telescope in Hawai‘i reveals a pair of interacting spiral galaxies — NGC 4568 (bottom) and NGC 4567 (top) — as they begin to clash and merge. The galaxies will eventually form a single elliptical galaxy in around 500 million years.
Orion Nebula
Celestial Cloudscape in the Orion Nebula
This celestial cloudscape from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the colourful region surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH 505. Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form...
Star-Studded Skyfield
This star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6638 in the constellation Sagittarius. The star-strewn observation highlights the density of stars at the heart of globular clusters, which are stable, tightly bound clusters of tens of...
Messier 61
The golden era to study stellar births
This week, we feature an image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4303, also known as Messier 61, which is one of the largest galactic members of the Virgo Cluster. Being a so-called starburst galaxy, it has an unusually high amount of stars being born, and has been used by astronomers as a laboratory to...
Cartwheel Galaxy
Cartwheel Galaxy (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image)
This image of the Cartwheel and its companion galaxies is a composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which reveals details that are difficult to see in the individual images alone. This galaxy formed as the result of a high-speed collision that...
Cartwheel Galaxy
Cartwheel Galaxy (MIRI)
This image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows a group of galaxies, including a large distorted ring-shaped galaxy known as the Cartwheel. The Cartwheel Galaxy, located 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is composed of a bright inner ring and an active...
RCW 120
A Crimson Nursery
RCW 120, also known as Sharpless 2-3, is an emission nebula and star-forming region located in the constellation Scorpius, about 4300 light-years away from Earth. The glowing nebula was captured here by the SMARTS 0.9-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program...
GRB 151229A
Hidden Galaxy Home of GRB (Unannotated)
Unannotated image of the region of the sky surrounding a recently identified galaxy that was found to be the home of GRB 151229A, a short gamma-ray burst. Astronomers calculate that this burst, which lies in the direction of the constellation Capricornus, occurred approximately 9 billion years...
Pulled from the Archive
Getting Started
Images from telescopes around the world and in space are now at your fingertips. AstroPix is a new way to explore and share the universe.
- Basic Search - Type some terms into the upper right text box to do a quick search.
- Browse by Topic - Jump right to some common categories that showcase the AstroPix collection.
- Advanced Search - Create your own structured search, or modify a browse topic, to find exactly the images that interest you.
Content Providers & Partners
- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
- European Southern Observatory (ESO)
- NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX)
- ESA's Herschel Space Observatory via NASA Herschel Science Center
- Multi-Mission Archive for Space Telescopes via STScI
- NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope via ESA/Hubble
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
- NSF's NOIRLab (Gemini Observatory, KPNO, CTIO, Rubin Observatory)
- NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)
- ESA's Planck Satellite via Planck U.S. Data Center
- NASA's SPHEREx
- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope
- NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
- Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)
- WorldWide Telescope
