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 ...

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 Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) is a reflection nebula, reflecting starlight, not producing its own light. It's located 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. A star (SAO 19158) and an open ...

Reflection nebulae reflect the light from nearby stars. The stars that illuminate them aren’t powerful enough to ionize the nebula’s gas, as with emission nebulae, but their light scatters through the ...

The Boomerang Nebula is classified as a bipolar reflection nebula, located 5,000 light-years distant in Centaurus, characterized by two nearly symmetrical wings of dust and gas spanning approximately ...

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 NGC 2264 is a vast stellar complex located in the Monoceros constellation, about 2,600 light-years away. It includes two ...

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 ...

Emission nebulae are the subject of many of the most spectacular astrophotographs published in the last decade. Although there are many subcategories of nebulae, they all consist of interstellar gas ...

This Christmas, astronomers are highlighting a spectacular region of space that looks remarkably like a glowing holiday tree.

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 ...