A colossal bar of iron hidden inside the Ring Nebula may be the ghostly remains of a planet destroyed by a dying star.

While it’s possible to see the nebula with the naked eye, it’s far more difficult to spot than closer deep-space sights like ...

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

January is the best time of the year to see the Great Orion Nebula as it climbs high overhead in the winter sky. Look to the ...

January doesn’t skimp on cosmic sightseeing. The month begins with a vibrant supermoon, continues with the year’s best Jupiter view, and ends with multiple moon-planet conjunctions. Aurora activity ...

Orion the Hunter is such a great constellation and I have to believe many stargazers share the same opinion. Even if you’re not all that much of a stargazer, you can’t help but notice the mighty ...

The New Year of 2026 began at the stroke of midnight today, and four minutes later the brightest star in the sky, Sirius in Constellation Canis Major — the greater hunting she-dog of Orion —transited ...

“Eyes to the Skies” is a recurring feature and publishes on the first of every month. You can find it on WTOP’s The Space Place. Email Greg your space questions and he might answer them in the next ...

Many astronomical sights have received cool nicknames, but it’s hard to compete with the “cosmic fire of creation.” Better known as the Orion Nebula (and officially dubbed Messier 42), the nebula is ...

The James Webb Space Telescope detects methyl cation (CH3+) in a young star system with a protoplanetary disk that is located in the Orion Nebula. Credit: Space.com | imagery courtesy: ESA/Webb, NASA, ...

With no Moon in the evening sky, let’s visit a favorite gem that’s now well above the horizon in the few hours leading up to midnight: the Orion Nebula (M42). Hanging below the easily recognized belt ...

Day 4 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Star Birth in the Lobster Nebula. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged a region where the radiation and winds from a group of superhot ...