Emission nebulae are glowing clouds of interstellar gas excited by hot, young stars within their folds. Because much of the emitted light is caused by intense ultraviolet radiation stripping electrons ...

Colorful and wispy Sharpless 2-296 forms the “wings” of an area of the sky known as the Seagull Nebula — named for its resemblance to a gull in flight. This celestial bird contains a fascinating mix ...

The Hubble Space Telescope may be experiencing problems this week, but it continues to offer a massive trove of data for astronomers to explore — including this week’s image of the beautiful and ...

Emission Nebulae Emission nebulae are so named because they emit their own light. This type of nebula forms when the intense radiation of stars within or near the nebula energizes the gas. A star’s ...

A massive cloud of dust and glowing gases speckled with newborn stars in the shape of a seagull shines in a stunning image captured by a telescope in Chile. A new photo from the European Southern ...

Ryan Génier from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada Emission nebula Sharpless 2–119 in Cygnus is also known as the Clamshell Nebula.

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 ...

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 ...

The Cone Nebula (NGC 2264) and its associated open cluster, the Christmas Tree Cluster, is in the faint constellation Monoceros the Unicorn. The easiest way to find it is to point your telescope 3.2° ...