Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. It’s one of the most common words used by astronomers—and ...

When a star runs out of fuel, it sheds its outer layers of gas and, if it doesn't explode in a supernova, forms a glowing shell of ionized gas that expands into space. Shells like these are known as ...

Hi folks, tune in every week of 2023 for the best in astronomy from Astronomy Editor Dave Eicher, brought to you by Celestron. Dave’s weekly video series will cover all the latest sky events, ...

Hazy, cloudy, colorful, spellbinding nebulae may be the most beautiful objects in the universe. Under a workaday telescope, they appear hazy, like a cloud. You might exclaim, “What’s this in my way? I ...

Nebulae are made up of gas ― primarily hydrogen and helium ― and fine cosmic dust. These clouds are part of the interstellar medium of extremely low-density gas and dust that exists between stars in ...

NASA released fascinating images from their Spitzer Space Telescope to mark the 50th anniversary of the wildly popular cult classic "Star Trek" TV series, which first aired on Sept. 8, 1966. The ...

July’s night skies are legendary for their sheer abundance of celestial objects such as immense star clouds, light and dark nebulae, crowded clusters and oddities. Daniel Zantzinger / Skywatcher's ...

Planetary nebulae are the remnants of stars roughly one-to-eight times the size of the sun surrounded by hot gas lit up by ultraviolet radiation. Kastner hopes that through a comprehensive campaign of ...

Astronomers studying dying stars’ colorful cast-offs have discovered a mysterious pattern: Some planetary nebulae in the Milky Way galaxy’s central bulge are strangely aligned, according to a study to ...

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 ...

Nebulae are interstellar clouds of gas and dust, initially mistaken for galaxies by early astronomers. Diffuse nebulae lack defined shapes and include reflection nebulae (reflecting starlight), ...