The Sleeping Gypsy is an 1897 oil painting by French Naïve artist Henri Rousseau (1844–1910). It is a fantastical depiction of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night.   What is the Sleeping [ … ]

Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that occupy the mass range between the heaviest gas giant planets and the lightest stars.   What are brown dwarfs? Unlike the stars in the main-sequence, they are not massive enough to [ … ]

The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion.   What is the Orion Nebula? The Orion Nebula also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976 is one of the [ … ]

A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter.   What are galaxies? The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias, literally “milky”, a reference to the Milky Way. Galaxies range in size [ … ]

N44 is an emission nebula with superbubble structure located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way in the constellation Dorado.   What is the emission nebula N44? Originally catalogued in Karl Henize’s “Catalogue of H-alpha emission stars [ … ]

A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura.   What is a frog? The oldest fossil “proto-frog” appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, but molecular clock dating suggests their origins may extend [ … ]

Wave Rock is a natural rock formation that is shaped like a tall breaking ocean wave. The “wave” is about 14 m (46 ft) high and around 110 m (360 ft) long.   What is Wave [ … ]

Auroras seen within the auroral oval may be directly overhead, but from farther away they illuminate the poleward horizon as a greenish glow, or sometimes a faint red, as if [ … ]

Lenticular clouds are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form in the troposphere, normally in perpendicular alignment to the wind direction.   What are lenticular clouds? There are three types of lenticular clouds: altocumulus standing lenticular (ACSL), stratocumulus [ … ]