Nota Bene

A beautiful and complex nebula that invites further investigation. If you point your telescope at the Christmas Tree Nebula (NGC 2264), you will be looking across our spiral arm of the galaxy towards an adjacent outer arm. As the name suggests, there is a nebula here that resembles… Read more: The Christmas Tree Nebula

A Nearby Nebula Illuminated by a Runaway Star. The Flaming Star Nebula is a nearby interstellar dust cloud illuminated by a star that is hurtling through our region of the galaxy. The star at the centre, AE Aurigae, is a “Runaway Star” that was ejected from the intense… Read more: The Flaming Star Nebula

Zeta Persei is the powerhouse for this scene. This beautiful pink nebula resides 1,000 light-years towards the outer edge of our spiral arm of the galaxy. It is about 100 light-years in length, which is tiny in the full scale of our galaxy, but this nebula is 36,000… Read more: The California Nebula 

Narcissus Garden, by Yayoi Kusama, Fondation Beyeler, Basel/Riehen, Switzerland, October, 2025 The title is from the ancient myth of Narcissus, who falls in love with his own image reflected in a pond. Here, Yayoi Kusama takes us beyond vanity to the full scope of how we relate to… Read more: Narcissus Garden, by Yayoi Kusama

The beautiful shapes and colours of the Orion Nebula. The magnificent Orion Nebula: The Queen of the Winter Sky. At a distance of only 1,300 light years, consider it nearby on a galactic scale, but distant and huge compared to our tiny solar system.  It is the closest region… Read more: The Great Nebula in Orion