NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see the Pleiades star cluster, an open star cluster located in the constellation of Taurus. We also see the bright trail of a meteor which happened to pass through the same area …

In today's image, we see the bright star Vega to the upper left, the fifth brightest star in our night sky. To the lower right, we see the comet Pons-Brooks which is making its way into the inner sol…

In today's image, we see the Orion spacecraft as it flew around our Moon last year in a test of the craft to eventually return humans to the Moon. The large "ocean" is actually one of the maria on th…

In today's image, we see a part of the Carina Nebula where stars are forming from dust while already formed stars are eating away at the dust, inhibiting star formation. It is a battle that the stars…

In today's image, we see a shower of particles from a single, very high energy nucleus striking Earth's upper atmosphere. While these cosmic rays strike Earth all the time, this one was of exceptiona…

In today's image, we see an image of the waning crescent moon, just a couple of days before new moon. As the image was being taken, a plane flew across the face of the moon giving us the lucky captur…

In today's image, we see a video clip which shows the Moon setting behind the rim of a volcano in the Canary Islands. The video will play about 2 minutes as we watch the Moon set.

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In today's image, we see an ancient observatory in Beijing including a giant Armillary Sphere which can be used to measure positions of objects in the sky. The star trails in the sky show the motion …

In today's image, we see the Milky Way above the telescopes of the La Silla observatory in Chile. We are looking in the direction of the center of the galaxy which is obscured by dust clouds. However…

In today's image, we see an image from day 13 of the flight of Artemis 1 from just a little over a year ago. This is when it reached its greatest distance from Earth. We see both Earth and Moon in th…

In today's image, we see what is called a landspout - similar to a waterspout but occurring over land. These objects form around the edges of the thunderstorms rather than with the massive cells that…

In today's image, we see the largest moon in the solar system, Ganymede as imaged by the Juno spacecraft back in 2021. This moon, larger than the planet Mercury, has an icy cratered surface, but also…

In today's image, we see the Eagle Ray Nebula, which bears a resemblance to a ray flying through space. This is an example of a dark nebula or a molecular cloud which is a denser area of space where …

In today's image, we see a jet of material being emitted from the icy comet known as 67/P. The comet was studied by the Rosetta spacecraft back in 2016 which orbited it as it came in close to the Sun…

In today's image, we see a 360 degree image, condensing the horizon to the little planet in the center of the image. Around that, we see an intense auroral display from a few weeks ago. Also noted in…

In today's image, we see two images of the planet Jupiter taken a week ago shortly after Jupiter's opposition. By looking at the center between the two images and crossing your eyes, you can merge th…

In today's image, we see the region around the Taurus molecular cloud, near the bright star Aldebaran in the sky. In this region, we see Herbig-Haro objects which are regions excited by jets of mater…

In today's image, we see the Hidden Galaxy which is actually hidden because of its location which means we have to look at it through the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy. The dust in our galaxy will di…

In today's image, we see a part of the veil supernova remnant. This is what is left behind by a star that was seen to explode from Earth about 5000 years ago. Since that time, the material has expand…

In today's image, we see Barnard 33, popularly known at the Horsehead nebula for its distinctive shape. This is a dark nebula in the constellation of Orion and is a part of the Orion star forming reg…