NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see three galaxies in the constellation which compose a compact group of galaxies. We have spiral galaxies on either side and an elliptical galaxy in the center. The spiral to th…

In today's image, we see our inner solar system with the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars identified. The other orbits are those of more than a thousand Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. Thes…

In today's image, we see a diagram showing how we are now able to detect low frequency gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes. This is done by measuring the timing of many differen…

In today's image, we see a region of our galaxy where the dust concentration is lower allowing us a view into more distant parts of our galaxy than would otherwise be visible. Dust blocks out much of…

In today's image, we see two images of Mars from MAVEN: The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft. This craft has been in orbit around Mars for nearly a decade giving us information about…

In today's image, we see the Belt of Venus. This is the dividing region between the Earth's shadow on the atmosphere and the portion of the atmosphere directly illuminated by sunlight. This is easily…

In today's image, we see a flash of lightning in the clouds of Jupiter's atmosphere as imaged by the Juno spacecraft currently in orbit around Jupiter. Lighting has been seen on several other planets…

In today's image, we see a 3D image of the Ingenuity helicopter sitting on the surface of the planet Mars. If you have red/blue 3D glasses, you can view the image in 3D. Ingenuity has now completed m…

In today's image, we see several very large galaxies in the constellation of Pavo. To the upper right, we see a barred spiral galaxy, five times the size of our Milky Way. To the lower left, we see a…

In today's image, we see part of the region around the constellation of the southern crown. This is part of a molecular cloud and star forming region. On the left side, we see a dark nebula where sta…

In today's image, we see three different paths taken by our Sun over the course of the year. The lowest and shortest path is at the winter solstice. The highest and longest path is at the summer sols…

In today's image, we see our Milky Way galaxy stretching from lower left to upper right. On the left hand side, we see the Milky Way itself. On the right hand side, we see the Nandu bird sketched ove…

In today's image, we see the central portions of the Lagoon Nebula which is a star forming region in the constellation of Sagittarius. We see a number of dark dusty areas, inclined a couple of funnel…

In today's image, we see the north polar region of Saturn as imaged by the Cassini spacecraft. The polar hexagon was first seen by the voyager craft in the 1980s and is apparently unique to Saturn. I…

In today's image, we see a video taken from the International Space Station showing the Earth at night. We will watch the ISS fly over North America, Europe, and Africa in its orbit. The bright, heav…

In today's image, we see combination of thousands of different images, taken one vertical column at a time to show the changes in the sky over the course of the night. We see not only stars, but als…

In today's image, we see tube globular star cluster known as M15. Globular star clusters are some of the oldest objects in the universe, many having formed within a billion years or so after the Big …

In today's image, we see the Shark Nebula, which is an example of a dusty nebula in a region of star formation in a molecular cloud. The two brighter area to the left of center are examples of emissi…

In today's image, we see the two innermost large moons of Jupiter - Io and Europa as they orbit around the giant planet. We also see the Great Red Spot, the largest storm in the solar system.

My podca…

In today's image, we see the two largest satellites of Earth. The largest satellite is the one natural satellite, our own Moon. The next largest satellite is the International Space Station. While th…