NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see an image from the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars. We see hills covered with a large number of flattened rocks. This is believed to be caused by wind erosion over long…

In today's image, we see the northern part of the Carina Nebula, a large star forming region visible in the southern hemisphere. We see a number of emission nebulae as well as several open star clust…

In today's image, we see the moon of Saturn known as Helene. This is a very small moon, about 30 km across and was imaged by the Cassini spacecraft back in 2012. The small number of impact craters on…

In today's image, we see an image of the solar eclipse from April 20 of this year. In a solar eclipse, our Moon passes in front of the Sun temporarily blocking out its light. This image was taken fro…

In today's image, we see the runaway star known as Alpha Camelopardalis. The star is moving at an extremely high speed. This may be the result of gravitational interactions in a cluster or the explos…

In today's image, we see the Tarantula Nebula, the largest and most active star forming region in our local group of galaxies.

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In today's image, we see an image of our Moon perfectly centered under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Getting an image like this takes careful planning to get the exact position correct and some luck …

In today's image, we see an image of the aurora as seen over southern Spain recently. The auroral activity is increasing as the Sun is moving toward the more active portion of its 11 year cycle of ac…

In today's image, we see the Medulla Nebula, which is the remnant of a star that would have been seen to explode on Earth ten thousand years ago.

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In today's image, we see a waterspout in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. These can be similar to tornadoes which form over land and can be quite dangerous.

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In today's image, we see a stellar nursery in the constellation of Perseus. The blue color toward the top of the image is an example of a reflection nebula where light from hot stars is scattered by …

In today's image, we see the solar eclipse from April 20 of this year. this occurred when the Moon passed in front of the Sun and blocked out its light for about a minute. We will have a penumbral lu…

In today's image, we see a dark nebula resembling a seahorse in the constellation of Cepheus. In this dark nebula, new stars are currently forming, invisible to us, but visible if you use infrared li…

In today's image, we see a recent auroral storm over Lapland. The aurora are caused when charged particles from our Sun, funneled along magnetic field lines, strike oxygen and nitrogen atoms in Earth…

In today's image, we see the path of two upcoming eclipses across the United Stated. In October of 2023, there will be an annular eclipse whose path will take it from Oregon through Texas. In April o…

In today's image, we see an example of ELVES lighting. This is an upper atmospheric lightning which may occur when electrons from a discharge lower in the atmosphere are funneled up to the ionosphere…

In today's image, we see the planetary nebula known as the Butterfly Nebula. The is the end state of most stars, including our own Sun. The inner layers compact down to a white dwarf star while the o…

In today's image, we see images of Mars as it was going through its retrograde motion in 2022-2023. This motion occurs when Earth overtakes Mars in its orbit and passes it, making Mars appear briefly…

In today's image, we see the Hamburger Galaxy. This is an edge-on spiral galaxy so we do not see the spiral arms, but do see the telltale signs of star formation such as the blue glow of hot stars an…

In today's image, we see the globular cluster known as NGC 2419. This is also known as the Intergalactic Wanderer since studies of its motion show that it was once associated with another galaxy in o…