NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see the star cluster NGC 206 in the Andromeda Galaxy. This is a very young and extremely large star cluster which will dwarf the star forming regions in our own Milky Way.

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In today's image, we see the North Star, also known as Polaris. this star is relatively bright and happens to be located near the North Celestial Pole in the sky. This allows us to identify the locat…

In today's image, we see The Running Chicken Nebula which may bear a resemblance to a chicken running across the sky. It is a region of star formation where a young star cluster is forming at the cen…

In today's image, we see the Egg Nebula. This is a sunlike star near the end of its life in what is called the pre-planetary nebula phase. The core (hidden by dust) is compacting down to a white dwar…

In today's image, we see the spiral galaxy known as M100. This is what is called a grand design spiral because of its majestic, sweeping spiral arms. We see many blue star clusters which outline the …

In today's image, we see the region around the bright star Rigel in the sky. Rigel, one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Orion is in the Orion star forming region and we see much of the…

In today's image, we see the Terran 1 spacecraft launch. While the overall launch was not completely successful, it was a test of the fuel methalox which consists of liquid methane and liquid oxygen.…

In today's image, we see a giant spiral galaxy about 8 times the diameter of our own Milky Way. It is named after Vera Ruby who studied spiral galaxies and was the first to determine that much of the…

In today's image, we see Olympus Mons on Mars. This is the largest volcano in the solar system, much larger than any volcano on Earth or Venus. It can become so large because of the lack of plate mot…

In today's image, we see the central portion of our galaxy in radio waves. We need to use radio waves because dust n the plane of the galaxy will keep any visible light from the center of the galaxy …

In today's image, we see the Ring Nebula which is an example of a planetary nebula. This will be the end state of our own Sun - the core will collapse down to a white dwarf star while the outer layer…

In today's image, we see a barred spiral in the constellation of Volans. Note the distortion of the upper spiral arm which was likely cause by the interaction of this galaxy with another galaxy in th…

In today's image, we see several images of the large moon of Saturn known as Titan. This moon is continually shrouded in clouds which prevent us from seeing the surface. However, infrared observation…

In today's image, we see the globular cluster known as NGC 4372 which is about 20,000 light years away and close (in the sky) to the nebula known as the Dark Doodad which is only about 700 light year…

In today's image, we see the nebula around a Wolf-Rayet star which formed in the shape of a dolphin head. This is material pushed out by the energetic star which moves outward and may be slowed by ot…

In today's image, we see the Sun setting as seen from the mountains of Cerro Telolo observatory in Chile. The green flash that is seen occurs when the atmospheric conditions are right and the atmosph…

In today's image, we see the aurora and constellation in the sky over the Arctic Henge in Iceland. The aurora are caused by charged particles from the Sun which follow along Earth's magnetic field to…

In today's image, we see video showing a potential future of explorers in the solar system. We will see potential exploration of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and some of their moons in this hypothe…

In today's image, we see the planet Venus in the upper left corner of the image - very prominent in the night sky right now as the evening star. We also see the very thin waxing crescent moon close t…

In today's image, we see Comet ZTF as it heads back to the outer solar system after passing close to our Sun in January and passing close to Earth in early February.

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