NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see the galaxy NGC 3169 which looks like it is being unraveled by interactions with a companion galaxy. These galaxies are in the process of colliding together and will eventuall…

In today's image, we see The Flaming Star Nebula, which is an example of an emission nebula which shines with the red glow of hydrogen gas. Off to the right, we see comet ZTF which we have looked at …

In today's image, we see the thin crescent Moon behind the temple of Poseidon in Greece. The very thin crescent phase is the most difficult to find in the sky since the thin crescent is always near t…

In today's image, we see the zodiacal light extending in a ray up above the horizon. This is caused by dust scatted off of dust in our solar system and back to Earth. The two bright objects are Venus…

In today's image, we see one of the moons of Saturn known as Iapetus. This moon has some interesting structures giving it a passing resemblance to perhaps a walnut. In addition, it has two distinct s…

In today's image, we see the crescent Moon near to the time of an occultation of Jupiter. An occultation occurs when one astronomical object passes directly in front of another one. This coming week …

In today's image, we see the planetary nebula known as Jones-Emberson 1. A planetary nebula will be the end state of a star much like our own Sun. The outer layers are expelled out into space as the …

In today's image, we see Arp 78 which is an example of a peculiar galaxy. A peculiar galaxy is a galaxy generally with a distorted structure because of interactions with other nearby galaxies. Genera…

In today's image, we see an image of our Sun taken in the light of hydrogen. The Sun is coming out of a solar minimum of activity just a couple of years ago where few sunspots or other signs of activ…

In today's image, we see comet ZTF at near its closest approach to Earth earlier this month as seen over Yosemite Falls in California, USA. The comet is now heading back to the outer solar system, pe…

In today's image, we see NGC 1850, a star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud which is a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. It bears a resemblance to the globular clusters in our galaxy, but is…

In today's image, we see an infrared view of the Pleiades star cluster. In the infrared, the dust around the cluster is emphasized, giving us an opportunity to study the structures that are formed in…

In today's image, we see NGC 1365 which is an example of a barred spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way. This is imaged from the James Webb Space Telescope which gives us a view of it in the infrared …

In today's image, we see the flash of the meteor created by the object known as 2023 CX1. This is a very rare case where the object was detected before it actually hit Earth's atmosphere. In this cas…

In today's image, we see one of the nearer clusters of galaxies known as the Hydra cluster. Galaxies tend to group in to large structures like clusters, then superclusters, and finally great filament…

In today's image, we see a number of objects in the sky over France. This includes the airglow which is light from the atmosphere when energized by photons from our Sun. We also see the Milky Way Gal…

In today's image, we see two nebulae, known as the Heart Nebula and the Should Nebula. These are examples of emission nebula which are located in star forming regions where gas left over from star fo…

In today's image, we see Comet ZTF and the planet Mars together in the sky. Mars will be visible for the next couple of months. However, the comet is fading and will soon disappear from view as it he…

In today's image, we see an unusual type of cloud, called a mammals cloud. There are rounded rather than flat on the bottom and are occasionally visible in regions around thunderstorms.

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In today's image, we see both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds in the sky over Chile. These are two small satellite galaxies of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

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