NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see two comets together in a telescopic view. This is comet ZTF which we have been looking at over the past couple of months as well as comet Atlas which is much fainter, but als…

In today's image, we see an image of clouds on Earth known as nacreous clouds. These form in the lower stratosphere which usually has no clouds when the temperatures are very low, forming ice crystal…

In today's image, we see the nebula around a Worf-Rayet star. The Wolf-Rayet stars are the most massive and hottest stars in the universe and are the type that will end their lives as supernovae. Her…

In today's image, we see Comet ZTF as images in late January between the Big and Little Dippers in the northern sky. Comet ZTF is now heading out into the solar system again and is fading although it…

In today's image, we see the star cluster at the center of the Rosette Nebula. The energy from the stars is in the process of clearing out the central regions of gas and dust. In a fe million year, a…

In today's image, we see one of the moons of Saturn, known as Enceladus. It is shining by saturnshine which means that light from the Sun travel to Saturn and is reflected off the planet and then to …

In today's image, we see a number of nebulae along the Vela Molecular Ridge. This includes the reflection nebula, NGC 2626 as well as dark nebulae and emission nebulae in the region. All of these are…

In today's image, we see an image showing star trails. Toward the left we see the locations of the North Celestial Pole with the relatively bright star Polaris just a bit above it. Polaris is current…

In today's image, we see three reflection nebulae in the Orion star forming region. These are all in the 1970s of the NGC catalog which would also include NGC 1976 which is the Orion Nebula (not pict…

In today's image, we see an artist's conception of the Trappist-1 system as viewed from the outermost (seventh) planet in the system. This is an interesting system in that it is composed of terrestri…

In today's image, we see comet ZTF in three views. The largest image is what would be seen with the naked-eye. The upper inset image is what would be seen through a pair of binoculars and the lower i…

In today's image, we see a globular star cluster known as NGC 6355. Globular star clusters are remnants of the early history of our galaxy. Having gone from thousands to just a couple of hundred as t…

In today's image, we see Barnard 68, a molecular cloud where the dust and molecular gas are dense enough to block out the light. Dust is very goo sat scattering and absorbing the shorter wavelengths,…

In today's image, we see Comet ZTF as it appeared on January 23 of this year. It is still visible without the aid of a telescope this weekend if you know where to look in the northern sky, near Polar…

In today's image, we see Comet ZTF with two tails, the dust and ion tails pointing to the upper right of the image. We also see an anti-tail toward the lower left. The presence of the anti-tail is ca…

In today's image, we see an active galaxy known by its catalog designation NGC 1275. An active galaxy differs from an ordinary galaxy in the it emits more energy and different types of energy than a …

In today's image, we see what is sometimes known as the Boogeyman Nebula. This is part of the Orion star forming region, about 1500 light years from Earth. We see the dark nebula as well as the red g…

In today's image, we see an image generated by artificial intelligence of what the surface of a specific Earth-sized exoplanet might look like. We can use the information we know about the object to …

In today's image, we see two galaxies in the process of colliding together in what is known as Arp 274. Galaxy collisions involve the collisions of gas clouds when can enhance star formation. However…

In today's image, we see an image showing an auroral display from early 2014. The aurora occur when charged particles from the Sun, often from a solar flare, strike Earth's atmosphere and are the fun…