NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see comet ZTF as imaged just a couple of days ago. The comet has brightened enough and is now visible to the naked-eye from a dark site with little light pollution. It should con…

In today's image, we see two galaxies: M81 - a spiral galaxy and M82 - an irregular galaxy. These are two galaxies that are interacting, enhancing star formation in both galaxies. In a few billion ye…

In today's image, we see the Seagull Nebula, a star forming region in the constellation of Canis Major, the large dog. This constellation also contains the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius. We…

In today's image, we see the lensing of a distant group of galaxies by a foreground cluster. Three different images of these galaxies are formed as light travels through the region of space distorted…

In today's image, we see the Andromeda Galaxy which is the nearest large spiral grassy to our own Milky Way. The clouds to the lower left are recently discovered and we do not yet know their origin o…

In today's image, we seen image of our Moon which has been enhanced to bring out some of the detail that is normally not visible. We can see the two different regions of our Moon - the maria and the …

In today's image, we see the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant left behind from the explosion of a massive star which was observed on Earth back in 1054. Many of the elements heavier that hydrogen and…

In today's image, we see our Sun imaged on January 4 which was the time of perihelion. Perihelion is the time in an orbit when an object (in this case, Earth) is closet to the Sun. While this is then…

In today's image, we see the young star cluster known as NGC 346 which is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. We see the star cluster as well as gas …

In today's image, we see a region in the constellation of Perseus in which stars are currently forming. We see a young cluster of stars and a good amount of dust regions where stars are currently in …

In today's image, we see an aurora over Iceland. The aurora are caused when charged particles from our Sun strike Earth's magnetic field and are funneled toward the poles. These then interact with ox…

In today's image, we see the Cone Nebula, also known as NGC 2264. This is an example of a star forming region. The Cone Nebula is being shaped and sculpted by a massive star not visible here, but jus…

In today's image, we see Comet ZTF including its due and ion tails stretching out into space. The comet will be closest to our Sun this coming week and may be visible without binoculars.

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In today's image, we see a periodic table of the elements. These are color coded based on our best estimate based on observations and calculations as to the origin of that specific element. We see th…

In today's image, we see two space stations moving across the sky - The International Space Station below and the Tiangong Space Station above. These are both in low Earth orbit and circle Earth in l…

In today's image, we see 12 images of our Moon showing the 12 full moons of 2022. The full moon occurs about once a month when the Moon is opposite to our Sun in the Sky. This year, there will be 13 …

In today's image, we see the Pleiades star cluster. This is an example of an open star cluster which is currently passing through a dust cloud which creates a reflection nebula where the blue light f…

In today's image, we see a spiral galaxy and a cometary globule. While it may appear that the globule will devour the galaxy, the globule is actually much smaller and is a part of our own galaxy that…

In today's image, we see Kemble's Cascade of Stars - an asterism or grouping of stars visible in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe). We see here that stars here have different colors w…

In today's image, we see the planets in the night sky just after sunset. Venus has recently made its transition from Morning Star to Evening Star and will become more prominent in the evening sky ove…