NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

In today's image, we see an artist's conception of what the dwarf planet Makemake might look like as we look back towards our Sun off in the distance. Makemake was found to have a moon several years …

In today's image, we see the planet Mars, also known as the Red Planet as it passes through the constellation of Taurus the bull. Also seen in the image are two oven star clusters in Taurus, The Hyad…

In today's image, we see a part of the Orion star forming region near the belt of Orion. We se the star Alnitak, one of the three bright stars in Orion's Belt as well as the Horsehead Nebula, a dark …

In today's image, we see the spiral galaxy Messier 88. This galaxy is similar to our own Milky Way in terms of size, but is far away ar about 50 million light years. This gives us a view of what an a…

In today's image, we see a full circle rainbow. This is only visible from above the ground because of the geometry involved in the reflection of light off of the raindrops. In this case, observed fro…

In today's image, we see NGC 6164, also known as the Dragon's Egg Nebula. This is the nebula around a very young, O-type star. These are the largest and most massive stars and also the most unstable.…

In today's image, we see a number of meteors from the Geminid meteor show that peaked about a week ago. The meteors are from debris left behind by an asteroid. The small particles strike Earth's atmo…

In today's image, we see the comet known as 2022 E3 (ZTF). This is a long period comet that will only return to the inner solar system after hundreds or thousands of years. It will reach its closest …

In today's image, we see an image taken by the Cassini spacecraft near the end of its mission in 2017. At this point, it was directed to a point close to Saturn and inside the orbit of the rings so i…

In today's image, we see NGC 1365, an example of a barred spiral galaxy. As with any spiral galaxy, we see the blue color of the spiral arms and the pink glow of the hydrogen regions that highlight t…

In today's image, we see the Sun in the sky around noon from central Sweden. From high latitudes, the Sun will never get very high in the sky at this time of year. Today is the winter solstice when t…

In today's image, we see the nebula known as Thor's Helmet - named for the resemblance to the winged helmet of the Norse god. This nebula contains a Wolf-Rayet star. This is a very young and very hot…

In today's image, we see the Tadpole Nebula, which is a part of a star forming region. In the main image, the stars have been digitally removed to allow the viewer to focus on the structures of the g…

In today's image, we see images of the 25 brightest stars in the night sky. We see a variety of colors among these stars indicating differences in temperature. A star can be bright because it is clos…

In today's image, we see a 3D image from the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon which occurred 50 years ago this month. This was the last time humans walked on the Moon. However, recent missions have occu…

In today's image, we see ammeter that is a part of the Geminid shower that peaked a couple of days ago. The Geminids are associated with the debris left behind by an asteroid. Also visible in the ima…

In today's image, we see Mars as it disappeared behind our Moon for about an hour on December 8 during the occultation that was visible from much of Europe and North America. Another occultation will…

In today's image, we see the lunar rover from the Apollo 17 mission from December 1972 - the last time humans landed on our Moon. The dust is the lunar soil or regolith which has been finely powdered…

In today's image, we see an image of the sky over Norway. It it, we see two galaxies, our own Milky Way as well as the Andromeda Galaxy. We also see the planet Jupiter within our solar system, and a …

In today's image, we see IC 1396, also known as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. This is a part of a star forming region. The cometary globule toward the upper right holds a newly formed star which is in…