NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

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…

In today's image, we see Io as imaged by the Galileo Spacecraft back in 1999. This shows Io in true color as would be seen by the typical human eye. Io is the most volcanically active object in our s…

In today's image, we see the Apollo 17 Lunar Module about an orbit before it would land on the surface of the Moon. This was the final landing of the Apollo program, now 50 years ago in Dec 1972. The…

In today's image, we see the planet Mars rising above the lunar limb during the occultation which occurred on December 7 and was visible from much of North America and Europe. An occultation occurs w…

In today's image, we see the Orion craft as it flew by our Moon three days ago on its return trip to Earth from a trip out beyond our Moon. Visible on the surface is the Ocean of Storms as well as a …

In today's image, we see the planetary nebula known as the Helix Nebula and also known by the catalog designation of NGC 7293. This is the end state of a star much like our own Sun. When it runs out …

In today's image, we see a portion of the Eagle Nebula known as M16. This is one of the pillars of star formation as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. In this region, new stars are in the pro…

In today's image, we see the Pleiades - this is an example of an open star cluster located in the constellation of Taurus and it one of the more prominent stars clusters visible to the naked eye.

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In today's image, we see an image from the Powers of 10 video from 1977. The video starts with a picnic scene and then zooms outbid factors of 10 to the edge of the universe. It will them zoom back i…

In today's image, we see Mars as it approaches opposition in less than a week now. When a planet is at opposition, it is opposite to the Sun in the sky and will be at its closest and brightest as see…

In today's image, we see a pair of galaxies in the process of merging to become a single, larger galaxy in this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Mergers are how we find galaxies to have evo…

In today's image, we see the Artemis 1 mission, showing the Orion spacecraft as it reached its furthest distance from our Moon a couple of days ago. The craft will now pass our Moon again as it retur…

In today's image, we see several different types of nebulae associated with star forming regions. We see the emission nebulae where gs is energized by the UV light from hot stars. We see reflection n…

In today's image, we see the Gum Nebula, an example of a supernova remnant. It is actually a difficult one to see wince it is the closest supernova remnant to Earth and spans about 40 degrees in the …

In today's image, we see some of the Leonid meteors from earlier this month as they pass through some of the constellations of the winter sky. Prominent at the center of the image is Orion, but we al…

In today's image, we see at least five supernumerary rainbows in the image. These are causes when identically sized water droplets, less than a millimeter in size not only reflect light, but also cau…

In today's image, we see an image of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft just a couple of days before it was plunged into the atmosphere at the end of its mission in 2017. Here we see the night side o…

In today's image, we see the spiral galaxy known as NGC 6744. This is a spiral galaxy, larger than our own Milky Way, but still showing the distinctive characteristics of a spiral galaxy such as star…

In today's image, we see Lynds Dark Nebula 1251. This is a region in the very early stages of star formation where stars are just beginning to form in the the densest dark globules present. The proto…

In today's image, we see Earth setting behind the lunar limb as imaged recently by the Orion craft. This has recently made a close approach to the lunar surface - within 100 miles. It will be going i…