Enhanced version of the Nasa astronomy picture of the day website
IC 342: Hidden Galaxy in Camelopardalis
Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island...
Fleming's Triangular Wisp
These chaotic and tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large...
The Horsehead Nebula
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years...
Space Station, Solar Prominences, Sun
That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspots, individually, have a dark central umbra, a lighter surrounding penumbra, and no...
Planet Earth from Orion
One year ago a Space Launch System rocket left planet Earth on November 16, 2022 at 1:47am EST carrying the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission, the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space...
Nightlights in Qeqertaq
Light pollution is usually not a problem in Qeqertaq. In western Greenland the remote coastal village boasted a population of 114 in 2020. Lights still shine in its dark skies though. During planet...
Daytime Moon Meets Morning Star
Venus now appears as Earth's brilliant morning star, shining above the southeastern horizon before dawn. For early morning risers, the silvery celestial beacon rose predawn in a close pairing with...
M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab
Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud...
Three Planets Rock
In the fading darkness before dawn, a tilted triangle appeared to balance atop a rock formation off the southern tip of Sicily. Making up the points of the triangle are three of the four brightest...
Andromeda over the Alps
Have you ever seen the Andromeda galaxy? Although M31 appears as a faint and fuzzy blob to the unaided eye, the light you see will be over two million years old, making it likely the oldest light...
Gibbous Moon beyond Swedish Mountain
This is a gibbous Moon. More Earthlings are familiar with a full moon, when the entire face of Luna is lit by the Sun, and a crescent moon, when only a sliver of the Moon's face is lit. When...
The SAR Arc and the Milky Way
This broad, luminous red arc was a surprising visitor to partly cloudy evening skies over northern France. Captured extending toward the zenith in a west-to-east mosaic of images from November 5,...
UHZ1: Distant Galaxy and Black Hole
Dominated by dark matter, massive cluster of galaxies Abell 2744 is known to some as Pandora's Cluster. It lies 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation Sculptor. Using the galaxy...
M1: The Crab Nebula
The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, debris...
Perseus Galaxy Cluster from Euclid
There's a new space telescope in the sky: Euclid. Equipped with two large panoramic cameras, Euclid captures light from the visible to the near-infrared. It took five hours of observing for...
A Martian Dust Devil Spins By
It moved across the surface of Mars -- what was it? A dust devil. Such spinning columns of rising air are heated by the warm surface and are also common in warm and dry areas on planet Earth. ...
Red Aurora over Italy
What was that red glow on the horizon last night? Aurora. Our unusually active Sun produced a surface explosion a few days ago that sent out a burst of electrons, protons, and more massive charged...
Creature Aurora Over Norway
It was Halloween and the sky looked like a creature. Exactly which creature, the astrophotographer was unsure (but possibly you can suggest one). Exactly what caused this eerie apparition in 2013...
Dinkinesh Moonrise
Last Wednesday the voyaging Lucy spacecraft encountered its first asteroid, 152830 Dinkinesh, and discovered the inner-main belt asteroid has a moon. From a distance of just over 400 kilometers,...
Jupiter by Moonlight
That bright beacon you've seen rising in the east just after sunset is Jupiter. Climbing high in midnight skies, our Solar System's ruling gas giant was at its 2023 opposition, opposite the...