Astronomy Picture of the Day
115 •
@nasa_apod
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
provided by NASA and Michigan Technological University (MTU).
Astronomy Picture of the Day
216
🌌The Leo Trio
This popular group leaps into the early evening sky around the March equinox and the northern hemisphere spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies found in the prominent constellation Leo gather here in one astronomical field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (left), M66 (bottom r ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
191
🌌The Eyes in Markarian's Galaxy Chain
Across the heart of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster lies a string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain. Prominent in Markarian's Chain are these two interacting galaxies, NGC 4438 (left) and NGC 4435 - also known as The Eyes. About 50 million light-years away, the two galaxies appear to be about 100,000 light-years apart in this sharp close-up, but have likely ap ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
191
© Alan Dyer, Amazingsky.com, TWAN
EquinoxSunset_Dyer_1701.jpg
jpg
238,413 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
192
🌌A Picturesque Equinox Sunset
What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east-west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle. Today, in some parts of the world (tomorrow in others), is one of those days: an equinox. Not only is this a day of equal night ("aequus"-"nox") and day time, but also a day when the sun rises precisely to th ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
195
🌌Comet Pons-Brooks' Swirling Coma
A bright comet will be visible during next month's total solar eclipse. This very unusual coincidence occurs because Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks's return to the inner Solar System places it by chance only 25 degrees away from the Sun during Earth's April 8 total solar eclipse. Currently the comet is just on the edge of visibility to the unaided eye, best visible with ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
197
Ngc7714_HubblePohl_2048.jpg
jpg
218,994 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
198
🌌NGC 7714: Starburst after Galaxy Collision
Is this galaxy jumping through a giant ring of stars? Probably not. Although the precise dynamics behind the featured image is yet unclear, what is clear is that the pictured galaxy, NGC 7714, has been stretched and distorted by a recent collision with a neighboring galaxy. This smaller neighbor, NGC 7715, situated off to the left of the frame, is thou ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
193
ELT_2024-03-13_2048.jpg
jpg
822,214 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
193
🌌ELT and the Milky Way
The southern winter Milky Way sprawls across this night skyscape. Looking due south, the webcam view was recorded near local midnight on March 11 in dry, dark skies over the central Chilean Atacama desert. Seen below the graceful arc of diffuse starlight are satellite galaxies of the mighty Milky Way, also known as the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. In the foreground i ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
192
🌌Portrait of NGC 1055
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus. Seen edge-on, the island universe spans over 100,000 light-years, a little larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. The colorful, spiky stars decorating this cosmic portrait of NGC 1055 are in the foregro ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
211
🌌Moon Pi and Mountain Shadow
What phase of the Moon is 3.14 radians from the Sun? The Full Moon, of course. Even though the Moon might look full for several days, the Moon is truly at its full phase when it is Pi radians (aka 180 degrees) from the Sun in ecliptic longitude. That's opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. Rising as the Sun set on March 9, 2020, only an hour or so after the moment ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
191
🌌The Seagull Nebula
A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker: the Seagull Nebula. This portrait of the cosmic bird covers a 1.6-degree wide swath across the plane of the Milky Way, near the direction of Sirius, the alpha star of the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major). Of course, the region include ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
198
🌌A Galaxy-Shaped Rocket Exhaust Spiral
What's that over the horizon? What may look like a strangely nearby galaxy is actually a normal rocket's exhaust plume -- but unusually backlit. Although the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, its burned propellant was visible over a much wider area, with the featured photograph being taken from Akureyri, Iceland. The h ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
198
© Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava
FullPlantonMoon_Horalek_1022.jpg
jpg
165,692 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
188
🌌A Full Plankton Moon
What glows in the night? This night featured a combination of usual and unusual glows. Perhaps the most usual glow was from the Moon, a potentially familiar object. The full Moon's nearly vertical descent results from the observer being near Earth's equator. As the Moon sets, air and aerosols in Earth's atmosphere preferentially scatter out blue light, making the Sun-reflec ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
187
© Fred Bruenjes (moonglow.net)
AntarcticEclipse_bruenjes_960.jpg
jpg
41,463 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
194
🌌A Total Eclipse at the End of the World
Would you go to the end of the world to see a total eclipse of the Sun? If you did, would you be surprised to find someone else there already? In 2003, the Sun, the Moon, Antarctica, and two photographers all lined up in Antarctica during an unusual total solar eclipse. Even given the extreme location, a group of enthusiastic eclipse chasers ventured near ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
197
🌌Comet Pons-Brooks in Northern Spring
As spring approaches for northern skygazers Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is growing brighter. Currently visible with small telescopes and binoculars the Halley-type comet could reach naked eye visibility in the coming weeks. Seen despite a foggy atmosphere, the comet's green coma and long tail hover near the horizon, in this well-composed deep night skyscape from R ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
209
🌌The Tarantula Zone
The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. About 180 thousand light-years away, it's the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies. The cosmic arachnid sprawls across this magnificent view, an a ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
189
🌌The Crew-8 Nebula
Not the James Webb Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this cloud of gas and dust dazzled spacecoast skygazers on March 3. The telephoto snapshot was taken minutes after the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket on the SpaceX Crew-8 mission, to the International Space Station. It captures plumes and exhaust from the separated first and second stage, a drifting Ro ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
164
M102_HubbleEbrahimian_3615.jpg
jpg
1,68 Мб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
162
🌌M102: Edge-on Disk Galaxy
What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy -- but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, the Spindle galaxy, pictured here, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. A perhaps more familiar galaxy seen edge-on is our own Milky Way galaxy. Also cataloged as M102, the Spindle galaxy has numerous and com ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
162
🌌NGC 2170: Angel Nebula Abstract Art
Is this a painting or a photograph? In this celestial abstract art composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines just above the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of color ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
167
🌌Light Pillars Over Inner Mongolia
What's happening across that field? Pictured here are not auroras but nearby light pillars, a phenomenon typically much closer.
🔗 https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240304.html
Astronomy Picture of the Day
181
🌌A Total Solar Eclipse Close-Up in Real Time
How would you feel if the Sun disappeared? Many eclipse watchers across the USA surprised themselves in 2017 with the awe that they felt and the exclamations that they made as the Sun momentarily disappeared behind the Moon. Perhaps expecting just a brief moment of dusk, the spectacle of unusually rapid darkness, breathtakingly bright glowing beads ar ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
165
IM_Odysseus_landing-2048x1118.png
png
2,67 Мб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
164
🌌Odysseus on the Moon
Methalox rocket engine firing, Odysseus' landing legs absorb first contact with the lunar surface in this wide-angle snapshot from a camera on board the robotic Intuitive Machines Nova-C moon lander. Following the landing on February 22, broken landing legs, visible in the image, ultimately left the lander at rest but tilted. Odysseus' gentle lean into a sloping lunar surfa ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
161
© John Sarkissian
The_Dish_Tracking_IM-1_22February2024_04.jpg
jpg
540,258 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
182
🌌Odysseus and The Dish
Murriyang, the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope points toward a nearly Full Moon in this image from New South Wales, Australia, planet Earth. Bathed in moonlight, the 64 meter dish is receiving weak radio signals from Odysseus, following the robotic lander's February 22 touch down some 300 kilometers north of the Moon's south pole. The landing of Odysseus represents the firs ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
173
CaesarCoin_Wikipedia_960.jpg
jpg
98,849 Кб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
183
🌌Julius Caesar and Leap Days
In 46 BC Julius Caesar reformed the calendar system. Based on advice by astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria, the Julian calendar included one leap day every four years to account for the fact that an Earth year is slightly more than 365 days long. In modern terms, the time it takes for the planet to orbit the Sun once is 365.24219 mean solar days. So if calendar years ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
192
🌌Shades of Night
How does the sky turn dark at night? In stages, and with different characteristic colors rising from the horizon. The featured image shows, left to right, increasingly late twilight times after sunset in 20 different vertical bands. The picture was taken last month in Syracuse, Sicily, Italy, in the direction opposite the Sun. On the far left is the pre-sunset upper sky. Toward ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
172
© Stéphane Vetter (Nuits sacrées)
Simeis147_Vetter_3000.jpg
jpg
4,55 Мб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
173
🌌Supernova Remnant Simeis 147
It's easy to get lost following the intricate, looping, and twisting filaments of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240, the filamentary nebula goes by the popular nickname the Spaghetti Nebula. Seen toward the boundary of the constellations of the Bull (Taurus) and the Charioteer (Auriga), the impressive gas structure covers nearly 3 degre ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
177
🌌Martian Moon Eclipses Martian Moon
What if there were two moons in the sky -- and they eclipsed each other? This happens on Mars. The featured video shows a version of this unusual eclipse from space. Pictured are the two moons of Mars: the larger Phobos, which orbits closer to the red planet, and the smaller Deimos, which orbits further out. The sequence was captured last year by the ESA’s Mar ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
173
© Hallgrimur P. Helgason; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt
PhoenixAurora_Helgason_3130.jpg
jpg
7,75 Мб
Astronomy Picture of the Day
200
🌌A Phoenix Aurora over Iceland
All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland, on a quiet September night, much of that night's auroras had died down. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a new burst of particles streamed down from space, lighting up the Earth's atmosphere once again. This time, surprisingly, pareidoliacally, the night lit up with an amazing shape reminiscent of a gian ...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
170
im-moon-imageFeb23_1024.jpg
jpg
244,053 Кб