Copyright: : Francesco Antonucci How do stars form? Images of the star forming region W5 like those in the infrared by NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, later NEOWISE) satellite provide clear clues with indications that massive stars near the center of empty cavities are older than stars near the edges. A likely reason […]
How were these unusual Martian spherules created? Thousands of unusual gray spherules made of iron and rock and dubbed blueberries were found embedded in and surrounding rocks near the landing site of the robot Opportunity rover on Mars in 2004. To help investigate their origin, Opportunity found a surface dubbed the Berry Bowl with an […]
Copyright: Tunc Tezel Sure, that figure-8 shaped curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun in Earth’s sky at the same time each day over one year is called an analemma. On the left, Earth’s figure-8 analemma was traced by combining wide-angle digital images recorded during the year from December 2011 through […]
Copyright: Luca Vanzella dmonton, Alberta, Canada, planet Earth lies on the horizon. in this stack of panoramic composite images. In a monthly time series arranged vertically top to bottom the ambitious photographic project follows the annual north-south swing of sunrise points, from June solstice to December solstice and back again. It also follows the corresponding, […]
Copyright: Vikas Chander Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth’s sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It’s hard to […]
Copyright: Eric Holland What’s that unusual spot on the Moon? It’s the International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit gibbous Moon in 2019. The featured image was taken from Palo Alto, California, USA with an exposure time of only 1/667 of a second. In […]
Can you find the Rosette Nebula? The red flowery-looking nebula just above the image center may seem a good choice, but that’s not it. The famous Rosette Nebula is really located on the lower right, here colored blue and white, and connected to the other nebulas by gold-colored filaments. Because the featured image of Rosette’s […]
APOD is 30 years old today. In celebration, today’s picture uses past APODs as tiles arranged to create a single pixelated image that might remind you of one of the most well-known and evocative depictions of planet Earth’s night sky. In fact, this Starry Night consists of 1,836 individual images contributed to APOD over the […]
Copyright: Damia Bouic; Right Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS; Digital processing: Damia Bouic How different does sunset appear from Mars than from Earth? For comparison, two images of our common star were taken at sunset, one from Earth and one from Mars. These images were scaled to have the same angular width and are featured […]
Copyright: Martín Moliné What are all those streaks in the sky? A galaxy, many satellite trails, and a few meteors. First, far in the distance, the majestic band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs down the left. Mirroring it on the right are several parallel trails of Earth-orbiting Starlink satellites. Many fainter satellite trails also […]
In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant. Some 800,000 light-years across compared to the Milky Way’s diameter of […]
Copyright: Fred Espenak On April 20, 2023 the shadow of a New Moon raced across planet Earth’s southern hemisphere. When viewed along a narrow path that mostly avoided landfall, the Moon in silhouette created a hybrid solar eclipse. Hybrid eclipses are rare and can be seen as a total eclipse or an annular “ring of […]
Copyright: Tragoolchitr Jittasaiyapan Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It’s likely that you do, even though some bright stars have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written language. Many world cultures have their own names for the brightest stars, and it is culturally and historically […]
Do oceans under the ice of Saturn’s moon Enceladus contain life? A reason to think so involves long features — some dubbed tiger stripes — that are known to be spewing ice from the moon’s icy interior into space. These surface cracks create clouds of fine ice particles over the moon’s South Pole and create […]
Can you identify this celestial object? Likely not — because this is a discovery image. Massive stars forge heavy elements in their cores and, after a few million years, end their lives in powerful supernova explosions. These remnants cool relatively quickly and fade, making them difficult to detect. To uncover such faint, previously unknown supernova […]
