Astronomy Picture of the Day RSS Feed

3 ATs Despite their resemblance to R2D2 , these three are not the droids you're looking for. Instead, the enclosures house 1.8 meter Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) at Paranal Observatory in the At...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240504.html

Temperatures on Exoplanet WASP 43b A mere 280 light-years from Earth , tidally locked, Jupiter-sized exoplanet WASP-43b orbits its parent star once every 0.8 Earth days. That puts it about 2 mi...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240503.html

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. The large galaxy of over 100 billion stars has well-defined sp...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240502.html

APOD: 2024 May 1 – IC 1795: The Fishhead Nebula To some, this nebula looks like the head of a fish . However, this colorful cosmic portrait really features glowing gas and obscuring dust cl...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240501.html

APOD: 2024 April 30 – GK Per: Nova and Planetary Nebula The star system GK Per is known to be associated with only two of the three nebulas pictured . At 1500 light years distant, Nova Perse...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240430.html

APOD: 2024 April 29 – Comet, Planet, Moon Three bright objects satisfied seasoned stargazers of the western sky just after sunset earlier this month. The most familiar was the Moon , seen on ...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240429.html

APOD: 2024 April 28 – Rings Around the Ring Nebula The Ring Nebula (M57) is more complicated than it appears through a small telescope. The easily visible central ring is about one light-ye...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240428.html

All Sky Moon Shadow If the Sun is up but the sky is dark and the horizon is bright all around, you might be standing in the Moon's shadow during a total eclipse of the Sun. In fact, the all-sk...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240427.html

Regulus and the Dwarf Galaxy In northern hemisphere spring , bright star Regulus is easy to spot above the eastern horizon. The alpha star of the constellation Leo, Regulus is the spiky star ce...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240426.html

NGC 604: Giant Stellar Nursery Located some 3 million light-years away in the arms of nearby spiral galaxy M33 , giant stellar nursery NGC 604 is about 1,300 light-years across. That's nearly ...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240425.html

APOD: 2024 April 24 – Dragons Egg Bipolar Emission Nebula How did a star form this beautiful nebula? In the middle of emission nebula NGC 6164 is an unusually massive star . The central star...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240424.html

APOD: 2024 April 23 – Contrail Shadow X What created this giant X in the clouds? It was the shadow of contrails illuminated from below. When airplanes fly, humid engine exhaust may form wat...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240423.html

APOD: 2024 April 22 – Moon and Smoke Rings from Mt Etna Yes, but can your volcano do this? To the surprise of some, Mt. Etna emits, on occasion, smoke rings. Technically known as vortex rin...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240422.html

APOD: 2024 April 21 – Perijove 16: Passing Jupiter Watch Juno zoom past Jupiter. NASA 's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its now month-long, highly-elongated orbits around our Sola...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240421.html

Diamonds in the Sky When the dark shadow of the Moon raced across North America on April 8, sky watchers along the shadow's narrow central path were treated to a total solar eclipse. During t...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240420.html

The Great Carina Nebula A jewel of the southern sky , the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-yea...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240419.html

Facing NGC 1232 From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy , we see NGC 1232 face-on. Nearly 200,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located some 47 million light-y...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240418.html

APOD: 2024 April 17 – Total Eclipse and Comets Not one, but two comets appeared near the Sun during last week's total solar eclipse . The expected comet was Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks , but it was...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240417.html

APOD: 2024 April 16 – Filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago, a star in the constellation of Vela could...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240416.html

APOD: 2024 April 15 – The Cigar Galaxy from Hubble and Webb Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? Known as the Cigar Galaxy and cataloged as M82 , red glowing gas and dust are...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240415.html

APOD: 2024 April 14 – How a Total Solar Eclipse Ended How does a total solar eclipse end? Yes, the Moon moves out from fully blocking the Sun , but in the first few seconds of transition, int...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240414.html

Palm Tree Partial Eclipse Only those along the narrow track of the Moon's shadow on April 8 saw a total solar eclipse. But most of North America still saw a partial eclipse of the Sun. From Cl...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240413.html