APOD: 2025 May 21 Б International Space Station Crosses the Sun
21.05.2025

Typically, the International Space Station is visible only at night. Slowly drifting across the night sky as it orbits the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen as a bright spot about once a month from many locations.

The Sun Also Rises
17.11.1995

Sunrise seen from low Earth orbit by the shuttle astronauts can be very dramatic indeed (and the authors apologize to Hemingway for using his title!). In this breathtaking view, the Sun is just visible...

Flying Saucer Crash Lands in Utah Desert
13.11.2022

A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. The year was 2004, and no space aliens were involved. The saucer, pictured here...

The Local Bubble and the Galactic Neighborhood
17.02.2002

What surrounds the Sun in this neck of the Milky Way Galaxy? Our current best guess is depicted in the above map of the surrounding 1500 light years constructed from various observations and deductions.

Prominences and Filaments on the Active Sun
15.06.2024

This colorized and sharpened image of the Sun is composed of frames recording emission from hydrogen atoms in the solar chromosphere on May 15. Approaching the maximum of solar cycle 25, a multitude of active regions and twisting, snake-like solar filaments are seen to sprawl across the surface of the active Sun.

Solar Flares Cause Sun Quakes
1.06.1998

An 11th magnitude quake has been recorded on the Sun, immediately following a moderate solar flare. The quake was the first ever recorded on the Sun, but only because astronomers have only recently figured out when and how to find them using the orbiting SOHO spacecraft.

Erupting Sun
18.09.1997

On August 27th twisting magnetic fields propelled this huge eruptive prominence a hundred thousand miles above the Sun's surface. The seething plasma of ionized gases is at a temperature of about 150,000 degrees Farenheit and spans over 200,000 miles (about 27 Earths).

The Local Interstellar Cloud
10.02.2002

The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas, called the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform, and shows patchiness even near our Sun.

The Solar Spectrum
15.08.2000

It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Shown above are all the visible colors of the Sun, produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism-like device.

Equinox + 1
20.03.2004

Twice a year, at the Spring and Fall equinox, the Sun rises due east. In an emphatic demonstration of this celestial alignment, photographer Joe Orman recorded this inspiring image of the Sun rising exactly along the east-west oriented Western Canal, in Tempe,Arizona, USA.