The Pleiades Star Cluster
1.12.2002

It is the most famous star cluster on the sky. The Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters.

NGC 300: A Cosmic Gemstone with Stars and Gas Clouds
16.07.2026

This sparkling, colorful gemstone is a spiral galaxy, NGC 300. It is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, only about 6 million light-years away. But does it really look like this? Here is a more standard portrait of it.

A Magellanic Starfield
4.01.2003

Stars of many types and colors are visible in this Hubble Space Telescope close-up of a starfield in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Over 10,000 stars are visible -- the brightest of which are giant stars. Were our Sun at the distance of these stars, about 170,000 light-years, it would hardly be discernable.

APOD: 2025 October 29 Б Dust Shapes of the Ghost Nebula
29.10.2025

Do any shapes seem to jump out at you from this interstellar field of stars and dust? The jeweled expanse, filled with faint, starlight-reflecting clouds, drifts through the night in the royal constellation of Cepheus.

IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula
7.01.2020

Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The orange and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes. The bright star...

The Solar Spectrum
27.02.2005

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.

APOD: 2026 January 11 Б M104: The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared
11.01.2026

This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.

Elements of the Swan Nebula
11.08.2003

In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as M17, stars continue to form. Also known as the Omega Nebula and Horseshoe Nebula, the darkness of M17's molecular clouds results from background starlight being absorbed by thick filaments of carbon-based smoke-sized dust.

M17: The Omega Nebula
26.01.1999

The Omega Nebula contains glowing gas, dark dust, and some unusually massive stars. Also known as the M17 and the Swan Nebula, the Omega Nebula is about 5000 light-years away, 20 light-years across, and visible with binoculars in the constellation of Sagittarius.

NGC 1977: Blue Reflection Nebula in Orion
1.02.1998

The Orion Nebula is visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch near the famous belt of three stars in the constellation Orion. The above picture captures a part of the Orion Nebula that primarily reflects light from bright Orion stars.