APOD: 2025 January 27 Б Pleiades over Half Dome
26.01.2025

Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away, formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another 250 million years.

APOD: 2026 April 22 Б Earthset with an iPhone
21.04.2026

What does it mean for the Earth to set? Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman gave us another spectacular view of Earth from their historic flyby of the Moon. Commander Wiseman's video, taken with an iPhone at 8x zoom, shows our entire planet gradually blocked from view by the Moon.

Moon AND Stars
6.09.2001

Here's something you don't see too often ... a detailed picture of the full Moon surrounded by a rich field of background stars. It's true that bright moonlight scattered by the atmosphere...

X Ray Stars in the Orion Nebula
19.05.2005

When our middle-aged Sun was just a few million years old it was thousands of times brighter in x-rays. In fact, it was likely similar to some of the stars found in this false-color x-ray composite of the Orion Nebula region from the Chandra Observatory.

In the Center of the Omega Nebula
6.05.2012

In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as the Omega Nebula, stars continue to form. The above image from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys shows exquisite detail in the famous star-forming region.

Edwin Hubble Discovers the Universe
25.04.2020

How big is our universe? This very question, among others, was debated by two leading astronomers 100 years ago today in what has become known as astronomy's Great Debate. Many astronomers then believed that our Milky Way Galaxy was the entire universe. Many others, though, believed that our galaxy was just one of many.

Jupiter Rotates
25.10.2021

Observe the graceful twirl of our Solar System's largest planet. Many interesting features of Jupiter's enigmatic atmosphere, including dark belts and light zones, can be followed in detail. A careful inspection will reveal that different cloud layers rotate at slightly different speeds.

Shadows at the Moons South Pole
9.04.2022

Was this image of the Moon's surface taken with a microscope? No -- it's a multi-temporal illumination map made with a wide-angle camera. To create it, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft collected...

Blood Moon, Ice Giant
10.11.2022

On November 8 the Full Moon turned blood red as it slid through Earth's shadow in a beautiful total lunar eclipse. During totality it also passed in front of, or occulted, outer planet Uranus for eclipse viewers located in parts of northern America and Asia.

APOD: 2023 October 3 Б MyCn 18: The Engraved Hourglass Planetary Nebula
2.10.2023

Do you see the hourglass shape -- or does it see you? If you can picture it, the rings of MyCn 18 trace the outline of an hourglass -- although one with an unusual eye in its center. Either way, the sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula.