APOD: 2025 July 10 Б Lynds Dark Nebula 1251
9.07.2025

Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, LDN 1251 is also less appetizingly known as "The Rotten Fish Nebula." The dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region.

APOD: 2025 February 23 Б Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
22.02.2025

Saturn looks slightly different in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth.

APOD: 2025 June 18 Б Space Station Silhouette on the Moon
17.06.2025

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.

APOD: 2023 April 17 Б ELVES Lightning over Italy
16.04.2023

What's that red ring in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including red sprites and blue jets.

APOD: 2023 August 7 Б The Pelican Nebula in Gas, Dust, and Stars
6.08.2023

The Pelican Nebula is slowly being transformed. IC 5070 (the official designation) is divided from the larger North America Nebula by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust. The Pelican, however, receives much study because it is a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds.

APOD: 2024 December 11 Б The Shells and Jets of Galaxy Centaurus A
10.12.2024

What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, cataloged as NGC 5128, which is only 12 million light-years distant. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies...

APOD: 2025 July 14 Б NGC 2685: The Helix Galaxy
13.07.2025

What is going on with this galaxy? NGC 2685 is a confirmed polar ring galaxy - a rare type of galaxy with stars, gas and dust orbiting in rings perpendicular to the plane of a flat galactic disk.

APOD: 2025 August 21 Б Mostly Perseids
20.08.2025

In this predawn skyscape recorded during the early morning hours of August 13, mostly Perseid meteors are raining down on planet Earth. You can easily identify the Perseid meteor streaks. They're the ones...

APOD: 2024 February 11 Б Rocket Plume Shadow Points to the Moon
10.02.2024

Why would the shadow of a rocket's launch plume point toward the Moon? In early 2001 during a launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, the Sun, Earth, Moon, and rocket were all properly aligned for this photogenic coincidence.

APOD: 2023 May 29 Б Milky Way over a Turquoise Wonderland
28.05.2023

What glows there? The answer depends: sea or sky? In the sea, the unusual blue glow is bioluminescence. Specifically, the glimmer arises from Noctiluca scintillans, single-celled plankton stimulated by the lapping waves. The plankton use their glow to startle and illuminate predators.