Baku Moonrise
8.12.2012

A Full Moon rises in this waterfront scene. Its colorful, watery reflection is joined by harbor lights and a windowed skyscraper's echo of the western horizon just after sunset. The tantalizing image is a composite of frames recorded at 2 minute intervals on November 28 from the Caspian Sea port city of Baku, Azerbaijan.

Full Moon in Mountain Shadow
21.10.2016

On October 15, standing near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea and looking away from a gorgeous sunset produced this magnificent snapshot of a Full Moon rising within the volcanic mountain's shadow. An alignment across the Solar System is captured in the stunning scene and seeming contradiction of bright Moon in dark shadow.

Remembering NEOWISE
31.07.2021

It was just last July. If you could see the stars of the Big Dipper, you could find Comet NEOWISE in your evening sky. After sunset denizens of the north could look for the naked-eye comet below the bowl of that famous celestial kitchen utensil and above the northwestern horizon.

Alpine Conjunction
2.01.2009

Did you see it? The last conjunction of Moon and bright planets in 2008 featured a young crescent Moon and brilliant Venus in the west after sunset on December 31st. Seen here in dark, clear, mountain air from Mönichkirchen, Austria, are the two celestial beacons that dominate planet Earth's night sky.

Scorpius Enhanced
16.06.2021

If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well-known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, a dark sky, and some sophisticated image processing.

Triple Conjunction Over Galician National Park
24.06.2015

What are those bright objects hovering over the horizon? Planets -- and the Moon. First out, the horizon featured is a shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean that occurs at the Galicia National Park in northern Spain. Next furthest out, on the left, is the Moon.

Mercury from Passing BepiColombo
28.06.2022

Which part of the Moon is this? No part -- because this is the planet Mercury. Mercury's old surface is heavily cratered like that of Earth's Moon. Mercury, while only slightly larger than Luna, is much denser and more massive than any Solar System moon because it is made mostly of iron.

Star Trails and Lightning over the Pyrenees
19.09.2022

The beauty in this image comes in layers. On the bottom layer is the picturesque village of Manlleu in Barcelona, Spain. The six-minute exposure makes car lights into streaks. The next layer is a mountain -- Serra de Bellmunt -- of Europe's famous Pyrenees.

Eclipse Street, Hong Kong
25.06.2020

On June 21 an annular solar eclipse came soon after the solstice and our fair planet's northernmost sunset for 2020. At maximum eclipse, the New Moon in silhouette created a ring of fire visible along a narrow path at most 85 kilometers wide.

APOD: 2025 August 12 Б Perseids from Perseus
12.08.2025

Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Perseus. That is why the meteor shower that peaks tonight is known as the Perseids -- the meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Perseus.