APOD: 2025 August 28 Б Galaxies, Stars, and Dust
27.08.2025

This well-composed telescopic field of view covers over a Full Moon on the sky toward the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Of course the brighter stars show diffraction spikes, the commonly seen effect of internal supports in reflecting telescopes, and lie well within our own Milky Way galaxy.

APOD: 2023 January 31 Б A Triple View of Comet ZTF
30.01.2023

Comet ZTF has a distinctive shape. The now bright comet visiting the inner Solar System has been showing not only a common dust tail, ion tail, and green gas coma, but also an uncommonly distinctive antitail.

APOD: 2023 March 21 Б Dark Nebulae and Star Formation in Taurus
20.03.2023

Can dust be beautiful? Yes, and it can also be useful. The Taurus molecular cloud has several bright stars, but it is the dark dust that really draws attention. The pervasive dust has waves...

APOD: 2023 May 30 Б M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
29.05.2023

Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets.

APOD: 2024 July 8 Б Exoplanet Zoo: Other Stars
7.07.2024

Do other stars have planets like our Sun? Surely they do, and evidence includes slight star wobbles created by the gravity of orbiting exoplanets and slight star dimmings caused by orbiting planets moving in front.

APOD: 2025 February 12 Б Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life
11.02.2025

What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. In September 2023, the robotic spaceship returned these samples to Earth.

APOD: 2025 June 26 Б The Seagull Nebula
25.06.2025

An interstellar expanse of glowing gas and obscuring dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker, the Seagull Nebula. This broadband portrait of the cosmic bird covers...

APOD is One Year Old Today
16.06.1996

The first Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) appeared one year ago today. Pictured above are Robert Nemiroff (left) and Jerry Bonnell (right), engaged in creating the APOD web pages. APOD started over speculative conversations on the ultimate value of the World Wide Web.

APOD: 2023 January 23 Б The Colliding Spiral Galaxies of Arp 274
22.01.2023

Two galaxies are squaring off in Virgo and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not. This is because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small fraction of that space.

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.