APOD: 2026 June 28 Б AR 4478: Giant Sunspot Group
28.06.2026

Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun. Active Region 4478 is not only big -- it's violent, showing tangled magnetic fields capable of throwing off huge clouds of particles into the Solar System. Some of these CMEs might impact the Earth.

How Big Is 2001 KX76
30.08.2001

Newly discovered minor planet 2001 KX76 is circled in the top panel above, a recent composite image from the European Southern Observatory's 2.2 meter telescope at La Silla, Chile. Though 2001 KX76 appears...

SN 1006: Pieces of the Cosmic Ray Puzzle
16.10.1996

Research balloon flights conducted in 1912 by Austrian physicist Victor Hess revealed that the Earth was constantly bombarded by high energy radiation from space - which came to be called "Cosmic Rays". What are Cosmic Rays and where do they come from?

The Gamma Ray Moon
10.02.1997

What if you could see gamma rays (photons with more than 40 million times the energy of visible light)? If you could, the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! This startling notion...

The Milky Way Over Tenerife
5.04.2011

Have you ever seen the band of our Milky Way Galaxy? Chances are you have never seen it like this -- nor could you. In a clear sky from a dark location at the right time, a faint band of light is visible across the sky. This band is the disk of our spiral galaxy.

Four Planets Orbiting Star HR 8799
1.02.2017

Does life exist outside our Solar System? To help find out, NASA has created the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) to better locate and study distant star systems that hold hope of harboring living inhabitants.

Sharpest Ultima Thule
28.02.2019

On January 1, New Horizons swooped to within 3,500 kilometers of the Kuiper Belt world known as Ultima Thule. That's about 3 times closer than its July 2015 closest approach to Pluto.

UGC 1810: Wildly Interacting Galaxy from Hubble
18.10.2020

What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partner is known as Arp 273.

APOD: 2026 May 13 Б NGC 188: Old Cluster in the New General Catalog
13.05.2026

The New General Catalog of star clusters and nebulae really isn't so new. In fact, it was published in 1888 - an effort by J. L. E. Dreyer to consolidate the work of astronomers William, Caroline, and John Herschel along with others into a useful single, complete catalog of astronomical discoveries and measurements.

Planck Maps the Microwave Background
25.03.2013

What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest surface known -- the background sky left billions of years ago when our universe first became transparent to light.