APOD: 2024 August 21 Б Fermis 12 year All Sky Gamma ray Map
21.08.2024

Forget X-ray vision Б imagine what you could see with gamma-ray vision! The featured all-sky map shows what the universe looks like to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi sees light with energies about a billion times what the human eye can see, and the map combines 12 years of Fermi observations.

APOD: 2026 March 5 Б Total Lunar Eclipse over Tse Bitai
5.03.2026

Earlier this week, EarthБs shadow swept across the full Moon in the yearБs only total lunar eclipse. This stunning sequence combines images showing the MoonБs path across the night sky. Each lunar image captures our planetБs shadow gradually engulfing the Moon, culminating in its red glow.

APOD: 2024 January 1 Б NGC 1232: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy
1.01.2024

Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the Very Large Telescopes, is a good example.

APOD: 2025 February 3 Б Wolf Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
3.02.2025

Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled by violent stellar winds.

APOD: 2020 August 14 Б NGC 5189: An Unusually Complex Planetary Nebula
14.08.2020

Why is this nebula so complex? When a star like our Sun is dying, it will cast off its outer layers, usually into a simple overall shape. Sometimes this shape is a sphere, sometimes a double lobe, and sometimes a ring or a helix.

APOD: 2024 December 9 Б Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
9.12.2024

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city.

APOD: 2023 March 1 Б The Flaming Star Nebula
1.03.2023

Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the Flaming Star and the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and even though the nebula appears to some like a swirling flame, there is no fire.

APOD: 2023 July 11 Б Sunspots on an Active Sun
11.07.2023

Why is our Sun so active now? No one is sure. An increase in surface activity was expected because our Sun is approaching solar maximum in 2025. However, last month our Sun sprouted more sunspots than in any month during the entire previous 11-year solar cycle -- and even dating back to 2002.

APOD: 2024 March 3 Б A Total Solar Eclipse Close Up in Real Time
3.03.2024

How would you feel if the Sun disappeared? Many eclipse watchers across the USA surprised themselves in 2017 with the awe that they felt and the exclamations that they made as the Sun momentarily disappeared behind the Moon.

APOD: 2024 July 24 Б Exaggerated Moon
24.07.2024

Our Moon doesn't really have craters this big. Earth's Moon, Luna, also doesn't naturally show this spikey texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on reality.