Enhanced version of the Nasa astronomy picture of the day website
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Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A
Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few million...
M83: The Southern Pinwheel
Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes...
Wolf Moon Engulfs Mars
Does the Moon ever engulf Mars? Yes, but only in the sense that it moves in front, which happens on rare occasions. This happened just yesterday, though, as seen from some locations in North...
North Star: Polaris and Surrounding Dust
Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, but...
Comet ATLAS Before Sunrise
Comet ATLAS is really bright now, but also really close to the Sun. Outside the glow of the Sun, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) would be one of the more remarkable comet sights of recent years, reflecting...
Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater
Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have...
An Evening Sky Full of Planets
Only Mercury is missing from a Solar System parade of planets in this early evening skyscape. Rising nearly opposite the Sun, bright Mars is at the far left. The other naked-eye planets Jupiter,...
Young Stars, Dark Nebulae
An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in multiple star systems are forming within their natal Taurus molecular...
Peculiar Galaxies of Arp 273
The colorful, spiky stars are in the foreground of this image taken with a small telescope on planet Earth. They lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. But the two eye-catching galaxies in the...
Supernova Remnants Big and Small
What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing interstellar medium, it heats up so much it glows. Two different...
A New Year's Aurora and SAR Arc
It was a new year, and the sky was doubly red. The new year meant that the Earth had returned to its usual place in its orbit on January 1, a place a few days before its closest approach to the Sun....
Colliding Spiral Galaxies from Webb and Hubble
Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of...
Rocket Launch as Seen from the International Space Station
Have you ever seen a rocket launch -- from space? A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS)....
Welcome to Perihelion
rth's orbit around the Sun is not a circle, it's an ellipse. The point along its elliptical orbit where our fair planet is closest to the Sun is called perihelion. This year perihelion is...
Eclipse Pair
clipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon, separated by just...
Solar Analemma 2024
Recorded during 2024, this year-spanning series of images reveals a pattern in the seasonal drift of the Sun's daily motion through planet Earth's sky. Known to some as an analemma, the...
Alpha Centauri: The Closest Star System
The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima Centauri -- is actually the nearest star. The bright stars Alpha...
The Twisted Disk of NGC 4753
What do you think this is? Here’s a clue: it's bigger than a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide...
M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
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...
Methane Bubbles Frozen in Lake Baikal
What are these bubbles frozen into Lake Baikal? Methane. Lake Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Russia, is the world's largest (by volume), oldest, and deepest lake, containing over 20% of...