Enhanced version of the Nasa astronomy picture of the day website
A December Winter Night
Orion seems to come up sideways, climbing over a distant mountain range in this deep skyscape. The wintry scene was captured from southern Poland on the northern hemisphere's long solstice...
Planet Earth at Twilight
No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet Earth. Instead, the shadow line or terminator is diffuse and shows the...
Grand Spiral NGC 5643
Viewed face-on, grand spiral galaxy NGC 5643 has a festive appearance in this colorful cosmic portrait. Some 55 million light-years distant, the galaxy extends for over 100,000 light-years, seen...
Diamond Dust Sky Eye
Why is there a huge eye in the sky? Diamond dust. That is an informal term for small ice crystals that form in the air and flitter to the ground. Because these crystals are geometrically shaped,...
Fox Fur, Cone, and Christmas Tree
What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). Considered as a star forming...
Christmas Tree Aurora
It was December and the sky lit up like a Christmas tree. Shimmering, the vivid green, blue, and purple auroral colors that formed the tree-like apparition were caused by high atmospheric oxygen...
The Local Fluff
The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy, about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas called the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform and shows...
A Year in Sunsets
A year in sunsets, from April 2023 to March 2024, track along the western horizon in these stacked panoramic views. The well-planned sequence is constructed of images recorded near the 21st day of...
The Long Night Moon
On the night of December 15, the Full Moon was bright. Known to some as the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon, it was the closest Full Moon to the northern winter solstice and the last Full Moon of...
Messier 2
After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star...
NGC 660: Polar Ring Galaxy
What kind of strange galaxy is this? This rare structure is known as a polar ring galaxy, and it seems to have two different rings of stars. In this galaxy, NGC 660, one ring of bright stars, gas,...
Near to the Heart Nebula
What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its...
A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko
This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a comet. It was discovered on the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA, which...
Geminid Meteors over a Snowy Forest
Meteors have been flowing out from the constellation Gemini. This was expected, as mid-December is the time of the Geminid Meteor Shower. Pictured here, over two dozen meteors were caught in...
Apollo 17's Moonship
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's...
M51: Tidal Streams and H-alpha Cliffs
An intriguing pair of interacting galaxies, M51 is the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with whirlpool-like spiral structure...
Phaethon's Brood
Based on its well-measured orbit, 3200 Phaethon (sounds like FAY-eh-thon) is recognized as the source of the meteoroid stream responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower. Even though most...
The Shells and Jets of Galaxy Centaurus A
What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, cataloged as NGC 5128, which is only 12 million light-years distant. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal...
The Great Meteor Storm of 1833
It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history. Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours...
Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
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...