Enhanced version of the Nasa astronomy picture of the day website
Comet Nishimura Grows
Comet Nishimura is growing. More precisely, the tails C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) are growing as it nears the Sun. Discovered only last month, the comet is already near naked eye brightness as it now...
Star Factory Messier 17
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this 1/3 degree wide...
The Large Cloud of Magellan
The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy...
HESS Telescopes Explore the High-Energy Sky
They may look like modern mechanical dinosaurs, but they are enormous swiveling eyes that watch the sky. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) Observatory is composed of four 12-meter...
Blue Supermoon Beyond Syracuse
The last full moon was doubly unusual. First of all, it was a blue moon. A modern definition of a blue moon is a second full moon to occur during one calendar month. Since there are 13 full moons...
Cygnus: Bubble and Crescent
As stars die, they create clouds. Two stellar death clouds of gas and dust can be found toward the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) as they drift through rich star fields in the...
Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 Fragments
Periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has broken up at least twice. A cosmic souffle of ice and dust left over from the early solar system, this comet was first seen to split into several large...
NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of...
The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course, M13 is now less...
The Crew-7 Nebula
Not the James Webb Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 26. The snapshot was...
Full Moons of August
Near perigee, the closest point in its almost moonthly orbit, a Full Moon rose as the Sun set on August 1. Its brighter than average lunar disk was captured in this dramatic moonrise sequence over...
Unusual Spiral Galaxy M66 from Webb
Why isn't spiral galaxy M66 symmetric? Usually, density waves of gas, dust, and newly formed stars circle a spiral galaxy's center and create a nearly symmetric galaxy. The differences...
Star Formation in the Pacman Nebula
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590. Formed within the nebula, that cluster's young, massive stars ultimately power the...
Three Galaxies and a Comet
Diffuse starlight and dark nebulae along the southern Milky Way arc over the horizon and sprawl diagonally through this gorgeous nightscape. The breath-taking mosaic spans a wide 100 degrees, with...
Crescents of Venus
Just as the Moon goes through phases, Venus' visible sunlit hemisphere waxes and wanes. This sequence of telescopic images illustrates the steady changes for Venus during its recent 2023...
A Season of Saturn
Ringed planet Saturn will be at its 2023 opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's skies, on August 27. While that puts the sixth planet from the Sun at its brightest and well-placed for viewing,...
Meteors along the Milky Way
Under dark and mostly moonless night skies, many denizens of planet Earth were able to watch this year's Perseid meteor shower. Seen from a grassy hillside from Shiraz, Iran these Perseid...
The Meteor and the Galaxy
It came from outer space. It -- in this case a sand-sized bit of a comet nucleus -- was likely ejected many years ago from Sun-orbiting Comet Swift-Tuttle, but then continued to orbit the Sun alone....
The Pistachio Nebula
This nebula had never been noted before. Newly discovered nebulas are usually angularly small and found by professionals using large telescopes. In contrast, the Pistachio Nebula was discovered by...
Introducing Comet Nishimura
Will Comet Nishimura become visible to the unaided eye? Given the unpredictability of comets, no one can say for sure, but it currently seems like a good bet. The comet was discovered only ten...