Enhanced version of the Nasa astronomy picture of the day website
Rocket Eclipse at Sunset
Shockwaves ripple across the glare as a launch eclipses the setting Sun in this exciting close-up. Captured on September 17, the roaring Falcon 9 rocket carried European Galileo L13 navigation...
Stellar Streams in the Local Universe
The twenty galaxies arrayed in these panels are part of an ambitious astronomical survey of tidal stellar streams. Each panel presents a composite view; a deep, inverted image taken from publicly...
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...
Comet A3 Through an Australian Sunrise
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is now visible in the early morning sky. Diving into the inner Solar System at an odd angle, this large dirty iceberg will pass its closest to the Sun -- between the orbits...
NGC 6727: The Rampaging Baboon Nebula
This dusty region is forming stars. Part of a sprawling molecular cloud complex that resembles, to some, a rampaging baboon, the region is a relatively close by 500 light-years away toward the...
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Approaches
What will happen as this already bright comet approaches? Optimistic predictions have Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) briefly becoming easily visible to the unaided eye -- although the future...
Chicagohenge: Equinox in an Aligned City
Chicago, in a way, is like a modern Stonehenge. The way is east to west, and the time is today. Today, and every equinox, the Sun will set exactly to the west, everywhere on Earth. Therefore,...
Sunrise Shadows in the Sky
The defining astronomical moment of this September's equinox is at 12:44 UTC on September 22, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving south in its yearly journey through planet...
A Hazy Harvest Moon
For northern hemisphere dwellers, September's Full Moon was the Harvest Moon. On September 17/18 the sunlit lunar nearside passed into shadow, just grazing Earth's umbra, the planet's...
The Dark Seahorse of Cepheus
Spanning light-years, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula floats in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus,...
The Mermaid Nebula Supernova Remnant
New stars are born from the remnants of dead stars. The gaseous remnant of the gravitational collapse and subsequent death of a very massive star in our Milky Way created the G296.5+10.0 supernova...
Melotte 15 in the Heart Nebula
Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star...
Mercury's Vivaldi Crater from BepiColombo
Why does this large crater on Mercury have two rings and a smooth floor? No one is sure. The unusual feature called Vivaldi Crater spans 215 kilometers and was imaged again in great detail by...
Find the Man in the Moon
Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia -- imagining familiar icons where they don't actually exist. The textured surface...
The Moona Lisa
Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth's sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at different times....
Aurora Australis and the International Space Station
This snapshot from the International Space Station was taken on August 11 while orbiting about 430 kilometers above the Indian Ocean, Southern Hemisphere, planet Earth. The spectacular view looks...
Young Star Cluster NGC 1333
This spectacular mosaic of images from the James Webb Space Telescope peers into the heart of young star cluster NGC 1333. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus,...
A Night Sky over the Tatra Mountains
A natural border between Slovakia and Poland is the Tatra Mountains. A prominent destination for astrophotographers, the Tatras are the highest mountain range in the Carpathians. In the featured...
Horsehead and Orion Nebulas
The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, they appear in...
Mars: Moon, Craters, and Volcanos
If you could fly over Mars, what might you see? The featured image shows exactly this in the form of a Mars Express vista captured over a particularly interesting region on Mars in July. The...