Partial Eclipse, Cloudy Day
21.12.2001

Welcome to the December Solstice, first day of winter in the north and summer in the southern hemisphere of planet Earth. Today the Sun reaches its southernmost declination in the sky at 19:21 Universal Time.

NGC 3603: An Active Star Cluster
18.10.1999

NGC 3603 is home to a massive star cluster, thick dust pillars, and a star about to explode. The central open cluster contains about 2000 bright stars, each of which is much brighter and more massive than our Sun.

Welcome to Planet Earth
25.03.2007

Welcome to Planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water. The planet has a relatively thin atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen.

Milky Way and Planets Near Opposition
21.05.2016

In this early May night skyscape, a mountain road near Bursa, Turkey seems to lead toward bright planets Mars and Saturn and the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, a direction nearly opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky.

APOD: 2023 March 15 Б Jupiter and Venus Converge over Germany
15.03.2023

This was a sky to show the kids. Early this month the two brightest planets in the night sky, Jupiter and Venus, appeared to converge. At their closest, the two planets were separated by only about the angular width of the full moon.

APOD: 2025 February 2 Б Comet G3 ATLAS Disintegrates
2.02.2025

What's happening to Comet G3 ATLAS? After passing near the Sun in mid-January, the head of the comet has become dimmer and dimmer. By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) had become a headless wonder -- even though it continued to show impressive tails after sunset in the skies of Earth's Southern Hemisphere.

APOD: 2025 September 16 Б New Comet SWAN25B over Mexico
16.09.2025

A newly discovered comet is already visible with binoculars. The comet, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and nicknamed SWAN25B, is brightening significantly as it emerges from the Sun's direction and might soon become visible on your smartphone -- if not your eyes.

The T Tauri Star Forming System
4.06.2001

What did the Sun look like before there were planets? A prototype laboratory for the formation of low mass stars like our Sun is the T Tauri system, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of Taurus. In young systems, gravity causes a gas cloud to condense.

A Crescent Earth at Midnight
21.06.2003

The Earth's northern hemisphere is outlined as a sunlit crescent in this dramatic view from orbit, recorded near local midnight by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-8) on June 22, 1996. That...

Heating Coronal Loops
14.08.2005

Why is the corona of the Sun so hot? Extending above the photosphere or visible surface of the Sun, the faint, tenuous solar corona can't be easily seen from Earth, but it is measured to be hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere itself.