West Of The Great Red Spot
25.12.1999

The turbulent region West of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is highlighted in this picture constructed from data recorded by the Galileo spacecraft. The image is color coded to show cloud height and thickness; white clouds are high and thick, light blue clouds are high and thin, and reddish clouds are low.

Hole in the Sun
27.09.2007

The dark expanse below the equator of the Sun is a coronal hole -- a low density region extending above the surface where the solar magnetic field opens freely into interplanetary space. Shown in false color, the picture was recorded on September 19th in extreme ultraviolet light by the EIT instrument onboard the space-based SOHO observatory.

NGC 6888: The Crescent Nebula
10.11.2007

What caused the Crescent Nebula? Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible in the center of the above image, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago.

In the Center of the Lagoon Nebula
19.10.2008

The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a whirlwind of spectacular star formation. Visible on the upper left, at least two long funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have been formed by extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight. The tremendously bright nearby star, Hershel 36, lights the area.

Genesis Missions Hard Impact
5.07.2009

A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert in 2004 after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. No space aliens were involved, however. The saucer, pictured above, was the Genesis sample return capsule, part of a human-made robot Genesis spaceship launched in 2001 by NASA itself to study the Sun.

AZURE Vapor Tracers over Norway
7.04.2019

What's happening in the sky? The atmosphere over northern Norway appeared quite strange for about 30 minutes last Friday when colorful clouds, dots, and plumes suddenly appeared. The colors were actually created by the NASA-funded Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment (AZURE) which dispersed gas tracers to probe winds in Earth's upper atmosphere.

APOD: 2025 August 21 Б Mostly Perseids
20.08.2025

In this predawn skyscape recorded during the early morning hours of August 13, mostly Perseid meteors are raining down on planet Earth. You can easily identify the Perseid meteor streaks. They're the ones...

A Crescent Nebula Star Field
15.04.2003

What caused the Crescent Nebula? Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible on the right, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago.

The N44 Superbubble
24.06.2017

What created this gigantic hole? The vast emission nebula N44 in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud has a large, 250 light-year hole and astronomers are trying to figure out why. One possibility is particle winds expelled by massive stars in the bubble's interior that are pushing out the glowing gas.

APOD: 2026 July 27 Б NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula
26.07.2026

What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. Taken from Krakow, Poland, the featured view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment.