The Suns Surface in 3D
24.06.2003

How smooth is the Sun? The new Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, deployed in the Canary Islands only last year, allows imaging of objects less than 100-km across on the Sun's surface. When pointed toward the Sun's edge, surface objects now begin to block each other, indicating true three-dimensional information.

Space Shuttle Rising
23.05.2015

What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. Sometimes, if you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time, you could have seen something very unusual -- a space shuttle launching to orbit.

Stellar Streams in the Local Universe
26.09.2024

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 available imaging surveys of a field that surrounds a nearby massive galaxy image.

A Scorpio Sky Spectacular
11.09.2007

If Scorpio looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpio more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, color filters, and a digital image processor.

APOD is 20 Years Old Today
15.06.2015

Welcome to the vicennial year of the Astronomy Picture of the Day! Perhaps a source of web consistency for some, APOD is still here. As during each of the 20 years of selecting images...

A Year of Sunrises
4.01.2022

Does the Sun always rise in the same direction? No. As the months change, the direction toward the rising Sun changes, too. The featured image shows the direction of sunrise every month during 2021 as seen from the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Streaming Dark Nebulas near B44
15.06.2009

Dark dust lit by the bright yellow star Antares highlight this photogenic starscape of the southern sky. A wider angle image shows the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy connected to Antares by streams of dust knows as the Dark River. At the head of the Dark River the dust appears in dense knots.

Space Shuttle Rising
25.05.2011

What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual -- the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit.

In the Center of Saturns North Polar Vortex
4.12.2012

What's happening at the north pole of Saturn? A vortex of strange and complex swirling clouds. The center of this vortex was imaged in unprecedented detail last week by the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. These clouds lie at the center of the unusual hexagonal cloud system that surrounds the north pole of Saturn.

Solstice Celebration
21.06.2000

Season's greetings! At 01:48 Universal Time on June 21 the Sun reaches its northernmost point in planet Earth's sky marking a season change and the first solstice of the year 2000. In celebration, consider this delightfully detailed, brightly colored image of the active Sun.