The Winter Hexagon
6.11.2002

Some of the brightest stars form a large and easily found pattern in the winter sky of Earth's northern hemisphere. Dubbed the Winter Hexagon, the stars involved can usually be identified even in the bright night skies of a big city.

Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky
27.01.2015

Which of these night sky icons can you find in this beautiful and deep exposure of the northern winter sky? Skylights include the stars in Orion's belt, the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades star cluster, the bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel, the California Nebula, Barnard's Loop, and Comet Lovejoy.

Arches Across an Arctic Sky
13.01.2021

What are these two giant arches across the sky? Perhaps the more familiar one, on the left, is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. This grand disk of stars and nebulas here appears to encircle much of the southern sky.

Aurora by Moonlight
12.02.2022

The ice was singing as light from a bright gibbous Moon cast shadows across this frozen lake, about 20 kilometers north of Stockholm, Sweden, planet Earth. In the alluring night skyscape captured on February 10, shimmering auroral curtains of light dance in the evening sky.

Star Trails in Southern Skies
26.09.1995

As the Earth spins on its axis, the sky seems to rotate around us. This motion produces the beautiful concentric arcs traced out by the stars in this time exposure of the night sky. In the foreground of the picture is the dome of the Anglo-Australian Telescope in central New South Wales Australia.

Florida Northern Lights
14.11.2025

Northern lights have come to Florida skies. In fact, the brilliant streak of a Northern Taurid meteor flashes through the starry night sky above the beach in this sea and skyscape, captured from Shired Island, Florida on November 11. Meteors from the annual Northern Taurid meteor shower are expected this time of year.

APOD: 2024 August 12 Б Perseid Meteors over Stonehenge
12.08.2024

What's happening in the sky above Stonehenge? A meteor shower: specifically, the Perseid meteor shower. A few nights ago, after the sky darkened, many images of meteors from this year's Perseids were captured separately and merged into a single frame.

Stars Trail over Ragusa
28.03.2020

In trying times, stars still trail in the night. Taken on March 14, this night skyscape was made by combining 230 exposures each 15 seconds long to follow the stars' circular paths. The camera was fixed to a tripod on an isolated terrace near the center of Ragusa, Italy, on the island of Sicily.

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.

Antares
24.06.1997

Antares is a huge star. In a class called red supergiant, Antares is about 700 times the size of our own Sun, 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius and one of the brighter stars in all the night sky.