APOD: 2024 May 12 Б Red Aurora over Poland
11.05.2024

Northern lights don't usually reach this far south. Magnetic chaos in the Sun's huge Active Region 3664, however, produced a surface explosion that sent a burst of electrons, protons, and more massive, charged nuclei into the Solar System.

APOD: 2024 June 2 Б Rotating Moon from LRO
1.06.2024

No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That's because the Earth's moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has been composed.

Eclipse Pair
2.01.2025

Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon, separated by just over 14 days, create a lunar and a solar eclipse.

Reflecting Merope
5.12.2000

In the famous Pleiades star cluster, a star's light is slowly destroying a passing cloud of gas and dust. The star, Merope, lies just off the upper right edge of this recently released picture by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble Holiday
23.12.1999

How would you like to spend your holiday in low earth orbit? That's what the crew of the space shuttle Discovery is doing as they deliver six new gyros and a faster main computer to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

A Perseid Meteor
12.08.2000

This weekend, the annual Perseid Meteor Shower reaches its maximum. Grains of cosmic sand and gravel shed from Comet Swift-Tuttle will streak across the sky as they vaporize during entry into Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids result from the yearly

Mir Flares Farewell
22.03.2001

Streaking low across the western horizon after sunset, the Russian Mir space station makes a final pass through the evening sky above the coastal city of Salvador, Brazil. In this 5 minute 20 second time exposure made with ASA 800 film and a wide-angle lens on March 19, setting stars leave short, almost vertical trails.

Simulated Galaxy Cluster View
5.03.2002

Stunningly detailed, this picture is a computer simulated view of a cluster of galaxies in the distant cosmos. A large, elliptical galaxy dominates this hypothetical cluster's central region surrounded by a swarm of member galaxies.

Neptune: Still Springtime After All These Years
13.06.2003

In the 1960s spring came to the southern hemisphere of Neptune, the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet. Of course, since Neptune orbits the Sun once every 165 earth-years, it's still spring for southern Neptune, where each season lasts over four decades.

Night MAGIC
15.10.2004

Is it magic? On a rare foggy night, mysterious laser beams seem to play across the MAGIC telescope at Roque de los Muchachos on the Canary Island of La Palma. The lasers are actually part of a system designed to automatically adjust the focusing of the inovative, seventeen meter wide, multi-mirrored instrument.