APOD: 2023 March 26 Б Wanderers
26.03.2023

How far out will humanity explore? If this video's fusion of real space imagery and fictional space visualizations is on the right track, then at least the Solar System. Some of the video...

Wonder and Mystery above the Very Large Telescopes
9.05.2011

What's that bright orange dot above the large telescope on the right? Even seasoned sky enthusiasts might ponder the origin of the orange orb seen by scrolling across this panoramic image, taken last December. Perhaps identifying known objects will help.

Impact on Jupiter
28.07.1998

In 1993, a strange string of comet pieces was discovered near the planet Jupiter. So unusual a sight, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) quickly became the object of much scientific curiosity. Studies showed that the Sun would soon perturb the orbit of SL9 so that it would actually

Annular Eclipse After Sunrise
2.03.2017

From northern Patagonia, morning skies were clear and blue on Sunday, February 26. This sweeping composite scene, overlooking Hermoso Valle, Facundo, Chubut, Argentina, follows the Sun after sunrise, capturing an annular solar eclipse. Created...

Crescent Neptune and Triton
25.07.2021

Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase. The elegant picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after closest approach in 1989.

Recycling Cassiopeia A
28.12.2017

Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After a few million years, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew.

An Annular Eclipse of the Sun
24.08.1998

An annular eclipse of the Sun was visible in parts of the Eastern Hemisphere on Saturday. The above picture was taken at that time by a video camera in Mersing on the East Coast of Malaysia and emailed to APOD yesterday from an internet cafe in Kuala Lumpur.

Callisto Enhanced
12.05.1998

Callisto is half rock and half ice. This moon of Jupiter is approximately the size of the planet Mercury, making it the third largest moon in the Solar System, after Ganymede and Titan. Callisto...

A Blue Moon Halo over Antarctica
11.08.2015

Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? Such 22 degree rings around the Moon -- caused by ice crystals falling in the Earth's atmosphere -- are somewhat rare. OK, but have you ever seen a blue moon?

A Big Dish at the VLA Radio Observatory
29.11.2006

They are so large, they are almost unreal. The radio dishes of the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes might appear to some as a strange combination of a dinosaur skeleton and common satellite-TV receiving dish.