APOD: 2020 July 28 Б NGC 6188: The Dragons of Ara
27.07.2020

Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark and large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away.

APOD: 2023 September 13 Б NGC 4632: Galaxy with a Hidden Polar Ring
12.09.2023

Galaxy NGC 4632 hides a secret from optical telescopes. It is surrounded by a ring of cool hydrogen gas orbiting at 90 degrees to its spiral disk. Such polar ring galaxies have previously been discovered using starlight. However, NGC 4632 is among the first in which a radio telescope survey revealed a polar ring.

APOD: 2024 March 31 Б Total Solar Eclipse Below the Bottom of the World
30.03.2024

In late 2021 there was a total solar eclipse visible only at the end of the Earth. To capture the unusual phenomenon, airplanes took flight below the clouded seascape of Southern Ocean. The featured...

APOD: 2024 August 21 Б Fermis 12 year All Sky Gamma ray Map
20.08.2024

Forget X-ray vision Б imagine what you could see with gamma-ray vision! The featured all-sky map shows what the universe looks like to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi sees light with energies about a billion times what the human eye can see, and the map combines 12 years of Fermi observations.

APOD: 2026 March 5 Б Total Lunar Eclipse over Tse Bitai
4.03.2026

Earlier this week, EarthБs shadow swept across the full Moon in the yearБs only total lunar eclipse. This stunning sequence combines images showing the MoonБs path across the night sky. Each lunar image captures our planetБs shadow gradually engulfing the Moon, culminating in its red glow.

APOD: 2024 January 1 Б NGC 1232: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy
31.12.2023

Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the Very Large Telescopes, is a good example.

APOD: 2025 February 3 Б Wolf Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
2.02.2025

Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled by violent stellar winds.

APOD: 2020 August 14 Б NGC 5189: An Unusually Complex Planetary Nebula
13.08.2020

Why is this nebula so complex? When a star like our Sun is dying, it will cast off its outer layers, usually into a simple overall shape. Sometimes this shape is a sphere, sometimes a double lobe, and sometimes a ring or a helix.

APOD: 2024 December 9 Б Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
8.12.2024

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city.

APOD: 2023 March 1 Б The Flaming Star Nebula
28.02.2023

Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the Flaming Star and the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and even though the nebula appears to some like a swirling flame, there is no fire.