Opposite the Sun
18.09.2010

Chances are the brightest star you've seen lately is actually planet Jupiter. Jupiter rules the sky in this labeled view of a starry September night from the Alborz mountains in Iran, complete with the trail of a red flashlight illuminating the mountain road.

Milky Way Over Spains Bardenas Reales
2.09.2013

What's that below the Milky Way? First, across the top of the above image, lies the faint band that is our planet's sideways view of the central disk of our home Milky Way Galaxy.

Dueling Bands in the Night
1.03.2022

What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits...

APOD: 2023 May 10 Б Milky Way over Egyptian Desert
10.05.2023

For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt's Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formations sculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind.

A Light and Dusty Night
2.10.2021

Posing as a brilliant evening star, Venus lies near the western horizon in this southern hemisphere, early spring, night skyscape. To create the composite view exposures tracking the sky and fixed for the foreground were taken on September 25 from Cascavel in southern Brazil.

Airglow Borealis
27.10.2018

The best known asterism in northern skies hangs over the Canadian Rockies in this mountain and night skyscape taken last week from Banff National Park. But most remarkable is the amazing greenish airglow. With...

A 212 Hour Exposure of Orion
29.03.2020

The constellation of Orion is much more than three stars in a row. It is a direction in space that is rich with impressive nebulas. To better appreciate this well-known swath of sky, an extremely long exposure was taken over many clear nights in 2013 and 2014.

A 212 Hour Exposure of Orion
23.11.2015

The constellation of Orion is much more than three stars in a row. It is a direction in space that is rich with impressive nebulas. To better appreciate this well-known swath of sky, an extremely long exposure was taken over many clear nights in 2013 and 2014.

Ice Halos by Moonlight and Sunlight
9.01.2026

Both Moon and Sun create beautiful ice halos in planet Earth's sky. In fact, the two brightest celestial beacons are each surrounded by a complex of ice halos in these photos of the sky above Chamonix-Mont-Blanc in France.

Moon Meets Mercury
9.05.2008

On Tuesday, May 6, while standing on planet Earth and sweeping your binoculars along the western horizon just after sunset, you might have encountered this arresting skyscape. The view features a slender crescent Moon and bright planet Mercury separated on the sky by only about 2 degrees.