APOD: 2025 May 4 Б Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole
3.05.2025

How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really unknown.

APOD: 2023 July 25 Б The Eagle Nebula with Xray Hot Stars
24.07.2023

What do the famous Eagle Nebula star pillars look like in X-ray light? To find out, NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory peered in and through these interstellar mountains of star formation.

APOD: 2023 October 23 Б Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno
22.10.2023

There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about...

APOD: 2024 March 18 Б Comet Pons Brooks Swirling Coma
17.03.2024

A bright comet will be visible during next month's total solar eclipse. This very unusual coincidence occurs because Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks's return to the inner Solar System places it by chance only 25 degrees away from the Sun during Earth's April 8 total solar eclipse.

APOD: 2026 May 12 Б The Conjunction of Comet R3 PanSTARRS and the Orion Nebula
11.05.2026

TodayБs composite image features something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue! Comet R3 PanSTARRS, streaking across the right of the image, likely originated from the Oort Cloud, meaning it is an old Solar System relic from billions of years ago.

APOD: 2023 October 10 Б Hidden Orion from Webb
9.10.2023

The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red and very near infrared light.

APOD: 2025 June 21 Б Two Worlds, Two Analemmas
20.06.2025

Sure, that figure-8 shaped curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun in Earth's sky at the same time each day over one year is called an analemma.

APOD Turns Eighteen
16.06.2013

The first APOD appeared eighteen years ago today, on 1995 June 16. Although garnering only 14 pageviews on that day, we are proud to estimate that APOD has now served over one billion space-related images over the past eighteen years.

APOD: 2026 March 20 Б Spring Equinox at Teide Observatory
19.03.2026

The defining astronomical moment of the equinox today is at 14:46 UTC (March 20). That's when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving north in its yearly journey through planet Earth's sky, marking the beginning of spring for our fair planet in the northern hemisphere and fall in the southern hemisphere.

APOD: 2023 October 24 Б Arp 87: Merging Galaxies from Hubble
23.10.2023

This dance is to the death. As these two large galaxies duel, a cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust currently stretches over 75,000 light-years and joins them. The bridge itself is strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity.