π A Two Percent Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Marina Prol apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25083...
Official Mirroring APOD BOT for Bluesky. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html Maintained by @shinyakato.dev
20,388 followers 1 following 3,816 posts
view profile on Bluesky
π A Two Percent Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Marina Prol apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25083...
π A Dark Veil in Ophiuchus Image Credit & Copyright: Katelyn Beecroft apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust.
Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula's orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen
The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula.
π The Horsehead and Flame Nebulas Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel Stern apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25090...
π Galaxies, Stars, and Dust Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Eder apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
investigate its largest moons.
underground sea is a candidate to harbor life -- similar with sister moons Europa and Ganymede. Callisto is slightly larger than Luna, Earth's Moon, but because of its high ice content is slightly less massive. ESA's JUICE and NASA's Europa Clipper missions are now headed out to Jupiter to better
flyby of NASA's Voyager 2 in 1979. The moon would appear darker if it weren't for the tapestry of light-colored fractured surface ice created by eons of impacts. The interior of Callisto is potentially even more interesting because therein might lie an internal layer of liquid water. This potential
Its surface is the most densely cratered in the Solar System -- but what's inside? Jupiter's moon Callisto is a battered ball of dirty ice that is larger than the planet Mercury. It was visited by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s and 2000s, but the recently reprocessed featured image is from a
π Callisto: Dirty Battered Iceball Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Voyager 2; Processing & License: Kevin M. Gill; apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25090...
π WISPIT 2b: Exoplanet Carves Gap in Birth Disk Image Credit: ESO, VLT, SPHERE; Processing & Copyright: ESO, Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden Obs.) et al.; Text: Ogetay Kayali (MTU) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
backyard telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).
have four corners. What lies at the nebula's center is unknown, with one hypothesis holding it to be a close binary star system where one star sheds gas onto an erratic disk orbiting the other star. NGC 7027, about 3,000 light years away, was first discovered in 1878 and can be seen with a standard
For much of its history, the planetary nebula has been expelling shells, as seen in blue in the featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope. In modern times, though, for reasons unknown, it began ejecting gas and dust (seen in brown) in specific directions that created a new pattern that seems to
What created this unusual planetary nebula? Dubbed the Pillow Nebula and the Flying Carpet Nebula, NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebulas known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027 first started expanding, as visible from Earth, about 600 years ago.
π NGC 7027: The Pillow Planetary Nebula Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Delio Tolivia Cadrecha apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25083...
radio dish for communication with spacecraft is titled in the direction of the two percent Moon. The sunset sky's pastel pinkish coloring is partly due to fine sand and dust from the Sahara Desert blown by the prevailing winds.
telephoto snapshot was captured on August 24, with the Moon very near the western horizon at sunset. Seen in a narrow crescent phase about 1.5 days old, the visible sunlit portion is a mere two percent of the surface of the Moon's familiar nearside. At the Canary Islands Space Centre, a steerable
A young crescent moon can be hard to see. That's because when the Moon shows it's crescent phase (young or old) it can never be far from the Sun in planet Earth's sky. And even though the sky is still bright, a slender sunlit lunar crescent is cleary visible in this early evening skyscape. The
π A Two Percent Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Marina Prol apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25083...
π The Meteor and the Star Cluster Image Credit & Copyright: Yousif Alqasimi & Essa Al Jasmi apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
distance, this telescopic frame would be about 25 light-years wide.
LDN 234 and LDN 204 from the 1962 Catalog of Dark Nebulae by American astronomer Beverly Lynds. Sh2-27 itself is the large but faint HII region surrounding runaway O-type star Zeta Ophiuchi. Along with the Zeta Oph HII region, LDN 234 and LDN 204 are likely 500 or so light-years away. At that
The diffuse hydrogen-alpha glow of emission region Sh2-27 fills this cosmic scene. The field of view spans nearly 3 degrees across the nebula-rich constellation Ophiuchus toward the central Milky Way. A Dark Veil of wispy interstellar dust clouds draped across the foreground is chiefly identified as
π A Dark Veil in Ophiuchus Image Credit & Copyright: Katelyn Beecroft apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π The Spinning Pulsar of the Crab Nebula Image Credit: NASA: X-ray: Chandra (CXC), Optical: Hubble (STScI), Infrared: Spitzer (JPL-Caltech) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
and dust in our own Milky Way.
thousand light-years distant, fills the scene. The galaxy seemingly tangled in the dusty cloud is the striking spiral galaxy NGC 7497. It's some 60 million light-years away, though. Seen almost edge-on near the center of the field, NGC 7497's own spiral arms and dust lanes echo the colors of stars
faint but pervasive clouds of interstellar dust ride above the galactic plane and dimly reflect the Milky Way's starlight. Known as galactic cirrus or integrated flux nebulae they are associated with the Milky Way's molecular clouds. In fact, the diffuse cloud cataloged as MBM 54, less than a
This well-composed telescopic field of view covers over a Full Moon on the sky toward the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Of course the brighter stars show diffraction spikes, the commonly seen effect of internal supports in reflecting telescopes, and lie well within our own Milky Way galaxy. The
π Galaxies, Stars, and Dust Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Eder apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π Fishing for the Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Bellelli apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
earliest direct glimpse of planetary sculpting in action.
Gaps and concentric rings mark where a newborn world is gathering gas and dust under its gravity, clearing the way as it orbits the star. Although astronomers have imaged disk-embedded planets before, this is the first-ever observation of an exoplanet actively carving a gap within a disk -- the
formation directly, telescopes let us watch similar processes unfolding around distant stars. At the center of this frame lies a young Sun-like star, hidden behind a coronagraph that blocks its bright glare. Surrounding the star is a bright, dusty protoplanetary disk -- the raw material of planets.
That yellow spot -- what is it? It's a young planet outside our Solar System. The featured image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile surprisingly captures a distant scene much like our own Solar System's birth, some 4.5 billion years ago. Although we can't look into the past and see Earth's
π WISPIT 2b: Exoplanet Carves Gap in Birth Disk Image Credit: ESO, VLT, SPHERE; Processing & Copyright: ESO, Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden Obs.) et al.; Text: Ogetay Kayali (MTU) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π A Tale of Two Nebulae Image Credit & Copyright: Kent Biggs apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π Mostly Perseids Image Credit & Copyright: Klaus Pillwatsch apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
hour-long exposure of the Pleiades. Along with the famous bright blue stars, less famous and less bright blue stars, and blue-reflecting dust surrounding the star cluster, the fast rock fragment created a distinctive green glow, likely due to vaporized metals.
with bright clouds or Earth's Moon, airplane trails, lens flares, faint satellite trails, and even insect trails. Sometimes, though, something really interesting is caught by chance. That was just the case a few weeks ago in al-Ula, Saudi Arabia when a bright meteor streaked across during an
Sometimes even the sky surprises you. To see more stars and faint nebulosity in the Pleiades star cluster (M45), long exposures are made. Many times, less interesting items appear on the exposures that were not intended -- but later edited out. These include stuck pixels, cosmic ray hits, frames
π The Meteor and the Star Cluster Image Credit & Copyright: Yousif Alqasimi & Essa Al Jasmi apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π Perseid Meteors from Durdle Door Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
the expanding remnants of the star's component gases. The supernova explosion was witnessed on planet Earth in the year 1054.
the emission from the nebula, driving a shock wave through surrounding material and accelerating the spiraling electrons. With more mass than the Sun and the density of an atomic nucleus,the spinning pulsar is the collapsed core of a massive star that exploded. The outer parts of the Crab Nebula are
swirling filaments near the Crab Nebula's center. The featured picture combines visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope in purple, X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, and infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope in red. Like a cosmic dynamo, the Crab pulsar powers
At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous swirl at the nebula's core. About twelve light-years across, the spectacular picture frames the glowing gas, cavities and
π The Spinning Pulsar of the Crab Nebula Image Credit: NASA: X-ray: Chandra (CXC), Optical: Hubble (STScI), Infrared: Spitzer (JPL-Caltech) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π Giant Galaxies in Pavo Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
August's rising Full Moon still appears small enough to be caught in the nets of an ancient fishing rig. The telephoto snapshot was taken along the Italian Costa dei Trabocchi, on the Adriatic Sea.
Triton. It's also larger than dwarf planets Pluto and Eris. With a diameter of 3,475 kilometers the Moon is about 1/4 the size of Earth though, and that does make it the largest moon when compared to the size of its parent Solar System planet. Of course in this serene, twilight sea and skyscape,
How big is planet Earth's Moon? Compared to other moons of the Solar System, it's number 5 on the largest to smallest ranked list, following Jupiter's moon Ganymede, Saturn's moon Titan, and Jovian moons Callisto and Io. Continuing the list, the Moon comes before Jupiter's Europa and Neptune's
π Fishing for the Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Bellelli apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π NGC 1309: A Useful Spiral Galaxy Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: L. Galbany, S. Jha, K. Noll, A. Riess apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
galaxies scattered through the frame.
light-years distant. That's about 100,000 times farther away than M57 but since they appear roughly similar in size, former spiral nebula IC 1296 must also be about 100,000 times larger than planetary nebula M57. Look closely at the sharp 21st century astroimage to spot even more distant background
spiral nebula. By chance the pair are in the same field of view, and while they appear to have similar sizes they are actually very far apart. At a distance of a mere 2,000 light-years M57 is well within our own Milky Way galaxy. Extragalactic IC 1296 (aka PGC62532) is more like 200,000,000
M57 is definitely not a planet though, but the gaseous shroud of one of the Milky Way's dying sun-like stars. Roughly the same apparent size as M57, the fainter and more often overlooked barred spiral galaxy at the left is IC 1296. In fact, over 100 years ago IC 1296 would have been known as a
This colorful telescopic view towards the musical northern constellation Lyra reveals the faint outer halos and brighter central ring-shaped region of M57, popularly known as the Ring Nebula. To modern astronomers M57 is a well-known planetary nebula. With a central ring about one light-year across,
π A Tale of Two Nebulae Image Credit & Copyright: Kent Biggs apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π Asperitas Clouds Over New Zealand Image Credit & Copyright: Witta Priester apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
above the eastern horizon.
single base frame exposure. But all exposures were taken during a period of around 2.5 hours from a wind farm near MΓΆnchhof, Burgenland, Austria. Red lights on the individual wind turbine towers dot the foreground. In their spectacular close conjunction, bright planets Jupiter and Venus are poised
constellation Perseus, located off the top of the frame. That's the direction in Earth's sky that looks along the orbit of this meteor shower's parent, periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle. Of course the scene is a composite, a combination of about 500 digital exposures to capture meteors registered with a
In this predawn skyscape recorded during the early morning hours of August 13, mostly Perseid meteors are raining down on planet Earth. You can easily identify the Perseid meteor streaks. They're the ones with trails that seem to converge on the annual meteor shower's radiant, a spot in the heroic
π Mostly Perseids Image Credit & Copyright: Klaus Pillwatsch apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π A Cool GIF of a 2025 Perseid Image Credit & Copyright: Renaud & Olivier Coppe apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
background sky that brought up the central band of our Milky Way galaxy running nearly vertically through the featured image's center. The limestone arch in the foreground in Dorset, England is known as Durdle Door, a name thought to survive from a thousand years ago.
straight paths, these paths appear slightly curved by the wide-angle lens of the capturing camera. The meteor streaks can all be traced back to a single point on the sky called the radiant, here just off the top of the frame in the constellation of Perseus. The same camera took a deep image of the
What are those curved arcs in the sky? Meteors -- specifically, meteors from this year's Perseid meteor shower. Over the past few weeks, after the sky darkened, many images of Perseid meteors were captured separately and merged into a single frame, taken earlier. Although the meteors all traveled on
π Perseid Meteors from Durdle Door Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...
π Moonlight, Planets, and Perseids Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Dai (TWAN) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
Condor galaxy.
interactions with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible here below the giant spiral galaxy's core. Other members of the southern Pavo galaxy group are scattered through this magnificent galaxy group portrait, with the dominant giant elliptical galaxy, NGC 6876, above and right of the soaring
appearance of this giant galaxy's stretched out spiral arms suggest the wings of a giant bird. So its popular moniker is the Condor galaxy. Lined with massive young, bluish star clusters and star-forming regions, the extended and distorted spiral arms are due to NGC 6872's past gravitational
Over 500,000 light years across, NGC 6872 (bottom left) is a truly enormous barred spiral galaxy. At least 5 times the size of our own large Milky Way, NGC 6872 is the largest known spiral galaxy. About 200 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the
π Giant Galaxies in Pavo Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
π M13: The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules Image Credit & Copyright: R. Jay Gabany apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core. Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's two recent supernovas and multiple Cepheid variable stars contribute to the
This galaxy is not only pretty -- it's useful. A gorgeous spiral some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters
π NGC 1309: A Useful Spiral Galaxy Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: L. Galbany, S. Jha, K. Noll, A. Riess apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
π Trapezium: In the Heart of Orion Image Credit: Data: Hubble Legacy Archive, Processing: Robert Gendler apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
Canterbury, New Zealand in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side.
mountains, or mammatus clouds associated with thunderstorms, or perhaps a foehn -- a type of dry downward wind that flows off mountains. Clouds from such a wind called the Canterbury arch stream toward the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. The featured image, taken above Hanmer Springs in
appearance, unusual in occurrence, and are relatively unstudied. Whereas most low cloud decks are flat bottomed, asperitas clouds appear to have significant vertical structure underneath. Speculation therefore holds that asperitas clouds might be related to lenticular clouds that form near
What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of meteorological doom. Formally recognized as a distinct cloud type only last year, asperitas clouds can be stunning in
π Asperitas Clouds Over New Zealand Image Credit & Copyright: Witta Priester apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
π Perseids from Perseus Image Credit & Copyright: Marcin RosadziΕski apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
meteor, its wraith-like trail really is persistent. A characteristic of bright meteors, a smoke-like persistent train can often be followed for many minutes wafting in the winds at altitudes of 60 to 90 kilometers.
trail known as a persistent train. The Perseid meteor, a fast moving speck of dust from the tail of large periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle, was heated to incandescence by ram pressure and vaporized as it flashed through the upper atmosphere at 60 kilometers per second. Compared to the brief flash of the
The camera battery died about 2am local time on August 12, while shooting in the bright moonlit skies from a garden in Chastre, Brabant Wallon, Belgium, planet Earth. But not before it captured the frames used to compose this cool animated gif of a brilliant Perseid meteor and a lingering visible
π A Cool GIF of a 2025 Perseid Image Credit & Copyright: Renaud & Olivier Coppe apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...
briefly combined with the two planets for a celestial spectacle even in moonlit skies.
exposure from a site near Gansu, China, with light from both planets reflected in the still waters of a local pond. Also seen against the moonlight were flashes from the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, known for its bright, fast meteors. Near the much anticipated peak of activity, the shower meteors
In the predawn sky on August 13, two planets were close. And despite the glare of a waning gibbous Moon, bright Jupiter and even brighter Venus were hard to miss. Their brilliant close conjunction is posing above the eastern horizon in this early morning skyscape. The scene was captured in a single
π Moonlight, Planets, and Perseids Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Dai (TWAN) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25081...