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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2012-04-10: A Fox Fur, a Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros). Pictured as a star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The image spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies below center, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze, and the Cone Nebula near the tree's top. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears here with its apex at the Cone Nebula and its broader base centered near S Mon.
November 17, 2025 at 12:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2012-04-14: Six Moons of Saturn
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
How many moons does Saturn have? So far 62 have been discovered, the smallest only a fraction of a kilometer across. Six of its largest satellites can be seen here, though, in a sharp Saturnian family portrait taken on March 9. Larger than Earth's Moon and even slightly larger than Mercury, Titan has a diameter of 5,150 kilometers and starts the line-up at the lower left. Continuing to the right across the frame are Mimas, Tethys, [Saturn], Enceladus, Dione, and Rhea at far right. Saturn's first known natural satellite, Titan was discovered in 1655 by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, while most recently the satellite provisionally designated S/2009 S1 was found by the Cassini Imaging Science Team in 2009. Tonight, Saturn reaches opposition in planet Earth's sky, offering the best telescopic views of the ringed planet and moons.
November 17, 2025 at 11:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2008-06-30: In the Center of the Trifid Nebula
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Clouds of glowing gas mingle with dust lanes in the Trifid Nebula, a star forming region toward the constellation of Sagittarius. In the center, the three prominent dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together. Mountains of opaque dust appear on the right, while other dark filaments of dust are visible threaded throughout the nebula. A single massive star visible near the center causes much of the Trifid's glow. The Trifid, also known as M20, is only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebulae known. The nebula lies about 9,000 light years away and the part pictured here spans about 10 light years. This image was created with the 0.8-meter IAC80 telescope on the Canary Islands of Spain.
November 17, 2025 at 10:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1999-10-27: In the Heart of the Tarantula Nebula
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Tomorrow's picture: X-Ray Jet From Centaurus A < Archive | Index | Search | Calendar | Glossary | Education | About APOD > Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA) NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply. A service of: LHEA at NASA/ GSFC & Michigan Tech. U.
November 17, 2025 at 9:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2012-02-14: The Rosette Nebula
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The Rosette Nebula is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers -- but it is the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros, some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this rose are actually a stellar nursery whose lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds and radiation from its central cluster of hot young stars. The stars in the energetic cluster, cataloged as NGC 2244, are only a few million years old, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula, cataloged as NGC 2237, is about 50 light-years in diameter. The nebula can be seen firsthand with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).
November 17, 2025 at 8:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2019-01-01: The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The featured image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo. News: New Horizons Spacecraft Passes Ultima Thule
November 17, 2025 at 7:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2015-07-17: Charon
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Icy world Charon is 1,200 kilometers across. That makes Pluto's largest moon only about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself. Charon is seen in unprecedented detail in this image from New Horizons. The image was captured late July 13 during the spacecraft's flight through the Plutonian system from a range of less than 500,000 kilometers. For reference, the distance separating Earth and Moon is less than 400,000 kilometers. Charonian terrain, described as surprising, youthful, and varied, includes a 1,000 kilometer swath of cliffs and troughs stretching below center, a 7 to 9 kilometer deep canyon cutting the curve of the upper right edge, and an enigmatic dark north polar region unofficially dubbed Mordor.
November 17, 2025 at 6:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2005-06-10: Titan's Cryovolcano
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Investigators suspect the domed feature detailed above is an ice volcano, or cryovolcano, seen in infrared light through the hazy atmosphere on Saturn's moon Titan. Since Titan's surface temperature is around minus 180 degrees Celsius, lava welling up to form the volcanic mound would be icy indeed - possibly a slurry of methane, ammonia, and water ice combined with other ices and hydrocarbons. The circular feature is roughly thirty kilometers in diameter. If its volcanic nature is confirmed, the discovery of cryovolcanism on Titan could explain the origin of methane in Titan's atmosphere. Before the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, a popular explanation for replenishing Titan's concentration of atmospheric methane was the presence of an extensive, methane-rich, hydrocarbon sea. But Cassini's instruments and the Huygens surface probe have failed to find such a global ocean.
November 17, 2025 at 5:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2000-12-18: Oceans Under Jupiter's Moon Ganymede?
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The search for extraterrestrial life came back into our own Solar System last week with the announcement that there may be liquid oceans under the surface of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Ganymede now joins Callisto and Europa as moons of Jupiter that may harbor seas of liquid water under layers of surface ice. The ocean hypothesis surfaced as an explanation for Ganymede's unusually strong magnetic field. Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System, also has the largest measured magnetic field of any moon. Some exobiologists hypothesize that life may be able to emerge in such an ocean, much as it did in the oceans of ancient Earth. Above, a frame from a computer simulation shows what it would look like to fly over the surface of Ganymede, as extrapolated from photographs of the grooved moon taken by the robot spacecraft Galileo currently orbiting Jupiter.
November 17, 2025 at 4:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2004-05-12: The Tails of Comet NEAT (Q4)
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Comet NEAT (Q4) is showing its tails. As the large snowball officially dubbed Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) falls toward the inner Solar System, it has already passed the Earth and will reach its closest approach to the Sun this coming Saturday. Reports place the comet at third magnitude, making it easily visible to the unaided eye to northern sky gazers observing from a dark location just after sunset. The above image was captured last Saturday from Happy Jack, Arizona, USA. Visible is a long blue ion tail, a blue coma surrounding the comet's nucleus, and a shorter but brighter sunlight reflecting dust tail. Q4 will likely drop from easy visibility during the next month as it recedes from both the Earth and the Sun. Another separate naked-eye comet, Comet Linear (T7), is also as bright as third magnitude and should remain bright into June.
November 17, 2025 at 3:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2025-06-29: Dark Sand Cascades on Mars
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Are these trees growing on Mars? No. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost. The featured image was taken in 2008 April near the North Pole of Mars. At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice. When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks -- streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions but cast no shadows. Objects about 25 centimeters across are resolved on this image spanning about one kilometer. Close ups of some parts of this image show billowing plumes indicating that the sand slides were occurring even while the image was being taken. Celestial Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
November 17, 2025 at 2:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2001-07-22: NGC 1977: Blue Reflection Nebula in Orion
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The Orion Nebula is visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch near the famous belt of three stars in the Orion. The above picture captures a part of the Orion Nebula that primarily reflects light from bright Orion stars. This reflection nebula appears blue because the blue light from the neighboring stars scatters more efficiently from nebula gas than does red light. The dark lanes are composed of mostly interstellar dust - fine needle-shaped carbon grains.
November 17, 2025 at 1:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2010-07-26: Lutetia: The Largest Asteroid Yet Visited
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
As humans explore the universe, the record for largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft has increased yet again. Earlier this month, ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft zipped past the asteroid 21 Lutetia taking data and snapping images in an effort to better determine the history of the asteroid and the origin of its unusual colors. Although of unknown composition, Lutetia is not massive enough for gravity to pull it into a sphere. Pictured above on the upper right, the 100-kilometer across Lutetia is shown in comparison with the other nine asteroids and four comets that have been visited, so far, by human-launched spacecraft. Orbiting in the main asteroid belt, Lutetia shows itself to be a heavily cratered remnant of the early Solar System. The Rosetta spacecraft is now continuing onto comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko where a landing is planned for 2014.
November 17, 2025 at 12:20 AM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1996-03-05: A Black Hole in M87's Center?
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The center of nearby giant galaxy M87 is a dense and violent place. In this 1994 photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope, a disk of hot gas was found to be orbiting at the center of this massive elliptical galaxy. The disk is evident on the lower left of the above photograph. The rotation speed of gas in this disk indicates the mass of the object the gas is orbiting, while the size of the disk indicates an approximate volume of the central object. These observations yield a central density so high that the only hypothesized object that could live there is a black hole. The picture also shows a highly energetic jet emanating from the central object. The jet is composed of fast moving charged particles and has broken into knots as small as 10 light years across. Information: The Scale of the Universe Debate in April 1996
November 16, 2025 at 11:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2006-08-16: The North America and Pelican Nebulas
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Here are some familiar shapes in unfamiliar locations. This emission nebula on the left is famous partly because it resembles Earth's continent of North America. To the right of the North America Nebula, cataloged as NGC 7000, is a less luminous nebula that resembles a pelican dubbed the Pelican Nebula. The two emission nebula measure about 50 light-years across, are located about 1500 light-years away, and are separated by a dark absorption cloud. This spectacular image captures, in false color, the nebulas, bright ionization fronts, and fine details of the dark dust. The nebulae can be seen with binoculars from a dark location. Look for a small nebular patch north-east of bright star Deneb in the constellation of Cygnus. It is still unknown which star or stars ionize the red-glowing hydrogen gas.
November 16, 2025 at 10:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2013-07-06: NGC 6384: Spiral Beyond the Stars
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The universe is filled with galaxies. But to see them astronomers must look out beyond the stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. This colorful Hubble Space Telescopic portrait features spiral galaxy NGC 6384, about 80 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. At that distance, NGC 6384 spans an estimated 150,000 light-years, while the Hubble close-up of the galaxy's central region is about 70,000 light-years wide. The sharp image shows details in the distant galaxy's blue star clusters and dust lanes along magnificent spiral arms, and a bright core dominated by yellowish starlight. Still, the individual stars seen in the picture are all in the relatively close foreground, well within our own galaxy. The brighter Milky Way stars show noticeable crosses, or diffraction spikes, caused by the telescope itself.
November 16, 2025 at 9:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1998-06-23: A Slice Through an Artificial Universe
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
We live in the era of humanity when most of our Universe is being mapped. To help understand these maps, astronomers computationally estimate the appearance of several possible candidate universes, to which maps of the real Universe can be compared. Pictured above is a slice through one of these artificial universes, displayed so that each part of the universe is seen at the same time after the Big Bang. The above map corresponds to an area nearly ten billion light years across. Highlighted in red are filaments that each contain thousands of galaxies, while darker regions are nearly devoid of galaxies. Our good-sized Milky Way Galaxy would hardly be visible on this map.
November 16, 2025 at 8:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2001-08-25: Pioneer 10: The First 7 Billion Miles
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Q: What was made by humans and is 7.3 billion miles away? A: Pioneer 10 -- and 1997 was the 25th anniversary of its launch. Almost 11 light-hours distant, Pioneer 10 is presently about twice as far from the Sun as Pluto, and bound for interstellar space at 28,000 miles per hour. The distinction of being the first human artifact to venture beyond the known planets of the Solar System is just one in a long list of firsts for this spacefaring ambassador, including; the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and explore the outer Solar System, the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter, and the first to use a planet's gravity to change its course and to reach solar-system-escape velocity. Pioneer 10's mission is nearing an end. Now exploring the distant reaches of the heliosphere it will soon run out of sufficient electrical power to operate science instruments. However, the 570 lb. spacecraft will continue to coast and in 300,000 years or so it will pass within about 3 light years of nearby star Ross 248. Ross 248 is a faint red dwarf just over 10 light years distant in the constellation Taurus. (Note: In 1998 Voyager 1, launched 5 years later but traveling faster than Pioneer 10, became humanity's most distant spacecraft.)
November 16, 2025 at 6:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2015-08-15: Perihelion Approaches
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
This dramatic outburst from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko occured on August 12, just hours before perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun. Completing an orbit of the Sun once every 6.45 years, perihelion distance for this periodic comet is about 1.3 astronomical units (AU), still outside the orbit of planet Earth (at 1 AU). The stark image of the 4 kilometer wide, double-lobed nucleus in bright sunlight and dark shadows was taken by the Rosetta spacecraft's science camera about 325 kilometers away. Too close to see the comet's growing tail, Rosetta maintains its ringside seat to watch the nucleus warm and become more active in coming weeks, as primordial ices sublimating from the surface produce jets of gas and dust. Of course, dust from the nucleus of periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, whose last perihelion passage was in 1992 at a distance of 0.96 AU, fell to Earth just this week.
November 16, 2025 at 5:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2014-05-06: Orange Sun Sparking
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Our Sun has become quite a busy place. Taken only two weeks ago, the Sun was captured sporting numerous tumultuous regions including active sunspot regions AR 2036 near the image top and AR 2038 near the center. Only four years ago the Sun was emerging from an unusually quiet Solar Minimum that had lasted for years. The above image was recorded in a single color of light called Hydrogen Alpha, inverted, and false colored. Spicules cover much of the Sun's face like a carpet. The gradual brightening towards the Sun's edges is caused by increased absorption of relatively cool solar gas and called limb darkening. Just over the Sun's edges, several filamentary prominences protrude, while prominences on the Sun's face are seen as light streaks. Possibly the most visually interesting of all are the magnetically tangled active regions containing relatively cool sunspots, seen as white dots. Currently at Solar Maximum -- the most active phase in its 11-year magnetic cycle, the Sun's twisted magnetic field is creating numerous solar "sparks" which include eruptive solar prominences, coronal mass ejections, and flares which emit clouds of particles that may impact the Earth and cause auroras. One flare two years ago released such a torrent of charged particles into the Solar System that it might have disrupted satellites and compromised power grids had it struck planet Earth. News: Free APOD Lecture in Paris on June 17
November 16, 2025 at 4:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2017-06-28: Rocket Launch as Seen from the Space Station
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, lies about 5,000 light-years away, a colorful study in cosmic contrasts. It shares this nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top left). Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old. M20 and M21 are easy to find with even a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. In fact, this well-composed scene is a composite from two different telescopes. Using narrowband data it blends a high resolution image of M20 with a wider field image extending to M21.
November 16, 2025 at 3:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2000-01-03: Cas A Supernova Remnant in X-Rays
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
The complex shell of a star seen to explode 300 years ago is helping astronomers to understand how that star exploded. The above recently released image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) shows unprecedented detail in three X-ray colors. The relationship between brightness, color, and position of material in the image indicates where in the star this material was just before the explosion. Bright knots on the left, for example, contain little iron, and so are hypothesized to originated from a higher layer than outer red filaments, which are iron rich. The blue region on the right is seen through absorbing dust, and so appears depleted of low-energy X-rays. It takes light ten years to cross the gas shell of the Cas A supernova remnant, which is 10,000 light-years distant. Most of the elements that make people and planets were produced in supernova explosions.
November 16, 2025 at 2:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2009-11-17: Dawn Before Nova
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Will this dawn bring another nova? Such dilemmas might be pondered one day by future humans living on a planet orbiting a cataclysmic variable binary star system. Cataclysmic variables involve gas falling from a large star onto an accretion disk surrounding a massive but compact white dwarf star. Explosive cataclysmic events such as a dwarf nova can occur when a clump of gas in the interior of the accretion disk heats up past a certain temperature. At that point, the clump will fall more quickly onto the white dwarf and land with a bright flash. Such dwarf novas will not destroy either star, and may occur irregularly on time scales from a few days to tens of years. Although a nova is much less energetic than a supernova, if recurrent novas are not violent enough to expel more gas than is falling in, mass will accumulate onto the white dwarf star until it passes its Chandrasekhar limit. At that point, a foreground cave may provide little protection, as the entire white dwarf star will explode in a tremendous supernova.
November 16, 2025 at 1:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2004-12-13: Announcing Comet Machholz
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
A comet discovered only this summer is brightening quickly and already visible to the unaided eye. Comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) is currently best visible in Earth's Southern Hemisphere where some observers report it brighter than magnitude 5. The comet is moving rapidly to northern skies and should continue to brighten until early January. By coincidence, Comet Machholz will be easy to view as it will be nearly opposite the Sun when appearing its brightest. How bright Comet Machholz will become then remains uncertain, but it will surely stay in northern skies for much of 2005, even approaching Polaris in early March. Pictured above, Comet Machholz was captured in early December already sporting a bright surrounding coma, a white oblong dust tail fading off toward the bottom, and a long wispy ion tail toward the right with a kink near the end.
November 16, 2025 at 12:20 PM
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NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2001-11-22: Fireball, Smoke Trail, Meteor Storm
#Astronomy #NASA #Space
Returning from orbit, space shuttles enter the atmosphere at about 8 kilometers per second as friction heats their protective ceramic tiles to over 1,400 degrees Celsius. By contrast, the bits of comet dust which became the Leonid meteors seen on November 18, were moving at 70 kilometers per second, completely vaporizing at altitudes of around 100 kilometers. In this single 5 minute time exposure, three Leonid meteors are shooting through skies above Spruce Knob, West Virginia, USA. Background stars are near the constellation Orion. The brightest meteor, a fireball, dramatically changes colors along its path and leaves a smokey persistant trail drifting in high-altitude winds. From that extremely dark site, at an elevation of 1,200 meters, astrophotographer Jerry Lodriguss reports, "We observed a [zenithal hourly rate] of about 3,600 at 10:30 UT and very high rates from 9:30 UT until well into the start of astronomical twilight at 10:50 UT. It was quite a spectacular storm, with bolides going off like flashbulbs, green and red fireballs and other fainter Leonids in all parts of the sky."
November 16, 2025 at 11:20 AM