Astronomy Picture of the Day

2026-10-23 Lucy Yunxi Hu

Explanation: Looking toward the north from Mullion, New South Wales, Australia, the Andromeda Galaxy never gets more than a few degrees above the horizon. During the southern hemisphere spring, Andromeda is highest in the sky around midnight ...

2026-10-22 Mark A. Garlick/University of Warwick

Explanation: Star light, star bright: is there a green star out tonight? Other than the Sun, all stars are so far from Earth that they appear as points in the sky. They are mostly white, but sometimes noticeably red or blue. This color typically ...

2026-10-21 Louis Leroux-Géré, Thibault Rouillée, Vincent Martin, Cédric de Decker (Starfront Observatories)

Explanation: Jinkies, look at all those ghosts! It took 100 hours of observation and a special oxygen filter for today’s image to capture three faint nebulas hidden in the Cassiopeia constellation. IC 59 and IC 63, the original Ghosts of ...

2026-10-20 Aurelia Degli Esposti

Explanation: This is an unusual rainbow. For one thing, the rainbow is not complete, appearing only in a sunlit fan -- but that by itself is not very unusual. What is most unusual is the fake location of the Sun. The Sun appears to be toward the ...

2026-10-19 X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF-IRA/A. Botteon et al.; Infrared: UKIDSS-GPS; Radio: ASTRONLOFAR; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Explanation: Explanation : What is Treble Clef? This unusual radio structure extends over 2 million light-years and resembles a common musical symbol -- but has its visible light hidden by our own Milky Way Galaxy. Examined in 2004, the nature of ...

2026-10-18 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, & The Hubble Heritage Project (STScI/AURA);Sonification: NASA, CXC, SAO, K. Arcand, M. Russo & A. Santaguida

Explanation: Yes, but have you ever experienced the Eagle Nebula with your ears? The famous nebula M16 is best known for the feast it gives your eyes, highlighting bright young stars forming deep inside dark towering structures. These light-years ...

2026-10-17 ESA , Rosetta , MPS , OSIRIS - Stereo Anaglyph: Philippe Lamy and The Team

Explanation: Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to the jagged and double-lobed nucleus of Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as Comet 67P . The stereo anaglyph was created by combining two images from the Rosetta spacecraft's narrow ...

2026-10-16 Eric Holland

Explanation: Blasting into the predawn sky on Tuesday, October 13, a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are headed for low Earth orbit in this stunning timelapse video captured from Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Starting with a launch from ...

2026-10-15 Jason Kurth, Ty Buckley

Explanation: The city lights outshine the stars in the City That Never Sleeps. Who would have thought that the Milky Way could be visible in this sky? This image was taken with a filter that blocks most visible light, capturing instead only light ...

2026-10-14 Petr Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava), Josef Kujal, Vojan Höfer

Explanation: What a cosmic coincidence! In today’s image, Mars joins the Beehive cluster (M44 or Praesepe) below an auroral curtain and above a horizon of happy little trees near Lansjärv, Sweden. An eruption off the Sun reached Earth on October ...