Astronomy Picture of the Day

2010-02-11 Bob Franke

This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 ...

2010-02-09

Sometimes, the space shuttle launches at night. Pictured above, the space shuttle Endeavour lifted off in yesterday's early morning hours from Launch Pad 39A in Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). ...

2010-02-08 Nagy Attila

Have you ever seen a halo around the Sun? This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal acts like a miniature lens. Because most of the crystals have a ...

2010-02-07 J. Rhoads

Most galaxies have a single nucleus -- does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible in this image. The central cloverleaf is rather light emitted ...

2010-02-06 Peter Lau

This remarkable scene combines multiple exposures recorded on the evening of January 18th from a waterside perspective in Hong Kong, China. It follows a young crescent Moon, with brilliant planet Jupiter to its left, as they set together in the ...

2010-02-05 Jean-Luc Dauvergne

It's spring for the northern hemisphere of Mars and spring on Mars usually means dust storms. So the dramatic brown swath of dust (top) marking the otherwise white north polar cap in this picture of the Red Planet is not really surprising. Taking ...

2010-02-04 Máximo Ruiz

This cosmic expanse of dust, gas, and stars covers close to 3 degrees on the sky in the heroic constellation Perseus. Right of center in the gorgeous skyscape is the dusty blue reflection nebula NGC 1333, about 1,000 light-years away. At that ...

2010-02-03

What is this strange object? First discovered on ground based LINEAR images on January 6, the object appeared unusual enough to investigate further with the Hubble Space Telescope last week. Pictured above, what Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 ...

2010-02-02 Wally Pacholka

ven from the top of a volcanic crater, this vista was unusual. For one reason, Mars was dazzlingly bright two weeks ago, when this picture was taken, as it was nearing its brightest time of the entire year. Mars, on the far upper left, is the ...

2010-02-01

Another moon of Saturn has been imaged in detail by the Cassini spacecraft. Orbiting Saturn since 2004, the robotic Cassini got its closest look yet at Saturn's small moon Prometheus last week. Visible above in an unprocessed image from 36,000 ...