Astronomy Picture of the Day

2003-11-01

The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color picture, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of ...

2003-10-31 T. Credner

It was a dark and stormy night. But on August 29th the red planet Mars, near its closest approach to Earth in almost 60,000 years, shone brightly in the sky against a background of stars in the constellation Aquarius. In the foreground of this ...

2003-10-30 Jimmy Westlake

Vivid auroral displays were triggered by a cloud of high energy particles and magnetic fields from the Sun that collided with planet Earth's magnetosphere yesterday, October 29, at about 06:30 Universal Time. The collision was anticipated, ...

2003-10-29

Yesterday, our Sun produced one of the most powerful solar flares in recorded history. Seen across the electromagnetic spectrum, the Sun briefly became over 100 times brighter in X-rays than normal. Over the next few days, as energetic ...

2003-10-28 Credit

The latest map of the cosmos again indicates that dark matter and dark energy dominate our universe. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is on its way to measuring the distances to over one million galaxies. Galaxies first identified on 2D ...

2003-10-27 Juan Carlos Casado

Two unusually large sunspot groups are now crossing the face of the Sun. Each group, roughly the size of Jupiter, is unusual not only for its size but because it is appearing over three years after solar maximum, the peak of solar surface ...

2003-10-26

Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in ...

2003-10-25 Gunther Groenez

Awash in a sea of plasma and anchored in magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized, dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Before the enlightened(!) age of cameras, solar observers created detailed drawings of ...

2003-10-24 Panther Observatory

This year's record close approach of Mars inspired many to enjoy telescopic views of the red planet. But while Mars was so bright it was hard to miss, spotting Mars' two diminutive moons was still a good test for observers with modest sized ...

2003-10-23 Galaxy Images

Looking toward the constellation Cygnus, a stunning and complex region of nebulae strewn along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy is revealed in this unique wide-angle sky view. Recorded with a filter designed to transmit light emitted by hydrogen ...