Apod

• Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries

  Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries

• Sh2-188: The Shrimp Nebula

  What causes the swirl in the Shrimp Nebula? Its high speed is likely

• Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe

  What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies

• Andromeda Before Photoshop

  What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured before image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through Earth's busy skies and with a digital camera that introduces normal imperfections

• Mirrored Meteor and Milky Way

  On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain

• Globular Cluster Omega Centauri

  Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter

• The Ghosts of Five Supernovas

  The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary image

• A New Lunar Crater: McGetchin

  A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and May of 2024

• Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun

  This shot captured an unexpected silhouette

• Cocoon Nebula Wide Field

  When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula