Young Moon and Sister Stars

2026-04-24 Giorgia Hofer

Sunlit arms of a crescent moon seem to embrace the faint lunar night side in this dramatic celestial scene from planet Earth. The single telephoto exposure tracking the sky was captured on the night of April 19, when a two day old Moon was near ...

Large Scale Structure of the Universe

2026-04-23

This is a map of the universe. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona, has finished its five-year survey. It observed more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and created a 3D map centered on ...

Earthset with an iPhone

2026-04-22

What does it mean for the Earth to set? Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman gave us another spectacular view of Earth from their historic flyby of the Moon. Commander Wiseman's video, taken with an iPhone at 8x zoom, shows our entire planet ...

Three Sky Arches over Snowy Alps

2026-04-21 Angel Fux

Why are there three arches across the sky instead of two? Last month, after being dropped off by a helicopter at a high mountain peak in the Alps near the Swiss Italian border, an adventurous astrophotographer expected two arches of our Milky Way ...

Comet R3 PanSTARRS over a Himalayan...

2026-04-20 Basudeb Chakrabarti & Samit Saha

The best way to see comet R3 PanSTARRS’s long tail is with a camera. This week, the recently brightened comet appears in northern skies to the east just before dawn, but is only barely visible to the unaided eye. The many-degree ion tail captured ...

Eye on the Milky Way

2026-04-19 Miguel Claro (TWAN, Dark Sky Alqueva)

Have you ever had stars in your eyes? It appears that the eye on the left does, and moreover, it appears to be gazing at even more stars. The featured 27-frame mosaic was taken in 2019 from Ojas de Salar in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The eye ...

PanSTARRS and Planets

2026-04-18 Luc Perrot

Near the eastern horizon before sunrise, Comet C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS is getting brighter. Readily visible in binoculars and small telescopes, the comet may be just on the verge of naked-eye visibility from dark sky sites. Though it was not quite ...

M82: Starburst Galaxy with a Superwind

2026-04-17 Arnaud Malleval

Messier 82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy's ...

South Celestial Tree

2026-04-16 Kiko Fairbairn

If you live in the northern hemisphere, you may have learned how to locate the North Star, Polaris, in the night sky. It can be used to find north, and it approximately marks the northern celestial pole. If you live in the southern hemisphere, ...

The ISS Transits the Moon

2026-04-15 Sébastien Borie Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

Nope, that is not an alien spaceship landing on the Moon! This is an image of the International Space Station (ISS) as it begins to transit in front of the Moon. The ISS is in low-Earth orbit (LEO) where it wizzes around the Earth every 90 ...