The Sun's Surface in 3D
How smooth is the Sun? The new Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, deployed in the Canary Islands only last year, allows imaging of objects less than 100-km across on the Sun's surface. When pointed toward the Sun's edge, surface objects now begin to ...
KamLAND Verifies the Sun
A large sphere beneath Japan has helped verify humanity's understanding of the inner workings of the Sun. The KamLAND sphere, shown above during construction in 2001, fails to detect fundamental particles called anti-neutrinos that are known to ...
Massive Stars of 30 Doradus
In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster of the largest, hottest, most massive stars known. These stars and part of the surrounding nebula are captured here in this gorgeous visible-light Hubble Space Telescope image. ...
A Crescent Earth at Midnight
The Earth's northern hemisphere is outlined as a sunlit crescent in this dramatic view from orbit, recorded near local midnight by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-8) on June 22, 1996. That date was two days after the ...
Snake in the Dark
Dark nebulae snake across a gorgeous expanse of stars in this wide-field view toward the pronounceable constellation Ophiucus and the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. In fact, the central S-shape seen here is well known as the Snake Nebula. It is ...
The Moon Maiden
Along the northwestern reaches of the lunar near side, the Sinus Iridum or Bay of Rainbows appropriately lies at the edge of the Moon's smooth, dark Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium). In this sketch of the lunar surface around the Bay of Rainbows, the ...
The Bubble Nebula from NOAO
It's the bubble versus the cloud. NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula, is being pushed out by the stellar wind of massive central star BD+602522. Next door, though, lives a giant molecular cloud, visible above to the lower right. At this place in ...
APOD Turns Eight
The first APOD appeared eight years ago today, on 1995 June 16. To date, we estimate that APOD has now served over 100 million space-related images. We again thank our readers and NASA for their continued support, but ask that any potentially ...
Noctilucent Clouds
Sometimes it's night on the ground but day in the air. As the Earth rotates to eclipse the Sun, sunset rises up from the ground. Therefore, at sunset on the ground, sunlight still shines on clouds above. Under usual circumstances, a pretty ...
The Planetary Nebula Show
What do the Owl, the Cat's Eye, the Ghost of Jupiter, and Saturn have in common? They're all planetary nebulae of course, glowing gaseous shrouds shed by dying sun-like stars as they run out of nuclear fuel. Beautiful to look at, the symmetric, ...
