APOD is 30 years old today. In celebration, today's picture uses past APODs as tiles arranged to create a single pixelated image that might remind you of one of the most well-known and evocative depictions

How different does sunset appear from Mars than from Earth? For comparison, two images of our common star were taken at sunset, one from Earth and one from Mars. These images were scaled to have the same

What are all those streaks in the sky? A galaxy, many satellite trails, and a few meteors. First, far in the distance, the majestic band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs down the left. Mirroring it on the

In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC

On April 20, 2023 the shadow of a New Moon raced across planet Earth's southern hemisphere. When viewed along a narrow path that mostly avoided landfall, the Moon in silhouette created a hybrid solar eclipse.

Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It's likely that you do, even though some bright stars have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written language. Many world cultures

Do oceans under the ice of Saturn's moon Enceladus contain life? A reason to think so involves long features -- some dubbed tiger stripes -- that are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior

Can you identify this celestial object? Likely not — because this is a discovery image. Massive stars forge heavy elements in their cores and, after a few million years, end their lives in powerful supernova

From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 3344 face-on. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away in the constellation

On the Mars rover's mission Sol 46 or Earth date April 6, 2021, Perseverance held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was designed to take close-ups

The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often given the names of flowers or insects, and its whopping 3 light-year wingspan, NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface

Savudrija lighthouse shines along the coast near the northern end of the Istrian peninsula in this well-composed night skyscape. A navigational aid for sailors on the Adriatic Sea, the historic lighthouse

Is the sky the same every night? No -- the night sky changes every night in many ways. To better explore how the night sky changes, the USA's NSF and DOE commissioned the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Cerro

Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now, air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm -- may cause noticeable

Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova, leaving the Veil Nebula. At the time, the expanding cloud was likely as bright

What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself,

On May 7, the Sun setting behind a church bell tower was captured in this filtered and manipulated digital skyscape from Ragusa, Sicily, planet Earth. In this version of the image the colors look bizarre.

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the attention, flaunting young, bright, blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along graceful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars

This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you. Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope image data, the stunning

Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the bottom-left corner, while the colorful Rho Ophiuchi