Photo of the Day The Dark Doodad Nebula drifts through southern skies, a tantalizing target for binoculars toward the small constellation Musca, The Fly. A dusty interstellar cloud, it's seen against rich starfields just south of the Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross. Stretching for about 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view, [...]
Photo of the Day This could be the view from an exoplanet orbiting around a red dwarf star, but it is our own Sun. This image was taken on July 22, 2026, in the Okanagan region in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Wildfire smoke from the Pacific Northwest acted as a solar filter, [...]
Photo of the Day Solar System bodies make deep space exploration more fuel efficient! Today’s video shows the Psyche spacecraft gaining speed and changing its trajectory with minimal fuel spent due to a gravity assist from Mars in May 2026. Mars has an average orbital speed of almost 87,000 km/h (54,000 mph) around the [...]
Photo of the Day What's connecting these two volcanoes? In ancient folklore, the two volcanoes, Parinacota (left) and Pomerape (right), are connected by representing a mythical prince and princess who engaged in a forbidden romance. Beneath the ground, the two peaks are not known to be connected by a common pool of hot magma, [...]
Photo of the Day The Southern Crown (Corona Australis) dazzles with young and ancient celestial jewels. The Corona Australis Cloud is a collage of reflection and emission nebulae on the left of today’s image. At 430 light years away, this cloud is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. It contains gas cool [...]
Photo of the Day What's happening in the Statue of Liberty nebula? Bright stars and interesting molecules are forming and being liberated. The complex nebula resides in the star forming region called RCW 57, and besides the iconic monument, to some looks like a flying superhero or a weeping angel. This re-assigned color image [...]
Photo of the Day A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. The year was 2004, and no space aliens were involved. The saucer, pictured here, was the Genesis sample return capsule, part of a human-made robot Genesis spaceship launched in 2001 [...]
Photo of the Day Comet 10P/Tempel 2 orbits the Sun once every 5.4 years. Currently visible in binoculars or small telescopes toward the constellation Capricornus, the periodic comet is captured in this sharp telescopic image from July 11 sporting a bright nuclear region and pretty greenish coma. Remarkably, a thin dust trail, not a [...]
Photo of the Day This sparkling, colorful gemstone is a spiral galaxy, NGC 300. It is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, only about 6 million light-years away. But does it really look like this? Here is a more standard portrait of it. This unusual image combines the light from the stars [...]
Photo of the Day Is there an angry Sith using force lightning in the Tatacoa Desert? This is not science fiction, but a red sprite with multiple streamers! Ordinary lightning occurs when thundercloud particles collide, lose their electrons, and build up negative charge at the cloud bottom. The cloud’s negative charge repels negative charge [...]
