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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 18m

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2025-04-26: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5335
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

This stunning portrait of NGC 5335 was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 170,000 light-years across and over 200 million light-years away toward the constellation Virgo, the magnificent spiral galaxy is seen face-on in Hubble's view. Within the galactic disk, loose streamers of star forming regions lie along the galaxy's flocculent spiral arms. But the most striking feature of NGC 5335 is its prominent central bar. Seen in about 30 percent of galaxies, including our Milky Way, bar structures are understood to channel material inward toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Of course, distant background galaxies are easy to spot, scattered around the sharp Hubble image. Launched in 1990, Hubble is now celebrating its 35th year exploring the cosmos from orbit around planet Earth.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 1h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2000-12-06: Reflecting Merope
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Tomorrow's picture: Faulty Earth < | Archive | Index | Search | Calendar | Glossary | Education | About APOD | > Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA) NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply. A service of: LHEA at NASA/GSFC & Michigan Tech. U.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 2h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2011-02-21: Flying over the Earth at Night II
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

What's visible in the night sky during this time of year? To help illustrate the answer, a beautiful land, cloud, and skyscape was captured earlier this month over Neuch�tel, Switzerland. Visible in the foreground were the snow covered cliffs of the amphitheater shaped Creux du Van, as well as distant trees, and town-lit clouds. Visible in the night sky (at midnight) were galaxies including the long arch of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy (M31), and the Triangulum galaxy (M33). Star clusters visible included NGC 752, M34, M35, M41, the double cluster, and the Beehive (M44). Nebulas visible included the Orion Nebula (M42), NGC 7822, IC 1396, the Rosette Nebula, the Flaming Star Nebula, the California Nebula, the Heart and Soul Nebulas, and the Pacman Nebula. Rolling your cursor over the above image will bring up labels for all of these. But the above wide angle sky image captured even more sky wonders. What other nebulas can you find in the above image?

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 3h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2003-01-24: Seyfert's Sextet
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Known as Seyfert's Sextet, this intriguing group of galaxies lies in the head portion of the split constellation Serpens. The sextet actually contains only four interacting galaxies, though. Near the center of this Hubble Space Telescope picture, the small face-on spiral galaxy lies in the distant background and appears only by chance aligned with the main group. Also, the prominent condensation on the far right is likely not a separate galaxy at all, but a tidal tail of stars flung out by the galaxies' gravitational interactions. About 190 million light-years away, the interacting galaxies are tightly packed into a region around 100,000 light-years across, comparable to the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, making this one of the densest known galaxy groups. Bound by gravity, the close-knit group may coalesce into a single large galaxy over the next few billion years.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 4h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2011-05-25: Space Shuttle Rising
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual -- the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds. Hot glowing gasses expelled by the engines are visible near the rising shuttle, as well as a long smoke plume. A shadow of the plume appears on the cloud deck, indicating the direction of the Sun. The shuttle Endeavour remains docked with the International Space Station and is currently scheduled to return to Earth next week.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 5h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2015-02-21: 45 Days in the Sun
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

From January 11 to February 25 2013, a pinhole camera sat in a field near Budapest, Hungary, planet Earth to create this intriguing solargraph. And for 45 days, an old Antonov An-2 biplane stood still while the Sun rose and set. The camera's continuous exposure began about 20 days after the northern hemispere's winter solstice, so each day the Sun's trail arcs steadily higher through the sky. These days in the Sun were recorded on a piece of black and white photosensitive paper tucked in to the simple plastic film container. The long exposure produced a visible color image on the paper that was then digitally scanned. Of course, cloudy days left gaps in the solargraph's Sun trails.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 6h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1999-02-05: HR 4796A: Not Saturn
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

These are not false-color renderings of the latest observations of Saturn's magnificent rings. Instead, the panels show a strikingly similar system on a much larger scale - a ring around the young, Vega-like star, HR 4796A, located about 200 light-years from Earth. Probably composed of dusty debris ground from colliding planetesimals, this ring is confined to a zone less than 17 AU wide (1 AU equals the Earth-Sun distance) and girdles the star at a radius of about 70 AU, roughly twice the orbital radius of Neptune. In analogy with the relationship of Saturn's rings and moons, this circumstellar ring could be held in place by forces due to planets - shepherding planetary bodies or the gravitational influence of larger planets orbiting closer to the parent star. In any event, because the ring would not survive long without something to keep it there, astronomers consider its presence strong evidence for unseen planetary bodies around HR 4796A. The top panels show the false-color images at two infrared wavelengths from the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS instrument, and the bottom panels trace the corresponding image contours. At the center of each, the overwhelming light of HR 4796A has been masked to reveal the fainter circumstellar ring.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 7h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2011-11-13: The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Few butterflies have a wingspan this big. The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of this particular planetary nebula is exceptionally hot though -- shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope soon after it was upgraded in 2009. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 8h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2007-08-07: Old Faithful Below a Yellowstone Sky
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

You don't have to be at Yellowstone to see a sky this beautiful, but it helps. Only at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA, would you see the picturesque foreground of the famous Old Faithful Geyser erupting in front an already picturesque sky. Old Faithful Geyser, visible in the foreground, is seen propelling a stream of hot water over 30 meters in the air. This happens predictably for a few minutes about every 90 minutes. Also predictable are the brightest orbs that populate the nighttime sky, although those visible at any one time keep changing. Visible far in the background sky of this mid-July image are the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy on the left, and the bright planet Jupiter on the right. Jupiter is the brightest celestial object in the entire image. Old Faithful has been erupting at least since the late 1800s.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 9h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2014-04-06: Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Pictured above, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas, approximately the same size, appears quite dead. Most recently, an analysis of slight gravity deviations has given an independent indication of underground oceans. Such research is particularly interesting since such oceans would be candidates to contain life.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 10h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2002-10-15: Aurora's Ring
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun made the early days of October rewarding ones for those anticipating auroras. While out enjoying the stormy space weather from Toemmeraas, Norway, Trygve Lindersen recorded this picturesque apparition of the northern lights with a digital camera on October 6. From this perspective, the curtains of green light formed a ring which seemed to hover, wraithlike, just above the foreground trees. But the ring of light was actually 100 kilometers or more above the trees and the greenish glow produced by oxygen molecules interacting with energetic electrons and fluorescing near the edge of space. After days of enchanting auroral displays on planet Earth, the solar activity which triggered October's geomagnetic storms seems to have subsided ... for now.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 11h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1999-11-22: The Crab Nebula from VLT
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

The Crab Nebula, filled with mysterious filaments, is the result of a star that was seen to explode in 1054 AD. This spectacular supernova explosion was recorded by Chinese and (quite probably) Anasazi Indian astronomers. The filaments are mysterious because they appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and higher speed than expected from a free explosion. In the above picture taken recently from a Very Large Telescope, the color indicates what is happening to the electrons in different parts of the Crab Nebula. Red indicates the electrons are recombining with protons to form neutral hydrogen, while blue indicates the electrons are whirling around the magnetic field of the inner nebula. In the nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star rotating, in this case, 30 times a second.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 12h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2008-02-21: Orion's Horsehead Nebula
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the red emission nebula seen just below and left of center in the this photograph. The brightest star on the left is located in the belt of the familiar constellation Orion. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright red emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will alter its appearance. The emission nebula's red color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Also visible in the picture are blue reflection nebulae that preferentially reflect the blue light from nearby stars.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 13h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2012-05-25: Scorpius in Red and Blue
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Cosmic dust clouds dim the light of background stars. But they also reflect the light of stars nearby. Since bright stars tend to radiate strongly in the blue portion of the visible spectrum, and the interstellar dust scatters blue light more strongly than red, the dusty reflection nebulae tend to be blue. Lovely examples are the wispy blue reflection nebulae near bright, hot stars Pi and Delta Scorpii (upper left and lower right) in this telescopic skyscape from the head of the constellation Scorpius. Of course, the contrasting red emission nebulae are also caused by the hot stars' energetic radiation. Ultraviolet photons ionize hydrogen atoms in the interstellar clouds producing the characteristic red hydrogen alpha emission line as the electrons recombine. About 600 light-years away, the nebulae are found in the second version of the Sharpless Catalog as Sh2-1 (left, with reflection nebulae VdB 99) and Sh2-7. At that distance, this field of view is about 40 light-years across.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 14h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2015-01-24: Light from Cygnus A
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Celebrating astronomy in this International Year of Light, the detailed image reveals spectacular active galaxy Cygnus A in light across the electromagnetic spectrum. Incorporating X-ray data ( blue) from the orbiting Chandra Observatory, Cygnus A is seen to be a prodigious source of high energy x-rays. But it is actually more famous at the low energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum. One of the brightest celestial sources visible to radio telescopes, at 600 million light-years distant Cygnus A is the closest powerful radio galaxy. Radio emission ( red) extends to either side along the same axis for nearly 300,000 light-years powered by jets of relativistic particles emanating from the galaxy's central supermassive black hole. Hot spots likely mark the ends of the jets impacting surrounding cool, dense material. Confined to yellow hues, optical wavelength data of the galaxy from Hubble and the surrounding field in the Digital Sky Survey complete a remarkable multiwavelength view.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 15h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2006-09-24: NGC 1499: The California Nebula
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

What's California doing in space? Drifting through the Orion Arm of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, this cosmic cloud by chance echoes the outline of California on the west coast of the United States. Our own Sun also lies within the Milky Way's Orion Arm, only about 1,500 light-years from the California Nebula. Also known as NGC 1499, the classic emission nebula is around 100 light-years long. It glows with the red light characteristic of hydrogen atoms recombining with long lost electrons, stripped away (ionized) by energetic starlight. In this case, the star most likely providing the energetic starlight is the bright, hot, bluish Xi Persei, just right of the nebula and above picture center. Fittingly, this composite picture was made with images from a telescope in California - the 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope - taken as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 16h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2002-05-08: Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 17h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2001-11-25: M16: Stars from Eagle's EGGs
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars. At each pillars' end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. The Eagle Nebula, associated with the open star cluster M16, lies about 7000 light years away.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 18h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1995-10-22: A Quasar - Galaxy Collision?
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

In 1963 astronomers were astounded to discover that certain faint, star-like objects have very large redshifts. The large redshifts imply that these objects, now known as quasars (QUASi-stellAR objects), lie near the edge of the observable Universe. To be visible at such extreme distances of billions of light years, they must emit tremendous amounts of energy. Where does the energy come from? In the most widely accepted model, a quasar is the bright nucleus of an active galaxy powered by a central, supermassive black hole.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 19h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1999-03-16: Sigmoids Predict Solar Eruptions
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

On the Sun, S marks the spot. Solar explosions have been discovered to explode preferentially from regions marked with this letter. The surface of the quiet Sun is a maze of hot gas and flowing magnetic fields. When two regions of high magnetic field strength approach each other, they typically pass uneventfully. If the two regions pass close enough and in just the right way, however, an X-ray bright S-shaped region called a sigmoid forms and quickly explodes in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Astronomers conjecture that in the center of the sigmoid, a circuit closes that somehow drives the explosion. The above picture shows the Sun in X-ray light. A pre-CME sigmoid is shown on the left inset image, while a post-CME arc is shown in the right inset.

Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 20h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2006-11-28: Unusual Starburst Galaxy NGC 1313

#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Why is this galaxy so discombobulated? Usually, galaxies this topsy-turvy result from a recent collision with a neighboring galaxy. Spiral galaxy NGC 1313, however, appears to be alone. Brightly lit with new and blue massive stars, star formation appears so rampant in NGC 1313 that it has been labeled a starburst galaxy. Strange features of NGC 1313 include that its spiral arms are lopsided and its rotational axis is not at the center of the nuclear bar. Pictured above, NGC 1313 spans about 50,000 light years and lies only about 15 million light years away toward the constellation of Reticulum. Continued numerical modeling of galaxies like NGC 1313 might shed some light on its unusual nature.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 21h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2018-07-03: An Airplane in Front of the Moon
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

If you look closely at the Moon, you will see a large airplane in front of it. Well, not always. OK, hardly ever. Actually, to capture an image like this takes precise timing, an exposure fast enough to freeze the airplane and not overexpose the Moon -- but slow enough to see both, a steady camera, and luck -- because not every plane that approaches the Moon crosses in front. Helpful equipment includes a camera with fast continuous video mode and a mount that automatically tracks the Moon. The featured fleeting superposition was captured from Seoul, South Korea two weeks ago during a daytime waxing gibbous moonrise. Within 1/10th of a second, the airplane crossing was over. Follow APOD on: Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, or Twitter

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 22h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 1999-07-10: Southern Neptune
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

Neptune, the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet, is 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth. Twelve years after a 1977 launch, Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and found surprising activity on a planet that receives only 3 percent as much sunlight as Jupiter. In its brief but tantalizing close-up glimpse of this dim and distant world, the robot spacecraft recorded pulses of radio emission, zonal cloud bands, and large scale storm systems with up to 1500 mile per hour winds - the strongest measured on any planet. This mosaic of 5 Voyager images shows Neptune's Southern Hemisphere. Cloud bands and the Earth-sized, late "Great Dark Spot" with trailing white clouds located at about 22 degrees southern latitude are clearly visible. The distance from the Great Dark Spot feature to Neptune's South Pole (image center) is about 17,000 miles.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 23h

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2018-11-23: Good Morning Leonid
#Astronomy #NASA #Space

On November 17, just an hour before sunrise, this bright and colorful meteor flashed through clear predawn skies. Above a sea of clouds this striking autumn morning's moment was captured from Hochblauen, a prominent 1165 meter high summit in southern Germany's Black Forest. Shining through the twilight, Sirius as well as the familiar stars of Orion are recognizable near the southwestern horizon, and the meteor seems headed right for the hunter's belt and sword. Still, as part of the annual Leonid meteor shower, the meteor trail does point back to the shower's radiant. The constellation Leo is high above the horizon and off the top left of the frame.

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 1d

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2023-12-23: A December Summer Night
#Astronomy #NASA #Space