Explanation: Yes, but have you ever experienced the Eagle Nebula with your ears? The famous nebula M16 is best known for the feast it gives your eyes, highlighting bright young stars forming deep inside dark towering structures. These light-years long columns of cold gas and dust are some 6,500 light-years distant toward the constellation of
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 October 17… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 3D 67P Explanation: Put
Explanation: Blasting into the predawn sky on Tuesday, October 13, a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are headed for low Earth orbit in this stunning timelapse video captured from Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Starting with a launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Falcon and Dragon are chasing the
Explanation: The city lights outshine the stars in the City That Never Sleeps. Who would have thought that the Milky Way could be visible in this sky? This image was taken with a filter that blocks most visible light, capturing instead only light in the near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum (with lower energy than
Explanation: What a cosmic coincidence! In today’s image, Mars joins the Beehive cluster (M44 or Praesepe) below an auroral curtain and above a horizon of happy little trees near Lansjärv, Sweden. An eruption off the Sun reached Earth on October 10th, 2026 causing strong disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field. Energetic particles from the eruption collide
Explanation: This stairway in Chile brings you only a little bit closer to heaven. But ooh, the sky above it makes you wonder. For example, you may wonder about the dark lane of our own Milky Way galaxy rising behind the expansive Atacama Desert in Chile, the band of zodiacal light on the upper left,