Category: Image of the Day

Does the Moon ever block out Mars? Yes, the Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar System’s planets. Just this past Sunday, as visible from some locations in South America, a waning gibbous Moon eclipsed Mars. The...

Why is this nebula so complex? When a star like our Sun is dying, it will cast off its outer layers, usually into a simple overall shape. Sometimes this shape is a sphere, sometimes a double lobe, and sometimes a...

What planets are those behind that unusual rock spire? Saturn (lower left) and Jupiter.  This month, after sunset, the bright planetary duo are quite prominent toward the southeast.  Now your view of our Solar System’s largest planets might not include a picturesque...

The Shifting Tails of Comet NEOWISE

Keep your eye on the ion tail of Comet NEOWISE. A tale of this tail is the trail of the Earth. As with all comets, the blue ion tail always points away from the Sun. But as Comet C/2020 F3...

Churning Clouds on Jupiter

Where is Jupiter’s ammonia? Gaseous ammonia was expected to be seen in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere by the orbiting Juno spacecraft — but in many clouds is almost absent. Recent Juno data, however, gives some clues: some high-level clouds appear to...

Perseids from Perseus

Where are all these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Perseus. That is why the meteor shower that peaks tomorrow night is known as the Perseids — the meteors...

The Origin of Elements

The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior...

Crescent Saturn

From Earth, Saturn never shows a crescent phase. But when viewed from a spacecraft the majestic giant planet can show just a sunlit slice. This image of crescent Saturn in natural color was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in...

The Pipe Nebula

East of Antares, dark markings sprawl through crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard, the obscuring interstellar dust clouds include B59, B72, B77 and B78,...

Messier 20 and 21

The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide...