The Map Of Dione

IC 405 & 410 Mosaic - Flame and Tadpole Nebulas

Syd Mead, space station concept art, c. 1970s.

the number of spacecraft failures recently has been absolutely insane and it all comes down to tech bros barging into the industry going "it's not that hard wtf is nasa so bad" and then completely skipping out on any testing

Apollo 11

Supernova 1987A

The remnant of Supernova 1987A, located in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, appears at the center of this image. The red, gaseous clouds that surround it fuel a firestorm of new star formation.

Sharp Nebula Shot!

The Boogeyman Nebula and Tarantula Nebula

Astronomy Picture of the Day

2025 January 28

Comet G3 ATLAS over Uruguay

A foreground grass field is shown below a distant field of stars. On the grass field are some trees. Dwarfing the trees, in the sky, is a comet with a long tail.

Image Credit & Copyright: Mauricio Salazar

Explanation: Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet's size usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically spans a few kilometers -- smaller than even a small moon. When nearing the Sun, however, this nucleus can eject dust and gas and leave a thin tail that can spread to an enormous length -- even greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Pictured, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) sports a tail of sunlight-reflecting dust and glowing gas that spans several times the apparent size of a full moon, appearing even larger on long duration camera images than to the unaided eye. The featured image shows impressive Comet ATLAS over trees and a grass field in Sierras de Mahoma, San Jose, Uruguay about a week ago. After being prominent in the sunset skies of Earth's southern hemisphere, Comet G3 ATLAS is now fading as it moves away from the Sun, making its impressive tails increasingly hard to see.

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

NASA Official: Amber Straughn

A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,

NASA Science Activation

& Michigan Tech. U.

The Ghost Nebula

The Ghost Nebula, also known as LBN 762, is a dark nebula located in the constellation Cassiopeia.

It is named for its ghostly appearance in images taken in infrared light, where it appears as a dark silhouette against the backdrop of brighter stars and gas.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and STScI; Acknowledgment: H. Arab (University of Strasbourg)