Αστρονομική Εικόνα της Ημέρας από τη NASA

Προηγούμενες Αστρονομικές Εικόνες της Ημέρας από τη NASA

Colorful Aurora over Icelandic Waterfall

27/08/2026

What a sight to behold, when a night sky became filled with colors that appeared to rain over the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland. This image was taken in a single 5 second exposure by the photographer in April 2025. Seeing an aurora is on many people's bucket lists. But it is not easy. It requires high solar activity, dark and clear skies, and usually a viewing location at high latitude. That makes the northern lights more easily seen than the corresponding southern lights, simply because there is less landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, especially around the Antarctic Circle. Auroras are caused by charged particles from the solar wind that are captured by the Earth's magnetosphere and guided by the magnetic field to a region close to one of the poles, where they collide with gas particles in the atmosphere. Different colors indicate interactions with different gases at different altitudes, like oxygen (red and green) and nitrogen (blue and pink). APOD's main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

JWST Images The Lion's Head Nebula

26/08/2026

Are we looking at the future of our Sun? The James Webb Space Telescope captured today’s composite image of the Lion’s Head Nebula (NGC 2392) with its NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The Lion’s Head Nebula is the remnant of a Sun-like star. This star was unable to sustain the nuclear fusion in its core needed to remain stable. It began to shed layers of gas and dust into space, forming this planetary nebula. A hot stellar core, called a white dwarf, is left behind within the lion’s nose. Do not boop this nose! Intense radiation from the white dwarf is ionizing the gas as it expands, creating the irregular bubble that makes up the lion’s face. Dust clumps that have survived the white dwarf’s radiation and a cloud of ionized gas make up the lion’s mane. This new and more detailed view of the nebula will help humanity learn more about how the gas and dust interact with each other and the white dwarf radiation.

Earth's Shadow Visualized with Lunar Eclipses

25/08/2026

What’s creating this giant hole in space? This is not a black hole — it’s a shadow. It’s Earth’s shadow. Since at least the time of Aristotle, people have noted that Earth's dark shadow on the Moon during a partial lunar eclipse is circular -- although never a whole circle. Using modern digital technology, though, the images of multiple lunar eclipses can be combined to show Earth's complete shadow. The featured image compilation by a perseistent astrophotographer is constructed from 22 years of lunar eclipses. The Moon is not eclipsed every month (moon-th) because the Moon's orbit is slightly tilted relative to Earth's orbit. Close inspection of some lunar eclipse images shows a faint blue band where Earth’s atmosphere filters out more red sunlight than blue. Later this week, a new lunar eclipse will occur and will be best visible in parts of North and South America, Europe, and Africa. APOD's main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Comet 220P in Outburst

24/08/2026

Comet 220P is unexpectedly bright. Normally, periodic Comet 220P/McNaught is so dim that to see it requires a telescope. Two surprising outbursts this year, however, have made it about 20,000 times brighter than usual, so that it is now visible with binoculars and long-duration camera exposures. As expected, Comet 220P continues to orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter with a period of over 5 years. The featured long duration exposure, taken 10 days ago from South Africa, shows the comet's bright green head and short dust tail. Reasons for Comet 220P's impressive outbursts are unknown but could be caused by the release of built-up subsurface gas or comet quakes. Comet 220P will pass about one Earth-Sun distance from the Earth in October, after which it is expected to fade quickly as it begins its return to the far part of its orbit. APOD's main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Mostly Perseids

22/08/2026

Recorded the night of August 12-13, images from four dedicated meteor-monitoring cameras at an astronomical observatory in Czechia were aligned and combined to create this all-night, all-sky view. On that night, the total count came to 1,706 meteors. And since that coincided with the peak activity of the 2026 Perseid Meteor Shower, most are perseids. Their overwhelming numbers make them easy to spot. Quite convincingly, perseid trails all trace back to a single radiant on the sky at the upper right, a region in the annual shower's eponymous constellation Perseus. But meteors belonging to other much less active showers can also revealed by finding their radiants too. For example, seen crossing the perseid trails are meteors from a shower whose radiant lies in Cygnus, known as Kappa Cygnids. The antihelion complex, a general region near Aquarius and opposite the Sun in the sky, is also identifiable as a weak source for meteors.

The Elephant's Trunk in Cepheus

20/08/2026

Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. The detailed telescopic view features the bright swept-back ridges and pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas that abound in the region. But the dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. Top to bottom this proboscidean-like rendition reaches across an almost 1 degree wide field of view, though. That's a little less than the angular size of 2 full moons.

Perseids from Perseus

18/08/2026

This was a good year for the Perseids meteor shower. A key reason was the Moon was absent from lighting up Earth's night sky so that more meteors were visible than usual. Where was the Moon? It was busy visiting the Sun. Near the Perseids peak, the Moon moved directly in front of the Sun and created a total solar eclipse visible from Greenland and Spain. The Perseids occur when the Earth collides with a stream of Sun-orbiting debris cast off by Comet Swift-Tuttle. Perseid meteors, although typically only the size of a sand grain, tend to be fast and bright because Swift-Tuttle's debris orbits the Sun in a direction partly opposite Earth's orbital motion. In the featured image compilation, accumulated over several nights from Jizerka in the Czech Republic, the Perseids meteor streaks can be traced back to a single location on the sky -- its radiant in Perseus. Gallery: Perseids Meteor Shower of 2026

A Golden Corona Eclipse

17/08/2026

This total solar eclipse appeared not only poetically beautiful but scientifically interesting. Usually the solar corona appears white, and to some observers the corona of last week's total solar eclipse did appear this pearly color. But this time, totality observers in Spain saw a corona that appeared unusually golden. For one reason, from Spain, the totality occurred when the setting Sun was near the horizon. That low, sunlight travels through a large amount of air which scatters out blue light. An unusual amount of smoke in the air from nearby forest fires acted as a second filter, further scattering the remaining blue tones and deepening the already gold-dominated light. The HDR-processed, multiple-exposure featured image was captured from Benavente, Spain last week. One thing that did not appear golden was a hydrogen-glowing prominence that hovered over the Sun's left edge -- its original bright pink color survived. Gallery: Solar Eclipse of 2026 August 12

Η Αστρονομική Εικόνα της Ημέρας από τη NASA

NASA Science

03/10/2026