July 2026 digital issue Now available!
Learn more
Skip to content
Astronomy Magazine logo
  • Login / Register
  • Logout
  • Shop
  • Subscribe
  • News
  • Science
    • Solar System
    • Exoplanets
    • Stars
    • Milky Way
    • Galaxies
    • Exotic Objects
    • Cosmology
  • Observing
    • In The Sky
    • Upcoming Events
    • The Sun
    • The Moon
    • Planets
    • Comets
    • Deep-Sky Objects
    • Observing Basics
    • Telescopes and Equipment
    • Astrophotography
    • Gear Guide
    • This Week in Astronomy
  • Space Exploration
    • What’s Launching This Week
    • Human Spaceflight
    • Robotic Spaceflight
  • The Magazine
  • Ask Astro
  • Star Products
  • News
  • Science
    • Solar System
    • Exoplanets
    • Stars
    • Milky Way
    • Galaxies
    • Exotic Objects
    • Cosmology
  • Observing
    • In The Sky
    • Upcoming Events
    • The Sun
    • The Moon
    • Planets
    • Comets
    • Deep-Sky Objects
    • Observing Basics
    • Telescopes and Equipment
    • Astrophotography
    • Gear Guide
    • This Week in Astronomy
  • Space Exploration
    • What’s Launching This Week
    • Human Spaceflight
    • Robotic Spaceflight
  • The Magazine
  • Ask Astro
  • Star Products
  • Login / Register
  • Logout
  • Shop
  • Subscribe

Picture of the Day

The kingdom’s frontier

On a black, star-filled background float two large, wispy blue bubbles of gas. The rounder one at left has a small bright pink-and-white knot at its lower edge. The bigger, more tangled structure at right blends pale blue filaments with patches of red, all scattered across thousands of faint stars.

An extragalactic supernova remnant

Rings within rings

A large, glowing cloud of gas fills the frame against a dense starfield. Its center glows teal and blue, ringed and streaked by billowing gold, orange, and rust-brown clouds, with dark lanes of dust winding through the right side. The colors are vivid and painterly.

A stellar nursery in Cygnus

A large glowing amber disk — the Sun — fills the frame against a black sky, with a few small dark spots scattered across its left side. The dark silhouette of a tall, intricate broadcast antenna tower runs vertically down the center, crossing the face of the Sun.

Sunspots beside the spire

A dark starfield is veined with faint, wispy brown clouds. At left, a bright patch glows red and teal; at upper right sit a bright face-on spiral galaxy and a smaller, cigar-shaped reddish galaxy.

The Vulcan’s nest

A faint blue-green cloud shaped like a squid stretches across the center of the frame, with two tapering lobes reaching left and right from a brighter, knotted middle. It floats against a much larger backdrop of deep red gas that fills the image in wispy, billowing curtains. Scattered white and pale-blue stars dot the scene.

Waiting in the wings

Wide-field view of deep space showing a bright teal comet near the center with a small, sharp core surrounded by a soft, round green glow. A thin, faint horizontal line crosses directly through the comet. A bright blue star with crisp four-pointed spikes shines above and to the left, set against a dense background of tiny white and reddish stars scattered over mottled brownish-grey dust clouds.

Comet Tempel 2’s dust trail

Virgo vertigo

Wide-field view of a rich starfield showing a bright, dense globular star cluster near the upper right and a complex blue nebula with dark dust lanes in the lower left. The globular cluster appears as a tight, glowing ball of countless tiny white stars fading smoothly into the surrounding field. The lower-left nebula is made of bright blue patches around a few standout stars, crossed by thick, irregular dark clouds that block the stars behind them, while the rest of the frame is sprinkled with stars of different brightness and color, including a few very bright stars with sharp diffraction spikes.

A glob and a stellar nursery

A wide, long-exposure view of the night sky shows the Milky Way stretching in a hazy, mottled band across the lower half of the frame, with creamy star clouds broken by dark dust lanes. A single bright meteor streaks diagonally from upper left to lower right as a sharp blue-white line that is brightest near its middle and fades at both ends. The background is filled with countless small stars of varying brightness, along with a few larger bluish stars that glow more strongly near the top and bottom of the image.

A June Epsilon Cygnid

Prominent filaments

1 2 3 … 42 Older posts
Astronomy Magazine

Astronomy magazine: 50 years and counting

The world's best-selling astronomy magazine offers you the most exciting, visually stunning, and timely coverage of the heavens above. Each issue includes expert science reporting, vivid color photography, complete sky coverage, spot-on observing tips, informative telescope reviews, and much more! All this in a user-friendly style that's perfect for astronomers at any level.

Count me in

Astronomy Newsletter

Get newsletters, updates and special offers via email from Astronomy.com!

Please enter a valid email address.
Astronomy Magazine logo
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Subscribe
  • Customer Service
  • Advertising
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Do Not Sell

@ 2025 Firecrown Media. All Rights Reserved.

More Sites from Firecrown Media Publisher logo
Scroll to Top

Sign In

New User? Create an Account

Why Sign In? Subscribers can access their digital magazine issues, and registered users can participate in our Community forums and galleries.

Please enter your email.
Please enter your password.

Lost your password?

Manage My AccountCustomer Support