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Picture of the Day

A wide starfield fills the frame, with a bright, textured orange cloud of glowing gas in the lower right that resembles a jellyfish. Its center is dense and fibrous and its lower edge frayed into wisps. Fainter strands of orange gas arc upward from it into a larger, hazy cloud that stretches across the top half of the image, fading from murky yellow-green on the upper left into soft blue on the upper right and cut through by dark, jagged dust lanes. Small white stars are scattered over the black background, with a couple of brighter yellow-white stars standing out near the left edge and below the main jellyfish-shaped cloud.

Sky nettle

Tall white sea cliffs drop into dark, blurred water at night, with and rolling grassy hills fading into the distance on the left. Above, a dense arch of the Milky Way stretches above a colorful sky on the horizon — cool blue and teal on the left, with orange light pollution at right. The Milky Way forms bright white star clouds set against a darker sky above packed with sharp stars.

Milky Way over Beachy Head

A pair of colliding galaxies sits in the lower-left of the frame, with two bright, close-together cores and long, thin arcs of bluish-white stars and gas sweeping outward in opposite directions against a dark purple-black sky. To the right, a round, face-on spiral galaxy with a bright center and faint, tightly wound arms appears above a smaller, fuzzy companion, all set in a dense background of tiny white stars scattered across the field.

A galactic collision

A bright, textured cloud of glowing gas fills most of the frame, forming a rounded shape that loosely suggests a monkey’s head against a dark background. The center is brighter and more structured, with a blue interior puncuated with darker knots and ridges. The outer regions are redder and fade into soft, wispy edges. A sparse scattering of small, sharp stars is visible across the nebula and the darker surrounding sky.

A tribute to Punch

Wide-field view of a bright pink nebula filling most of the frame, with a blue halo surrounding bright stars at the nebula’s core. It is a dense central cloud crossed by dark, branch-like dust lanes. A small, very bright white-and-pink knot stands out just right of center, while a separate patch of pink gas and dust sits in the lower left and faint bluish wisps trace along the bottom edge. The entire scene is sprinkled with a rich starfield of white points, including several brighter stars with four-pointed diffraction spikes scattered across the image.

A tangled heart

Wide star-filled view of space showing a large, round nebula left of center with a pale blue core and a golden-yellow outer ring streaked by dark dust filaments. A smooth, diffuse blue cloud spreads out to the left of this main nebula, fading into soft lavender and pink edges. On the right side, thin, wispy orange and reddish-brown gas filaments form a sprawling, curtain-like network, with several brighter knots and a few larger stars with faint diffraction spikes scattered among a dense background of tiny white stars.

A cosmic bubble

A long, edge-on galaxy stretches diagonally across a dark, star-filled sky, with a bright yellow-white center crossed by thin dark dust lanes. Bright red plumes of gas shoot out above and below the middle of the galaxy. The background is scattered with sharp stars of different colors and faint distant galaxies, with a few wispy grey clouds of dust on the right side.

Bursting with stars

A dark, jagged hilltop topped by a small church stands against a glowing night sky filled with stars. The Milky Way arches high overhead as a bright, dense band of light, with streaks and clumps of dark dust and red gas fading into a softer, mottled glow. The horizon is lit by a faint warm haze, separating the dark foreground from the richly textured starfield above.

Winter is fading

Wide, mottled clouds of dark dust and faint brownish-red glow fill the frame, threaded with small, brighter blue reflection patches around young stars near the center. The nebulosity looks lumpy and uneven, with wisps and filaments extending outward into a busy background of sharp, pinpoint stars scattered across the field.

A stellar nursery in Perseus

Bands of soft green aurorae stretch above a jagged, silhouetted mountain ridge under a star-filled sky, reflecting off a body of water in the foreground. The Milky Way forms a bright, hazy band stretching from the right of the frame to the top. Beside it at left lie a few compact, fuzzy light patches — the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

Southern lights

A bright, blue-purple nebula sits near the center of the frame, shaped like a soft, irregular oval with wispy outer layers folded in on themselves like petals of a flower. Dark, smoky dust lanes and brownish clouds stretch across the image's outer frame, blocking parts of the starfield and giving the background a mottled look. Stars are scattered throughout, with the brightest concentrated near the center of the nebula.

The Iris blooms

PanSTARRS reemerges

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