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Picture of the Day

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

Alpine arches

A wide, tangled ring of thin, reddish filaments wraps around a darker central region, forming an uneven circle against a black sky. The ring is mottled and wispy, with brighter knots and fainter strands that fade into the background. Myriad small stars of varying brightness are scattered across the frame and in front of the ring.

Remnant of the ancients

A deep image of the Sunflower Galaxy set against a dark sky, with a bright, compact core wrapped in soft, uneven spirals of light. Very faint, misty arcs and streaks of starlight extend far beyond the main disk, forming a large, irregular halo around the galaxy. The background is sprinkled with small, sharp stars in white, blue, and amber, along with a few tiny, hazy distant galaxies.

Left in the dust

A billowing tail

A wandering pair

A blue pearl

Helpful clouds (for once)

Meteoric crown

Oxygen swells in Cygnus

1 2 3 … 40 Older posts
Astronomy Magazine

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