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.

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

A tangled heart

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