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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Apollo 17 s Moonship
27.12.2025
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit.
3I/ATLAS Flyby
26.12.2025
Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That's about 900 light-seconds. This deep exposure captures the comet...
Unicorn, Fox Fur and Christmas Tree
25.12.2025
A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, this beautiful but complex arrangement of interstellar gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen...
APOD: 2025 December 24 Б Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe
24.12.2025
What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe. Although extremely faint, LRDs are now frequently identified in deep observations made for other purposes.
APOD: 2025 December 23 Б Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy
23.12.2025
What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES.
APOD: 2025 December 22 Б Sunset Solstice over Stonehenge
22.12.2025
Yesterday the Sun reached its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, many cultures mark yesterday's date as a change of seasons -- from autumn to winter in Earth's Northern Hemisphere and from spring to summer in Earth's Southern Hemisphere.
A Solstice Sun Tattoo
20.12.2025
The word solstice is from the Latin for Sun and to pause or stand still. And in the days surrounding a solstice the Sun's annual north-south drift in planet Earth's sky does slow down, pause, and then reverse direction.
Long Shadows of the Montes Caucasus
19.12.2025
When the Moon is at its first quarter phase, the Sun rises along the Montes Caucasus as seen from the lunar surface. The lunar mountain range casts the magnificent, spire-like shadows in this telescopic view from planet Earth, looking along the lunar terminator or the boundary between lunar night and day.
Jupiter and the Meteors from Gemini
18.12.2025
Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is the brightest celestial beacon at the center of this composite night skyscape. The scene was constructed by selecting the 40 exposures containing meteors from about...
APOD: 2025 December 17 Б W5: The Soul Nebula
17.12.2025
Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, whom Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river.
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