Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
2025-12-06
Fifty three years ago, in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This snapshot from another world was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the lunar valley's floor. The image shows Schmitt next to the lunar rover parked at the southeast rim of Shorty Crater. That location is near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. And for now, Cernan and Schmitt are the last to walk on the Moon.
The Bipolar Jets of KX Andromedae
2025-12-05
Copyright:Tim Schaeffer
Blasting outward from variable star KX Andromedae, these stunning bipolar jets are 19 light-years long. Recently discovered, they are revealed in unprecedented detail in this deep telescopic image centered on KX And and composed from over 692 hours of combined image data. In fact, KX And is spectroscopically found to be an interacting binary star system consisting of a bright, hot B-type star with a swollen cool giant star as its co-orbiting, close companion. The stellar material from the cool giant star is likely being transferred to the hot B-type star through an accretion disk, with spectacular symmetric jets driven outward perpendicular to the disk itself. The known distance to KX And of 2,500 light-years, angular size of the jets, and estimated inclination of the accretion disk lead to the size estimate for each jet of an astonishing 19 light-years. Free APOD Lecture in Phoenix: Wednesday, December 10 at 7 pm
Galaxies in the Furnace
2025-12-04
Copyright:Simone Curzi
An example of violence on a cosmic scale, enormous elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 lies about 75 million light-years away toward Fornax, the southern constellation of the Furnace. Investigating the startling sight, astronomers suspect the giant galaxy of colliding with smaller neighbor NGC 1317 seen just right of the large galaxy's center, producing far flung star streams in loops and shells. Light from their close encounter would have reached Earth some 100 million years ago. In the sharp telescopic image, the central regions of NGC 1316 and NGC 1317 appear separated by over 100,000 light-years. Complex dust lanes visible within also indicate that NGC 1316 is itself the result of a merger of galaxies in the distant past. Found on the outskirts of the Fornax galaxy cluster, NGC 1316 is known as Fornax A. One of the visually brightest of the Fornax cluster galaxies it is one of the strongest and largest celestial radio sources with radio emission extending well beyond this one degree wide field-of-view.
Visualization: Near a Black Hole and Disk
2025-12-03
What would it look like to plunge into a monster black hole? This image from a supercomputer visualization shows the entire sky as seen from a simulated camera plunging toward a 4-million-solar-mass black hole, similar to the one at the center of our galaxy. The camera lies about 16 million kilometers from the black hole’s event horizon and is moving inward at 62% the speed of light. Thanks to gravity’s funhouse effects, the starry band of the Milky Way appears both as a compact loop at the top of this view and as a secondary image stretching across the bottom. Move the cursor over the image for additional explanations. Visualizations like this allow astronomers to explore black holes in ways not otherwise possible.
M77: Spiral Galaxy with an Active Center
2025-12-02
What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster (Cetus). At that estimated distance, this gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across. Also known as NGC 1068, its compact and very bright core is well studied by astronomers exploring the mysteries of supermassive black holes in active Seyfert galaxies. M77's active core glows bright at x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and radio wavelengths. The featured sharp image of M77 was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows details of the spiral's winding spiral arms as traced by obscuring red dust clouds and blue star clusters, all circling the galaxy's bright white luminous center. Free APOD Lecture in Phoenix: Wednesday, December 10 at 7 pm
3I ATLAS: Tails of an Interstellar Comet
2025-12-01
Copyright: Victor Sabet & Julien De Winter
How typical is our Solar System? Studying 3I/ATLAS, a comet just passing through, is providing clues. Confirmed previous interstellar visitors include an asteroid, a comet, a meteor, and a gas wind dominated by hydrogen and helium. Comet 3I/ATLAS appears relatively normal when compared to Solar System comets, therefore providing more evidence that our Solar System is a somewhat typical star system. For example, Comet 3I/ATLAS has a broadly similar chemical composition and ejected dust. The featured image was captured last week from Texas and shows a green coma, a wandering blue-tinted ion tail likely deflected by our Sun's wind, and a slight anti-tail, all typical cometary attributes. The comet, visible with a telescope, passed its closest to the Sun in late October and will pass its closest to the Earth in mid-December, after which it will return to interstellar space and never return. Explore the Universe: Random APOD Generator