Planet Parade over Sydney Opera House

2026-02-24

Copyright:Prasun Agrawal

Look up this week and see a whole bunch of planets. Just after sunset, looking west (mostly), planets Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter will all be visible to the unaided eye simultaneously. If you have a telescope, planets Uranus and Neptune can also be seen. In order up from the horizon, the lineup this week will be Venus (the brightest), Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter (second brightest). It doesn't matter where on Earth you live because this early evening planet parade will be visible through clear skies all around the globe. The planets will appear to be nearly in a line because they all orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane: the ecliptic. The featured image shows a similar planet parade that occurred in 2022, captured over the Sydney Opera House in southern Australia. Although visible all week, the planets will be most easily seen together this weekend.

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster

2026-02-23

Copyright:Kamil Fiedosiuk

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 18-hour exposure, taken from Bory Tucholskie, Poland covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight. Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (after 1995)

Shadow of a Martian Robot

2026-02-22

What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover exploring Mars. Opportunity explored the Red Planet from 2004 to 2018, finding evidence of ancient water, and sending breathtaking images across the inner Solar System. Pictured here in 2004, Opportunity looks opposite the Sun into Endurance Crater and sees its own shadow. Two wheels are visible on the lower left and right, while the floor and walls of the unusual crater are visible in the background. Caught in a dust storm in 2018, Opportunity stopped responding, and NASA stopped trying to contact it in 2019 and declared the ground-breaking mission, originally planned for only 92 days, complete.

Twilight with Moon and Planets

2026-02-21

Copyright:Tunc Tezel

Only two days after the February New Moon's annular eclipse of the Sun, a slender lunar crescent poses near the western horizon in this wintry twilight skyscape. Its nightside faintly illuminated by earthshine, the young Moon is joined by three bright planets in the mostly clear, early evening skies above the village of Kirazli, Turkiye. Inner planet Venus appears closest to the horizon. Near the beginning of its 2026 performance as planet Earth's evening star, brilliant Venus is seen through the warm sunset glare near picture center. Straight above Venus, innermost planet Mercury is easy to spot as it stands remarkably high above the horizon even as the twilight sky is growing dark. Outer planet Saturn, most distant of the naked-eye planets, is found just left of the Moon's sunlit crescent.

B93: A Dark Interstellar Ghost

2026-02-20

Copyright:Christian Bertincourt; Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

"A ghost in the Milky Way…” says Christian Bertincourt, the astrophotographer behind this striking image of Barnard 93 (B93). The 93rd entry in Barnard’s Catalogue of Dark Nebulae, B93 lies within the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24), where its darkness stands in stark contrast to bright stars and gas in the background. In some ways, B93 is really like a ghost, because it contains gas and dust that was dispersed by the deaths of stars, like supernovas. B93 appears as a dark void not because it is empty, but because its dust blocks the light emitted by more distant stars and glowing gas. Like other dark nebulas, some gas from B93, if dense and massive enough, will eventually gravitationally condense to form new stars. If so, then once these stars ignite, B93 will transform from a dark ghost into a brilliant cradle of newborn stars.

IC 2574: Coddington's Nebula

2026-02-19

Copyright:Dane Vetter

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact, dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574 are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of the M81 group of galaxies, seen toward the northern constellation Ursa Major. Also known as Coddington's Nebula, the faint but intriguing island universe is about 50,000 light-years across, discovered by American astronomer Edwin Coddington in 1898.