Stunning New Images of Jupiter From NASA’s Juno Spacecraft (read article here)
NASA Johnson on Flickr
International Space Station (ISS) passing across the field of view of the Moon, as seen from a telescope.
Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) © Don Pettit
NASA Johnson on Flickr
Astronomy Picture of the Day
2025 January 28
Comet G3 ATLAS over Uruguay
A foreground grass field is shown below a distant field of stars. On the grass field are some trees. Dwarfing the trees, in the sky, is a comet with a long tail.
Image Credit & Copyright: Mauricio Salazar
Explanation: Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet's size usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically spans a few kilometers -- smaller than even a small moon. When nearing the Sun, however, this nucleus can eject dust and gas and leave a thin tail that can spread to an enormous length -- even greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Pictured, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) sports a tail of sunlight-reflecting dust and glowing gas that spans several times the apparent size of a full moon, appearing even larger on long duration camera images than to the unaided eye. The featured image shows impressive Comet ATLAS over trees and a grass field in Sierras de Mahoma, San Jose, Uruguay about a week ago. After being prominent in the sunset skies of Earth's southern hemisphere, Comet G3 ATLAS is now fading as it moves away from the Sun, making its impressive tails increasingly hard to see.
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.
M42: A Mosaic of Orion’s Great Nebula
Credits: Rice U., NASA
Approaching the Agena target vehicle, earth horizon in background, Gemini VIII.
Stingray Nebula
“Archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades. Witnessing such a swift rate of change in a planetary nebula is exceedingly rare, say researchers. These images captured by Hubble in 1996 (left), when compared to Hubble images taken in 2016 (right), show a nebula that has drastically dimmed in brightness and changed shape. Bright blue shells of gas near the centre of the nebula have all but disappeared, and the wavy edges that earned this nebula its aquatic-themed name are virtually gone. The young nebula no longer pops against the black velvet background of the distant Universe.” - via Wikimedia Commons