**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

28 June 2026

**AR 4478: Giant Sunspot Group**

Image:

Credit: Not provided

Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun. Active Region 4478 is not only big -- it's violent, showing tangled magnetic fields capable of throwing off huge clouds of particles into the Solar System . Some of these CME s might impact the Earth. At the extreme, these solar storm s could cause some Earth-orbiting satellites to malfunction , the Earth's atmosphere to slightly distort, and electrical power grids to surge . When impacting Earth's upper atmosphere , these particles can produce beautiful auroras . Pictured here, AR 4478 and its dark sunspot s were captured in visible light a few days ago from Barcelona , Spain . Almost as large as AR 3664 was in 2024, the AR 4478 sunspot group is so big that it is visible just with glasses specially designed to view solar eclipse s. This week, skygazing enthusiasts all over the globe will not only be tracking AR 4478 during the day -- but keenly watching night skies for its corresponding bright auroras .

#APOD #SunSpot #SolarStorm #SolarPhysics #SpaceWeather #SolarObservation

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260628.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

27 June 2026

**Mars Marathon by Perseverance**

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Image Credit: NASA , LPL (U. Arizona) , MRO , HiRISE

In this recent HiRISE view from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the little green dot indicated on the surface of the big Red Planet is the Perseverance Mars rover. Recorded on June 13, the car-sized, six-wheeled robot was imaged a day before completing a Martian marathon, traveling a total distance of 26.218 miles ( 42.195 kilometers ) since it began exploring the surface of Mars. That equivalent marathon distance was achieved by Perseverance on its mission sol (Martian day) 1,890, after about 5 Earth years and 4 Earth months of driving. Perseverance is continuing to hunt for biosignatures. In the HiRISE image, the Mars rover's tracks can be seen leading to its location in an area west of its landing site in Jezero crater near an ancient river delta .

#APOD #Cosmos #Universe #Astrogeek #Astrophoto

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260627.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

26 June 2026

**Milky Way Urban Style**

Image:

Credit: Shingoo Lee

Explanation: In a cosmic vista you can never see, the Milky Way arcs through the night above Seoul, South Korea. Remarkably, this urban night skyscape reveals our galaxy's faintly luminous central region and dark obscuring dust clouds in spite of the brilliant city lights . To overcome the extreme light pollution of the metropolitan area and record faint cosmic details, an infrared filter was used to capture the night scene in a single exposure. While the filter transmits predominately infrared light, it still passes some visible light to give the scene a natural appearance. The view is from Seoul's Ttukseom Hangang Park, with the Han River and a well lit railway bridge across the foreground. The 123 story Lotte World Tower looms in the distance, the tallest building in South Korea.

#APOD #MilkyWay #UrbanAstronomy #SeoulSky #InfraredImaging #LightPollution

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260626.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

25 June 2026

**Anticrepuscular Rays over Sicily**

Image:

Credit: Not provided

The Sun has just set... in the opposite side of the sky. Pictured here are anticrepuscular rays apparently converging in the east in this image of the limestone plateau in the heart of the Hyblaean Mountains of southeastern Sicily , in Italy. How were these anticrepuscular rays formed, if the Sun wasn't there ? After the Sun set (in the west, as usual) its light still illuminated a cloud higher up in the sky. Partially blocked by the cloud, the sunlight produced patterns of light and shadow, crossing the sky in parallel lines. Perspective makes it look like they converge in the east, in the same way that train tracks appear to meet in the distance. This effect can also happen at sunrise , only the directions are exchanged. In rare cases, both crepuscular and anticrepuscular rays can be seen at the same time .

#APOD #AnticrepuscularRays #SicilySky #HyblaeanMountains #LimestonePlateau #AstronomyPhotography

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260625.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

24 June 2026

**SDO Observes a Coronal Mass Ejection**

Video:

Video Credit: NASA , SDO , AIA ; Processing: Richard Petarius III ( MTU ) Text: Keighley Rockcliffe ( NASA GSFC , UMBC CSST , CRESST II )

Why does the Sun throw stuff at us? The Sun’s surface is a churning soup of energetic electrons and ions called plasma . The motion of those charged particles creates magnetic field loops that are larger than the Earth . These loops twist, turn, and trap plasma. The featured time-lapse, taken over 2 hours on April 24th, 2026 by the Solar Dynamics Observatory , shows what happens when those magnetic fields become too stressed: they snap and expel billions of tons (trillions of kilograms) of plasma into space at millions of miles (or kilometers) per hour in what is called a coronal mass ejection (CME). The Sun releases a few CMEs each day when it is at the peak of its activity cycle , which passed in 2025. Some of these eruptions hit Earth and can disrupt power grids, disable satellites, and endanger astronauts, which is why space weather monitoring is so important.

#APOD #SDO #SolarDynamicsObservatory #CME #CoronalMassEjection #SolarPhysics

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260624.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

23 June 2026

**Flying Past Neptune's Moon Triton**

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Image Credit: NASA ; JPL , Voyager 2, Digital composition: Paul Schenk ( LPI , USRA )

What would it look like to fly past Triton , the largest moon of planet Neptune ? Only one spacecraft has ever done this -- and the images of this dramatic encounter have been gathered into a video . In 1989, the Voyager 2 robotic spacecraft shot through the Neptune system with cameras blazing. Triton is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon but has ice volcanoes and a surface rich in frozen nitrogen . The first sequence in the video shows Voyager's approach to Triton , which, with the exception of an overall false green tint , appears in approximately true color. The mysterious cantaloupe terrain seen under the spacecraft soon changed from light to dark, with the terminator of night crossing underneath . After closest approach, Voyager pivoted to see the departing moon, now visible as a diminishing crescent . In 2015, the robotic New Horizons spacecraft famously flew past Pluto , an orb of similar size to Triton.

#APOD #Voyager2 #Triton #Neptune #IcyMoons #FrozenNitrogen

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260623.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

22 June 2026

**M27: The Dumbbell Nebula**

Image:

Credit: Not provided

Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun 's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764 . At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier's list , now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula , one of the brightest planetary nebula s on the sky and visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Fox ( Vulpecula ). It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27, featured here in colors enhanced by red for hydrogen and blue for oxygen . We now know that in about 6 billion years, our Sun will shed its outer gases into a planetary nebula like M27, while its remaining center will become an X-ray hot white dwarf star. Understanding the physics and significance of M27 was well beyond 18th century science, though. Even today, many things remain mysterious about planetary nebulas , including how their intricate shapes are created.

#APOD #M27 #DumbbellNebula #PlanetaryNebula #MessierObjects #StellarEvolution

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260622.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

21 June 2026

**Keogram: The Sky in 2025**

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Credit: Not provided

What if you could see the entire sky -- all at once -- for an entire year? That, very nearly, is what is pictured here. Every 15 seconds during 2025, an all-sky camera took an image of the sky over the Netherlands . Central columns from these images were then aligned and combined to create the featured keogram , with January at the top, December at the bottom, and the middle of the night running vertically just left of center. What do we see? Most obviously, the daytime sky is mostly blue , while the nighttime sky is mostly black. The twelve light bands crossing the night sky are caused by the glow of the Moon . The thinnest part of the black hourglass shape occurs during the summer solstice , like today , when days are the longest, while the thickest part occurs at the winter solstice . Equinoxes can also be located in the keogram, for example the northern-spring equinox from one year ago is about three-quarters of the way up.

#APOD #Keogram #AllSkyCamera #NightSky #DaySky #MoonGlow

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260621.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

20 June 2026

**Daytime Moon Meets Evening Star**

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Credit: Not provided

Venus is now appearing on the celestial stage as Earth's brilliant evening star, performing with the Moon, other wandering planets, and bright stars in western skies. For evening sky gazers on June 17, the celestial beacon rose after sunset close by a young, slender, crescent Moon. But from some locations the Moon could be seen to occult or pass in front of Venus. And from a backyard observatory in southern British Columbia, Canada, the lunar occultation was played out in daylight. This stunning telescopic snapshot captured a scene in dramatically cloudy skies , following Venus' hour long disappearance, as the evening star emerged beyond the bright lunar limb.

#APOD #DaytimeMoon #EveningStar #VenusEncounter #LunarOccultation #MoonPhase

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260620.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

19 June 2026

**Starry Night II**

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Credit: Not provided

Does this scene look familiar? It is a modern recreation of the famous painting Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh . Both the image and the painting depict a tall tree on the left, a crescent moon on the upper right, the planet Venus just to the right of the tree, a foreground horizon rising from left to right, and clouds above the horizon. Differences include that the photograph was taken in mid-April earlier this year in Cascavel , Brazil , while the painting was composed in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence , France , in 1889. The original Starry Night is considered by many to be one of the three most famous paintings in the world today and a statement about the wonders of the night sky. Today is (roughly) the anniversary of the morning that van Gogh saw the sky that he later painted in his version of Starry Night .

#APOD #StarryNight #VanGogh #NightSky #Astronomy #AstronomyLovers

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260619.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

18 June 2026

**Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center**

Image:

Credit: Not provided

Do you see that blue blob to the lower right of the image center? Astronomers think that it shows where a massive star exploded as a supernova whose light reached Earth 1,700 years ago . The image combines optical data from the PanSTARRS telescopes in Hawaii (background stars in red, green, and blue), radio from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa (large red cloud) and X-rays from NASA 's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA ’s XMM-Newton (shown in blue). The large cloud is a star forming region called Sagittarius C , which is approximately 50 light-years in extent and about 26,000 light-years from Earth . It is located only about 260 light-years from the supermassive black hole in the center of the Galaxy (off to the left of the image). If the blue blob is confirmed to be a supernova remnant , it would be one of the closest ever discovered to the Galactic Center . In this dense region , the deaths of massive stars are connected to the birth of new stars through gas and magnetic fields in a complex way.

#APOD #Supernova #SupernovaRemnant #SagittariusC #MilkyWay #GalacticCenter

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260618.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day**

17 June 2026

**Longmore 8: The Hamster Wheel Nebula**

Image:

Credit: Not provided

How did a hamster wheel get into space? The Hamster Wheel Nebula (Longmore 8) was discovered by Andrew Longmore in 1976 as a part of a larger survey of the southern sky. This survey employed several improvements in photographic technology , including the use of highly sensitive film , to capture deeper and fainter objects on plates that were examined by eye and catalogued. The featured image , taken at Observatorio El Sauce in Chile, depicts an intricate wheel structure of glowing hydrogen that was thrown out into space by a dying star and ionized by the leftover white dwarf . This structure was barely visible on the original plate, emphasizing the power of modern telescopes and cameras. Two opposing clumps of red hydrogen gas encased in the blue veil of ionized oxygen hint at the presence of a companion to the bright white dwarf at the wheel’s center!

#APOD #Astrophotography #Universe #Space #Astronomy

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260617.html