NASA Image Of The Day

NASA Image of the Day The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

  • Sulaiman Mountain Haze
    on May 8, 2024 at 5:56 pm

    An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this oblique photograph of the Sulaiman Mountains in central Pakistan. The range resulted from the slow-motion collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates that began about 60 million years ago. Peaks rise to more than 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level in the northern portion of the mountain range, shown in this photograph.

  • Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
    on May 7, 2024 at 6:15 pm

    This image of Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1, 2018, as Juno performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was 15,379 miles (24,749 kilometers) to 30,633 miles (49,299 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet.

  • Astronaut Suni Williams Prepares for Crew Flight Test
    on May 6, 2024 at 7:21 pm

    During a mission dress rehearsal, NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronaut Suni Williams flashes a thumbs up in her Boeing spacesuit inside the crew suit-up room inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, April 26, 2024. As part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore are the first to launch to the International Space Station aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 10:34 p.m. ET Monday, May 6.

  • A Moonlit Trio
    on May 3, 2024 at 5:55 pm

    The Moon, left, Jupiter, right, and Saturn, above and to the left of Jupiter, are seen after sunset with the Washington Monument, Thurs. Dec. 17, 2020, in Washington. The two planets drew closer to each other in the sky as they headed towards a “great conjunction” on Dec. 21, where the two giant planets appeared a tenth of a degree apart.

  • Galaxy Evolution Explorer Searches for Light
    on May 2, 2024 at 5:43 pm

    NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer was launched on April 28, 2003. Its mission was to study the shape, brightness, size and distance of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history.

  • By Their Powers Combined
    on May 1, 2024 at 5:57 pm

    In a historic first, all six radio frequency antennas at the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex – part of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) – carried out a test to receive data from the agency's Voyager 1 spacecraft at the same time on April 20, 2024. Known as "arraying," combining the receiving power of several antennas allows the DSN to collect the very faint signals from faraway spacecraft. A five-antenna array is currently needed to downlink science data from the spacecraft's Plasma Wave System instrument. As Voyager gets further way, six antennas will be needed.

  • International Space Station Program Manager Dana Weigel
    on April 30, 2024 at 4:41 pm

    "What you eventually realize is that your success as a leader is not really yours, it’s the team’s. You’re not successful without the team, so it’s your ability to support, motivate, and guide the team that allows us to accomplish amazing things." — Dana Weigel, International Space Station Program Manager, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

  • The Horse’s Mane
    on April 29, 2024 at 6:04 pm

    Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1,300 light-years away. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.

  • Hubble Spots a Magnificent Barred Galaxy
    on April 26, 2024 at 5:01 pm

    The magnificent central bar of NGC 2217 (also known as AM 0619-271) shines bright in the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog), in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Roughly 65 million light-years from Earth, this barred spiral galaxy is a similar size to our Milky Way at 100,000 light-years across.

  • Navigating the Moon with Art
    on April 25, 2024 at 4:52 pm

    Artists used paintbrushes and airbrushes to recreate the lunar surface on each of the four models comprising the LOLA simulator. Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface.

Current amateur astronomy information such as points of interest and events in the night sky, star party dates, educational information, telescopes buying tips and much more.