omnianasa/nasa-apod-metadata huggingface dataset:
NGC 6888: The Crescent Nebula (2024-11-12)
How was the Crescent Nebula created?  Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible in the center of the featured image, was created by the brightest star in its center.  A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago.  At that time, the massive central star had evolved to become a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136), shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of our Sun's mass every 10,000 years.  This wind impacted surrounding gas left over from a previous phase, compacting it into a series of complex shells, and lighting it up.  The Crescent Nebula, also known as NGC 6888, lies about 4,700 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus.  Star WR 136 will probably undergo a supernova explosion sometime in the next million years.   Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 from Webb (2024-11-13)
A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb's field of view stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy's core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy's central bar. Astronomers suspect the gravity field of NGC 1365's bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, funneling gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the active galaxy's central, supermassive black hole.
IC 348 and Barnard 3 (2024-11-14)
A great nebulous region near bright star omicron Persei offers this study in cosmic contrasts.  Captured in the telescopic frame is a colorful complex of dust, gas, and stars spanning about 3 degrees on the sky along the edge of the Perseus molecular cloud, some 1000 light-years away. Surrounded by a bluish halo of dust-reflected starlight, omicron Persei itself is just left of center. Immediately below it lies the intriguing young star cluster IC 348 recently explored at infrared wavelengths by the James Webb Space Telescope. In silhouette against the diffuse reddish glow of hydrogen gas, dark and obscuring interstellar dust cloud Barnard 3 is at upper right. Of course, the cosmic dust also tends to hide newly formed stars and young stellar objects or protostars from prying optical telescopes. At the Perseus molecular cloud's estimated distance, this field of view would span about 50 light-years.
Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3 (2024-11-15)
Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze across the western Ocean of Storms on the surface of the Moon. The 3D anaglyph features Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in November of 1969. Surveyor 3 had landed at the site on the inside slope of a small crater about 2 1/2 years earlier in April of 1967. Visible on the horizon beyond the far crater wall, Apollo 12's Lunar Module Intrepid touched down less than 200 meters (650 feet) away, easy moonwalking distance from the robotic Surveyor spacecraft. This stereo image was carefully created from two separate pictures (AS12-48-7133, AS12-48-7134) captured on the lunar surface. They depict the scene from only slightly different viewpoints, approximating the separation between human eyes.
Pluto at Night (2024-11-16)
The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene. In the stunning spacebased perspective the Sun is 4.9 billion kilometers (almost 4.5 light-hours) behind the dim and distant world. It was captured by far flung New Horizons in July of 2015 when the spacecraft was at a range of some 21,000 kilometers from Pluto, about 19 minutes after its closest approach. A denizen of the Kuiper Belt in dramatic silhouette, the image also reveals Pluto's tenuous, surprisingly complex layers of hazy atmosphere. Near the top of the frame the crescent twilight landscape includes southern areas of nitrogen ice plains now formally known as Sputnik Planitia and rugged mountains of water-ice in the Norgay Montes.
LDN 1471: A Windblown Star Cavity (2024-11-17)
What is the cause of this unusual parabolic structure?  This illuminated cavity, known as LDN 1471, was created by a newly forming star, seen as the bright source at the peak of the parabola.  This protostar is experiencing a stellar outflow which is then interacting with the surrounding material in the Perseus Molecular Cloud, causing it to brighten.  We see only one side of the cavity -- the other side is hidden by dark dust.  The parabolic shape is caused by the widening of the stellar-wind blown cavity over time. Two additional structures can also be seen either side of the protostar; these are known as Herbig-Haro objects, again caused by the interaction of the outflow with the surrounding material.  What causes the striations on the cavity walls, though, remains unknown.  The featured image was taken by NASA and ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope after an original detection by the Spitzer Space Telescope.   Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Stars and Dust in the Pacman Nebula (2024-11-18)
Stars can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from the dense and dark molecular clouds from which they are born.  The tools the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and fast stellar winds.  The heat they generate evaporates the dark molecular dust as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow.   Pictured here, a new open cluster of stars designated IC 1590 is nearing completion around the intricate interstellar dust structures in the emission nebula  NGC 281, dubbed the Pac-man Nebula because of its overall shape.  The dust cloud just above center is classified as a  Bok Globule as it may gravitationally collapse and form a star -- or stars. The Pacman Nebula lies about 10,000 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.
Undulatus Clouds over Las Campanas Observatory (2024-11-19)
What's happening with these clouds?  While it may seem that these long and thin clouds are pointing toward the top of a hill, and that maybe a world-famous observatory is located there, only part of that is true. In terms of clouds, the formation is a chance superposition of impressively periodic undulating air currents in Earth's lower atmosphere. Undulatus, a type of Asperitas cloud, form at the peaks where the air is cool enough to cause the condensation of opaque water droplets.  The wide-angle nature of the panorama creates the illusion that the clouds converge over the hill.  In terms of land, there really is a world-famous observatory at the top of that peak: the Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile.  The two telescope domes visible are the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes.  The featured coincidental vista was a surprise but was captured by the phone of a quick-thinking photographer in late September.   Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Earthset from Orion (2024-11-20)
ght billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft orbited in the opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Orion entered its distant retrograde orbit on November 25. Swinging around the Moon, Orion reached a maximum distance (just over 400,000 kilometers) from Earth on November 28, exceeding a record set by Apollo 13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration. The Artemis II mission, carrying 4 astronauts around the moon and back again, is scheduled to launch no earlier than September 2025.
The Elephant's Trunk in Cepheus (2024-11-21)
Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. The detailed telescopic view features the bright swept-back ridges and pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas that abound in the region. But the dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This rendition spans a 1 degree wide field of view though, about the angular size of 2 full moons.
The Medusa Nebula (2024-11-22)
Braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation. The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is the faint one near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.
Interplanetary Earth (2024-11-23)
In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting the outermost gas giant. On that same day people across planet Earth snapped many of their own pictures of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is seen against the dark background of space as captured by the sunward MESSENGER spacecraft, then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER took its image as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the brighter Earth and Moon are both overexposed and shine brightly with reflected sunlight. Destined not to return to their home world, both Cassini and MESSENGER have since retired from their missions of Solar System exploration.
The Horsehead Nebula (2024-11-25)
One of the most identifiable nebulas in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud.  Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a photographic plate in the late 1800s.  The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis.  The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left.  Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field.  Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming.  Light takes about 1,500 years to reach us from the Horsehead Nebula.  The featured image was taken from the Chilescope Observatory in the mountains of Chile.
The Sombrero Galaxy from Webb and Hubble (2024-11-26)
This floating ring is the size of a galaxy.  In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.  The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in visible light (bottom panel) actually glows brightly in infrared light (top panel).  The featured image shows the infrared glow in false blue, recorded recently by the space-based James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and released yesterday,  pictured above an archival image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in visible light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years and lies 28 million light years away.  M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo.
The Meteor and the Comet (2024-11-27)
How different are these two streaks?  The streak on the upper right is Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas showing an impressive dust tail. The comet is a large and dirty iceberg that entered the inner Solar System and is shedding gas and dust as it is warmed by the Sun's light. The streak on the lower left is a meteor showing an impressive evaporation trail.  The meteor is a small and cold rock that entered the Earth's atmosphere and is shedding gas and dust as it is warmed by molecular collisions.  The meteor was likely once part of a comet or asteroid -- perhaps later composing part of its tail.  The meteor was gone in a flash and was only caught by coincidence during a series of exposures documenting the comet's long tail. The featured image was captured just over a month ago from Sichuan Province in China.   Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024
NGC 206 and the Star Clouds of Andromeda (2024-11-28)
The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found at the center of this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 206 spans about 4,000 light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Messier 4 (2024-11-29)
Messier 4 can be found west of bright red-giant star Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius. M4 itself is only just visible from dark sky locations, even though the globular cluster of 100,000 stars or so is a mere 5,500 light-years away. Still, its proximity to prying telescopic eyes makes it a prime target for astronomical explorations. Recent studies have included Hubble observations of M4's pulsating cepheid variable stars, cooling white dwarf stars, and ancient, pulsar orbiting exoplanet PSR B1620-26 b. This sharp image was captured with a small telescope on planet Earth. At M4's estimated distance it spans about 50 light-years across the core of the globular star cluster.
Winter and Summer on a Little Planet (2024-11-30)
Winter and summer appear to come on a single night to this stunning little planet. It's planet Earth of course. The digitally mapped, nadir centered panorama covers 360x180 degrees and is composed of frames recorded during January and July from the Col du Galibier in the French Alps. Stars and nebulae of the northern winter (bottom) and summer Milky Way form the complete arcs traversing the rugged, curved horizon. Cars driving along on the road during a summer night illuminate the 2,642 meter high mountain pass, but snow makes access difficult during winter months except by serious ski touring. Cycling fans will recognize the Col du Galibier as one of the most famous climbs in planet Earth's Tour de France.
Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe (2024-12-01)
What color is the universe?  More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be?  This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. In computer parlance: #FFF8E7.  To determine this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of the larger samples of galaxies analyzed: the 200,000 galaxies of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey.  The resulting cosmic spectrum has some emission in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a single perceived composite color.  This color has become much less blue over the past 10 billion years, indicating that redder stars are becoming more prevalent.  In a contest to better name the color, notable entries included skyvory, univeige, and the winner: cosmic latte.
NGC 300: A Galaxy of Stars (2024-12-02)
This galaxy is unusual for how many stars it seems that you can see. Stars are so abundantly evident in this deep exposure of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 because so many of these stars are bright blue and grouped into resolvable bright star clusters.  Additionally, NGC 300 is so clear because it is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, as light takes only about 6 million years to get here.  Of course, galaxies are composed of many more faint stars than bright, and even more of a galaxy's mass is attributed to unseen dark matter.  NGC 300 spans nearly the same amount of sky as the full moon and is visible with a small telescope toward the southern constellation of the Sculptor. The featured image was captured in October from Rio Hurtado, Chile and is a composite of over 20 hours of exposure.
Ice Clouds over a Red Planet (2024-12-03)
If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see?  You might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun over the horizon, and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view captured last March by NASA's rolling explorer,  Perseverance. The orange coloring is caused by rusted iron in the Martian dirt, some of which is small enough to be swept up by winds into the atmosphere. The blue tint near the rising Sun is caused by blue light being preferentially scattered out from the Sun by the floating dust. The light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of water-ice and appear high in the Martian atmosphere.  The shapes of some of these clouds are unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.
Stereo Jupiter near Opposition (2024-12-05)
Jupiter looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope images. Both were captured last year on November 17 from Singapore, planet Earth, about two weeks after Jupiter's 2023 opposition. Climbing high in midnight skies the giant planet was a mere 33.4 light-minutes from Singapore. That's about 4 astronomical units away. Jupiter's planet girdling dark belts and light zones are visible in remarkable detail, along with the giant world's whitish oval vortices. Its signature Great Red Spot is prominent in the south. Jupiter rotates rapidly on its axis once every 10 hours. So, based on video frames taken only 15 minutes apart, these images form a stereo pair. Look at the center of the pair and cross your eyes until the separate images come together to see the 3D effect. Of course Jupiter is now not far from its 2024 opposition. Planet Earth is set to pass between the Solar System's ruling gas giant and the Sun on December 7.
Xuyi Station and the Fireball (2024-12-06)
Colorful and bright, this streaking fireball meteor was captured in a single exposure taken at Purple Mountain (Tsuchinshan) Observatory’s Xuyi Station in 2020, during planet Earth's annual Perseid meteor shower. The dome in the foreground houses the China Near Earth Object Survey Telescope (CNEOST), the largest multi-purpose Schmidt telescope in China. Located in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province, the station began its operation as an extension of China's Purple Mountain Observatory in 2006. Darling of planet Earth's night skies in 2024, the bright comet designated Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) was discovered in images taken there on 2023 January 9. The discovery is jointly credited to NASA's ATLAS robotic survey telescope at Sutherland Observatory, South Africa. Other comet discoveries associated with the historic Purple Mountain Observatory and bearing the observatory's transliterated Mandarin name include periodic comets 60/P Tsuchinshan and 62/P Tsuchinshan.
Rocket Engine Fireplace (2024-12-07)
You might not think a close up view of rocket engines producing 8.8 million pounds of thrust would be relaxing, but here it can be. In fact, you can get a warm and cozy feeling just spending a few moments watching NASA's holiday rocket engine fireplace. The video features a loop of the Space Launch System rocket's RS-25 main engines throttled up and running flanked by solid rocket boosters and framed by a stone fireplace. The accompanying audio track mixes the drastically muted sounds of the rocket engines firing with the more familiar sounds of a burning, crackling wood fire. AI elements are included in the composed video along with an image and logo from the Artemis I mission. The Artemis I uncrewed mission to the Moon and back again launched in November 2022 on a Space Launch System rocket.
Aurora around Saturn's North Pole (2024-12-08)
Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's?  To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's North Pole simultaneously during Cassini's final orbits around the gas giant in September 2017.  During this time, Saturn's tilt caused its North Pole to be clearly visible from Earth. The featured image is a composite of ultraviolet images of auroras and optical images of Saturn's clouds and rings, all taken by Hubble.  Like on Earth, Saturn's northern auroras can make total or partial rings around the pole. Unlike on Earth, however, Saturn's auroras are frequently spirals -- and more likely to peak in brightness just before midnight and dawn.  In contrast to Jupiter's auroras, Saturn's auroras appear better related to connecting Saturn's internal magnetic field to the nearby, variable, solar wind.  Saturn's southern auroras were similarly imaged back in 2004 when the planet's South Pole was clearly visible to Earth.    Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster (2024-12-09)
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 23-hour exposure, taken from Fagagna, Italy  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.   New: Alternative multi-APOD front page