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Image of the Day

The New York metropolitan area was showing the effects of a prolonged cold spell in late January 2026. During a...
Chunks of ice, which appear light blue in this false-color image, line the western shore of Manhattan in the Hudson River. Smaller rivers and lakes in the scene also appear frozen or partially frozen. The ground is snow-covered, and tall buildings cast long, dark shadows.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare — seen as the bright flash toward the upper...
The Sun is blue, purple, and black with a bright purple line surrounding it. Scattered across it are some brighter purple spots where there is higher activity. Just above center is a bright red and white X: This is the solar flare.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 7722, a lenticular galaxy located about 187 million light-years away, features concentric...
A disk-shaped galaxy. It glows brightly at the center and shines a faint white light all around it. The disk is made up of tightly-packed rings of dust, some darker and some lighter. Wide, long lanes of dark reddish dust cross the galaxy in front of its edge, blocking out some of its light; the long strands twist and break apart at each side. A couple of nearby stars and distant galaxies are also visible on the black background.
The Varda Space Industries W-5 capsule returned to Earth in Koonibba in South Australia on Jan. 29, 2026, with the...
An orange and white streak cuts diagonally through a cloudy sky and down to Earth in the distance. The clouds have an unusual, rippling, wave-like pattern.
A full moon is seen shining over NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher in...
A golden full moon is seen shining over NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher in the early hours of February 1, 2026. The SLS core stage is a distinctive deep orange, while Orion is white and sits on top of the core stage.
NASA's Orion spacecraft sits atop the agency's SLS (Space Launch System) rocket at the launch pad after rollout on Jan....
The Orion spacecraft is white and cylinder-shaped with a pointed nose at the top. It rests above the SLS rocket, part of which (the orange part) can just barely be seen at the bottom of the photo. Behind Orion and the SLS is a gray gantry with scaffolding and balconies.
Deep Space Station 15 (DSS-15), one of the 112-foot (34-meter) antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow,...
A white radio antenna faces upward in the direction of a star-studded night sky.
A new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope of a portion of the Helix Nebula highlights comet-like knots, fierce...
A closeup of a small section of the Helix Nebula, an expanding shell of gas and dust. Thousands of orange and gold comet-like pillars stream upward from the bottom, like thin liquid blown up a sheet of glass. These pillars are around the circumference of the arced shell, which forms a partial orange semi-circle at the bottom. The pillars are more numerous and denser at the bottom, and darker red. They fade to orange and then yellow in the arc. In the top two-thirds, they are thinner and more golden, and it’s easier to see the black background of space. Several bright blue stars, some with diffraction spikes, are scattered throughout. A few larger stars are on the right side.
This stellar landscape is reminiscent of a winter vista in a view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red, green,...
A winter scene fit for a holiday greeting card. Above what appears to be a fantastical snowy mountainscape, is a brilliant blue sky packed with colorful lights. The golden mountainscape is in fact part of the nebula NGC 6357, as captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The green, red, and golden lights in the blue sky above are bursts of high-energy X-rays from active stars, detected by Chandra.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s 2024 NIRCam image shows protostar EC 53 circled. Researchers using new data from Webb’s MIRI...
A rectangular image of the Serpens Nebula with black vertical rectangles at the bottom left and top right to indicate missing data. A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust, and within that orange dust, there are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right at the same angle. At center-left is a larger star that is circled. This star has Webb’s signature diffraction spikes, but along the right also has an arc of white, with the circular edge starting at the center of the star. Mostly blue gas fills the center. There is a particularly bright central star. The gas to the right is a darker orange. Small points of light are sprinkled across the field. The brightest sources have extensive eight-pointed diffraction spikes.
A seemingly serene landscape of gas and dust is hopping with star formation behind the scenes.
Misty, bluish-white gas nearly fills this image. A few scattered stars shine through the gas. To the bottom left and just near a bright star, a dark cloud of dust interrupts the glowing, nebulous landscape.
A green and red aurora streams across Earth’s horizon above the city lights of Europe in this Jan. 19, 2026,...
A green and red aurora streams across Earth’s horizon above the city lights of Europe.
The Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial is seen during a wreath laying ceremony that was part of NASA's Day of Remembrance,...
A wreath with red and white flowers, green leaves, and white ribbon bows rests on a tripod stand with three thin metal legs. It stands in front of the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial. The Memorial has two parts: A polished gray stone headstone with a bronze embossed plaque on it, resting on a small platform of rough gray stone. The plaque has the likeness of Challenger and the crew on it. Behind the memorial, we can see rows of white stone headstones.
NASA's massive Crawler-Transporter, upgraded for the Artemis program, carried the agency's SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion spacecraft on the...
NASA's Artemis II SLS rocket - with its distinctive butterscotch orange-brown color- and Orion spacecraft are on top of a massive platform. The platform has a banner with the Artemis logo on it on the left and an American flag on the right. The rocket and platform are moved by an immense machine called the crawler-transporter, which has treads like a tank. The view is from the ground up, so the deep blue sky is the background for most of this picture.
A bright reflection nebula shares the stage with a protostar and planet-forming disk in this Hubble image.
Within a ghostly blue and orange cloud of gas and dust, several stars shine brightly. To the upper left is a protoplanetary disk, appearing as a bright point flanked on either side by fan-shaped shadows. To the center right, stars are nestled in a cavity in the gas and dust.
NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 moves toward the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, Jan. 9,...
A crawler-transporter, including its massive treads take up the majority of the image. In fact, the entire crawler cannot be seen. There are a few people at the top of the crawler, which allows you to see just how massive the machine is.
Jets of ionized gas streak across a cosmic landscape from a newly forming star.
Narrow, knotted clouds of purple and green glowing gas are seen against a field of stars. Some of the larger stars have diffraction spikes.
The New York–Newark–Jersey City Metropolitan Statistical Area, which spans 23 counties across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and has...
The New York–Newark–Jersey City Metropolitan Area at night. City lights illuminate most of the image.
NASA’s Pandora small satellite, and NASA-sponsored Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS), and Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT) CubeSat, are...
NASA’s Pandora small satellite, and NASA-sponsored Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS), and Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT) CubeSat, inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing
This artist’s concept depicts a smaller white dwarf star pulling material from a larger star, right, into an accretion disk....
A smaller white dwarf star (middle left) pulls material from a larger star into a swirling accretion disk. The star is yellow with a brighter yellow rim. The material is multicolored, giving the disk surrounding the star a striped appearance. The larger star on the right is golden yellow.
Images depicting NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are projected onto the Washington Monument as part of an event to...
A nighttime image of NASA's Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket is projected onto the Washington Monument. The SLS has an orange middle with two smaller boosters on either side. The Lincoln Memorial is illuminated in the foreground, and in the background, you can see the U.S. Capitol building's distinctive dome.
Artemis II crewmembers (left to right) NASA astronauts Christina Koch, mission specialist; and Victor Glover, pilot; CSA (Canadian Space Agency)...
Four astronauts in spacesuits walk through a small corridor, following another person. The photo is in black and white.
NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured this image of lightning while orbiting aboard the International Space Station more than 250 miles...
Lightning turns a cloud formation an eerie blue above Milan, Italy. The view is from the International Space Station.
NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory has mapped the entire sky in 102 infrared colors, as seen here in this image released on...
A map of the entire sky, as seen by NASA's SPHEREx Observatory. The image features a selection of colors emitted primarily by stars (blue, green, and white), hot hydrogen gas (blue), and cosmic dust (red).
A scientific balloon starts its ascent into the air as it prepares to launch carrying NASA’s Payload for Ultrahigh Energy...
A white scientific balloon rises into the bright blue sky above snowy Antarctica. The sky and the balloon take up most of the image, with the ground only being a small white stripe at the bottom of the photo. The balloon has a long white "tail" with orange and black portions.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 4388, a member of the Virgo galaxy cluster.
A nearly edge-on spiral galaxy. Its disk holds pink light from star-forming nebulae and blue light from clusters of hot stars. Thick dark clouds of dust block the strong white light from galaxy’s center. A faint, glowing halo of gas surrounds the disk, fading into the black background of space. A bluish plume of gas also extends from the galaxy’s core extending toward the lower-right corner of the image.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times of day on Nov. 18,...
The Curiosity rover is visible at the bottom right of this panorama image. The rover is at the top of a ridge referred to as a boxwork formation. The sky ahead of it is hazy; it's red on the left and blue on the right.
Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory come together in this eye-catching photo of colliding spiral...
A pair of colliding spiral galaxies. Here, both spirals are shown face on, with the smaller of the two galaxies, IC 2163, at the upper left of the larger galaxy, NGC 2207, which dominates the center and lower right of the image. Both galaxies have long, spiraling, silver blue arms, dotted with specs of blue and red. Toward our upper left, the curving arms overlap, and bend toward their neighbors' core. James Webb mid-infrared image (white, gray, and red) and adds the X-ray view from Chandra (blue).
Tiny ball bearings surround a larger central bearing during the Fluid Particles experiment, conducted inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG)...
Tiny silver ball bearings crowd around a larger bearing in a clear, viscous fluid. Some of the smaller ball bearings are suspended in the fluid.
NASA engineer Guy Naylor poses for a photograph wearing a custom Santa Claus suit on the 19th level of High...
A man with a big white beard wearing a blue Santa costume with Artemis and NASA patches points to his hat. The Artemis II SLS and Orion spacecraft are In the background.
From left to right, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid...
Four astronauts - three men and one woman - wearing orange spacesuits stand on the street. Behind them, people are standing or walking by. There is a partially visible van behind the crew; the van has a picture of the Moon and the words "Artemis II" on it.
These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, and they’re located about 24 million light-years away in the...
This Webb image shows two interacting galaxies. NGC 4490 occupies the left side of the image, while NGC 4485 appears as a white glowing hue in the top right of the field. Both galaxies are connected by a bright stream of red stretching from the top left of the image, through the bottom center, and ending at the right under galaxy NGC 4485. There are regions of bright blue ionized gas visible in concentrated areas of the red stream. The background is black with multiple galaxies in various shapes throughout.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit demonstrates electrostatic forces using charged water droplets and a knitting needle made of Teflon.
White streaks of motion swirl and swoop all over the image. At the middle of the image is a Teflon knitting needle.
Justin Hall, left, controls a subscale aircraft as Justin Link holds the aircraft in place during preliminary engine tests on...
One white man with a long beard and tattoos on his arms holds a silver and gray controller, while another white man leans over to hold a small aircraft in place. The two men are both wearing hearing protection, which look like headphones. The aircraft looks to be only a few feet tall.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the blue dwarf galaxy Markarian 178 (Mrk 178) against a backdrop of distant...
A pale blue dwarf galaxy on the black backdrop of space with some faraway galaxies. The galaxy itself resembles a fuzzy cloud of tightly packed stars, with a broad halo of stars dispersed around it. Spread across the galaxy’s core are several small, glowing patches of gas where there is a concentration of very hot stars.
Clockwise from left, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, and Mike...
Four people look through a circular hole in a silver metallic fabric. Clockwise from left are JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, and Mike Fincke.
The Bassac River surrounds CĂą Lao Dung, a river islet district in southern Vietnam, before emptying into the South China...
A view of a brown river and an islet from the International Space Station. The land visible on the right is mostly dark green, while the land on the left is brown with green edges along the river. Clumps of smaller white clouds dot the photo, almost like lines of dots. Wispier clouds are visible along the right side of the image.
The Calabash Nebula, pictured here — which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 — is a spectacular example of the...
The Calabash Nebula, pictured here — which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 — is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the Sun. This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the star going through a rapid transformation from a red giant to a planetary nebula, during which it blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space. The recently ejected material is spat out in opposite directions with immense speed — the gas shown in yellow is moving close to a million kilometres an hour. Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution because it occurs within the blink of an eye — in astronomical terms. Over the next thousand years the nebula is expected to evolve into a fully fledged planetary nebula. The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains a lot of sulphur, an element that, when combined with other elements, smells like a rotten egg — but luckily, it resides over 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis (The Poop deck).
Webb’s image of the enormous stellar jet in Sh2-284 provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their...
Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a flower seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the flower to upper left and lower right are red gas outflows that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. Each red triangle is made up of wavy, irregular lines. Dozens of stars are scattered across the field. One particularly bright white star with eight diffraction spikes is located at the top of the yellow rose. Another bright blue star with even more prominent diffraction spikes is to its lower left. The background of space is black.
The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan with...
An orange and white striped parachute attached to a black spacecraft. The spacecraft is very small compared to the parachute. It is landing on ground that has white frost on it.