NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is a huge collection of astronomical images, both amateur and professional. It celebrates our amazing universe every day.
Since its inception in 1995, NASA APOD has been selecting and publishing some of the best images of space. Its two editors, Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, are the people behind it. Here, you can see images taken with space telescopes like Hubble, JWST etc. But it also includes amateur images taken with regular DSLR cameras.
Here are some of the best images from December 2024.
Stereo Jupiter near Opposition
These two photos from a rooftop telescope show Jupiter clearly. About two weeks after Jupiter’s 2023 opposition, both were caught from Singapore, Earth, on November 17, 2023. The enormous planet rose high in the nighttime skies and was only 33.4 light-minutes away from Singapore. About four astronomical units separate them. The pale oval vortices of Jupiter and the planet girdling black belts and light zones are evident in striking detail. In the south, its distinctive Great Red Spot is noticeable. Once every ten hours, Jupiter does a fast rotation on its axis. Therefore, these pictures make up a stereo pair based on video frames captured about 15 minutes apart. To observe the 3D effect, look at the pair’s middle and cross your eyes until the individual pictures merge.
Aurora around Saturn’s North Pole
Do the auroras on Saturn resemble those on Earth? During Cassini’s last orbits around Saturn in September 2017, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft concurrently observed Saturn’s North Pole to help answer this issue. Because of its tilt, Saturn’s North Pole was visible from Earth at this period. The featured image combines Hubble’s optical and ultraviolet views of Saturn’s rings and clouds, as well as ultraviolet photographs of auroras. Saturn’s northern auroras can form whole or partial rings around the pole, just like they do on Earth. Saturn’s auroras, unlike those on Earth, are usually spirals and are more likely to reach their brightest moments shortly before sunrise and midnight. Unlike Jupiter, Saturn’s auroras seem to be more closely associated with linking the planet’s internal magnetic field to the neighbouring, fluctuating solar wind. In 2004, when the planet’s South Pole was visible from Earth, comparable images of Saturn’s southern auroras were taken.
The Shells and Jets of Galaxy Centaurus A
Which active galaxy is the nearest to Earth? That would be Centaurus A, which is only 12 million light-years away and is listed as NGC 5128. Centaurus A, which was created when two normally normal galaxies collided, has a dark dust lane across the middle, outer shells of gas and stars, and particle jets originating from a supermassive black hole at the centre. All of them are caught in the featured image, which is a composite of more than 310 hours of visible light photos taken using a home-built telescope near Auckland, New Zealand, during the previous ten years. Centaurus A is classified as an active galaxy because of its centre’s brightness, which ranges from low-energy radio waves to high-energy gamma rays.
A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov – Gerasimenko
This kilometre-high cliff is found on a comet’s surface. Rosetta, an ESA-launched robotic spacecraft that orbited Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (CG) from 2014 to 2016, made the discovery of the comet’s dark nucleus. Rosetta captured this view of the jagged cliff early in its mission. Despite being almost a kilometre high, Comet CG’s low surface gravity would allow a human to survive a leap from the cliffs. Boulders up to 20 meters broad are scattered throughout comparatively flat ground at the base of the cliffs. The ice on Comet CG has a much different deuterium content than the water in Earth’s oceans, which suggests that it has a distinct origin, according to data from Rosetta.
Near to the Heart Nebula
What causes the Heart Nebula to excite? First, IC 1805, a massive emission nebula on the upper left, resembles a human heart in some ways. Although hydrogen, the nebula’s most dominant element, emits red light, this long-exposure photograph also included light from sulphur (yellow) and oxygen (blue). Young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 are in the heart of the Heart Nebula, destroying several beautiful dust pillars with their atom-exciting energetic light and winds. About 7,500 light years away, in the direction of the Cassiopeia constellation, is the Heart Nebula. However, this wide-field image displays much more, such as three planetary nebulae on the image right, a supernova remnant on the lower left, and the Fishhead Nebula directly beneath the Heart. However, this image, which was taken over 57 nights, is so deep that it displays lengthy, intricate filaments that are fainter.
NGC 660: Polar Ring Galaxy
Known as a polar ring galaxy, this unusual formation appears to have two distinct rings of stars. One of the bright stars, gas, and dark dust rings in this galaxy, NGC 660, looks to be almost vertical, while another, shorter ring runs diagonally from the upper left. Research is still ongoing to determine how polar ring galaxies get their remarkable appearance, but one prominent theory suggests that it typically occurs when two galaxies with differing core ring planes collide. NGC 660 is situated approximately 40 million light-years away, in the direction of the Fish (Pisces) constellation, and covers roughly 50,000 light-years. The highlighted photo is a recent capture from Chile’s Observatorio El Sauce.
Messier 2
This massive star cluster is the second item on the renowned list of objects that are not comets, which was compiled by astronomer Charles Messier in the 18th century after the Crab Nebula. One of the biggest globular star clusters now recognised to roam the Milky Way galaxy’s halo is M2. This spectacular Hubble image resolves stars across the cluster’s centre 40 light-years, despite Messier’s first description of it as a starless nebula. Nearly 150,000 stars make up its population, which is centred within a 175-light-year radius. This 13 billion-year-old Milky Way denizen, also called NGC 7089, is located approximately 55,000 light-years away from the constellation Aquarius. Recently, it was discovered that Messier 2 is linked to an extended star debris stream, which is a sign of previous gravitational tidal disruption.
A Year in Sunsets
In these stacked panoramic shots, a year’s worth of sunsets from April 2023 to March 2024 follow the western horizon. The carefully thought-out sequence is made up of pictures taken from the same spot with a view of Cairo, Egypt, close to the 21st day of the specified month. However, the yearly extreme northern (towards right) and southern limits of the setting Sun mark the solstice days for any place on Earth. The Latin words for “Sun” and “standstill” are the origin of the word solstice. The seasonal drift of the Sun’s daily trajectory through the sky seems to halt and reverse course on the solstice date, marking the beginning of its yearly cosmic voyage. Naturally, the Sun comes to a complete halt on this particular date. The Sun’s southernmost declination occurs on the 21 December 2024 solstice at 09:21 UTC, marking the beginning of astronomical winter in the north and summer in the south.
Grand Spiral NGC 5643
In this vibrant cosmic image, the massive spiral galaxy NGC 5643 appears festive when viewed face-on. The galaxy is located within the limits of the southern constellation Lupus and is approximately 55 million light-years away. It spans more than 100,000 light-years. This composite of image data from the Hubble Space Telescope shows its inner 40,000 light-years in great clarity. The galaxy’s majestic spiral arms wind from a yellowish centre region that is dominated by old starlight. Dust lanes, young blue stars, and reddish star-forming regions outline the spiral arms. Another name for NGC 5643’s brilliant, compact core is a powerful radio and X-ray emitter. The Seyfert class of active galaxies, in which enormous amounts of gas and dust are believed to be falling into a centre giant black hole, is represented by NGC 5643, one of the closest examples.
A December Winter Night
In this vast skyscape, Orion appears to rise sideways, climbing above a far-off mountain range. The chilly landscape was photographed in southern Poland on the long solstice night in the northern hemisphere. The camera was altered to capture red hydrogen-alpha light, revealing otherwise invisible nebulae hanging in the sky. The nebulae join the luminous giants Betelgeuse and Rigel, as well as Hunter’s well-known belt stars, close to the border of the Orion molecular cloud. The V-shaped Hyades star cluster is anchored close to the top centre by the reddish Aldebaran, the Eye of Taurus the Bull. The brightest celestial beacon above the snowy peaks of this horizon is Jupiter, the reigning gas giant of the Solar System, which is still close to opposition in the sky of the planet Earth.
If you have a space image, you can submit it to NASA APOD too.
For more incredible astrophotography photos, check our previous Breathtaking Astronomy Photos articles:
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