Ten breathtaking astrophotography images you should see right now (February 2025)

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 February 2025.

Comet G3 ATLAS Disintegrates

What’s happened to Comet G3 ATLAS? The comet’s head became more faint since it passed close to the Sun in mid-January. By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) had become a headless wonder, albeit continuing to produce magnificent tails in the Southern Hemisphere skies after sunset. These are the images of Comet G3 ATLAS captured from Río Hurtado, Chile, on consecutive January nights. Clearly, the comet’s head is brighter and more centrally concentrated on earlier days (left) than on later days (right). A crucial cause is that the comet’s ice and rock nucleus in the center of the head has broken. At its solar closest, Comet G3 ATLAS traveled deep inside Mercury’s orbit, a distance where heat kills many comets. Some of the scattering leftovers from Comet G3 ATLAS will continue to circle the Sun.

IC 2574: Coddington’s Nebula

Grand spiral galaxies frequently seem to get all the attention, displaying their youthful, bright, blue star clusters in gorgeous, symmetric spiral arms. However, stars can also develop in small, irregular galaxies. In reality, dwarf galaxy IC 2574 has unambiguous evidence of intensive star formation activity in its reddish patches of burning hydrogen gas. The turbulent star-forming areas in IC 2574, like those in spiral galaxies, are agitated by stellar winds and supernova explosions, which spit material into the galaxy’s interstellar medium and cause more star formation. IC 2574 is a member of the M81 galaxy group, visible in the northern constellation Ursa Major, at a distance of only 12 million light-years. The charming island universe, also known as Coddington’s Nebula, is around 50,000 light-years in size and was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer Edwin Coddington.

Auroral Hummingbird over Norway

Is this the biggest hummingbird ever? Although it appears to be a common fluttering nectarivore, the image depicts a stunningly detailed and colorful aurora with feather-like rays. This aurora was so strong that it was visible to the naked eye during blue hour, which occurs shortly after sunset when the sky turns a darker blue. However, with a sensitive camera that could detect small glows, the aurora appeared to be a hummingbird. Because reds are normally found higher in the Earth’s atmosphere than greens, the true 3D structure of this aurora would likely be unfamiliar. Auroras are formed when an explosion on the Sun causes high-energy particles to flow into the Earth’s atmosphere and excite nitrogen atoms and molecules. Auroras form when a solar explosion sends high-energy particles into the Earth’s atmosphere, exciting nitrogen and oxygen atoms and molecules. The above photograph was taken in late January over Lyngseidt, Norway.

Thor’s Helmet versus the Seagull

These nebulae, which resemble seagulls and ducks, are not the only cosmic clouds that conjure up ideas of flight. But both are winging their way over this vast celestial terrain, which spans about 7 degrees of Earth’s night sky and leads to the Big Dog constellation (Canis Major). The expansive Seagull (top center) is made up of two large cataloged emission nebulas. The brighter NGC 2327 creates the head, while the more diffuse IC 2177 serves as the wings and torso. The Seagull’s wingspan would be around 250 light-years at the nebula’s estimated distance of 3,800 light-years. The Duck appears considerably more compact in the lower right, spanning only around 50 light-years despite its estimated distance of 15,000 light-years. The Duck Nebula, NGC 2359, was created by the powerful winds of an extraordinarily large, burning star near its center. Of fact, the Duck’s thick body and winged appendages have earned it the slightly more dramatic common name Thor’s Helmet.

HH 30: A Star System with Planets Now Forming

How are stars and planets formed? New clues have been discovered in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space Telescope, in collaboration with Hubble and the Earth-bound ALMA. The measurements reveal, among other things, that massive dust grains are concentrated in a central disc where they potentially become planets. The featured image from Webb depicts several aspects of the operating HH-30 system. Jets of particles are expelled vertically, as seen in red, while a black dust-rich disc spans the center, hiding the light from the star or stars that are still forming there. Blue-reflecting dust can be seen in a parabolic arc above and below the core disc, however, it is unclear why a tail appears on the lower left. The study of planet formation in HH 30 can help astronomers better understand how planets in our own Solar System, including our Earth, arose.

Messier 87

Messier 87, an enormous elliptical galaxy, is approximately 50 million light-years away. The huge galaxy, also known as NGC 4486, has trillions of stars, as opposed to the mere billions found in our massive spiral Milky Way. The Virgo galaxy cluster’s largest center elliptical galaxy is M87. This clear optical and near-infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an intense jet from the enormous galaxy’s core stretching outward for around 5,000 light-years. In reality, the cosmic blow torch is visible across the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to radio frequencies. Its primary power source is M87’s core, a supermassive black hole. The Event Horizon Telescope on Earth captured an image of this monster amid M87.

Hubble’s Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic

The largest photomosaic yet created using Hubble Space Telescope picture data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral galaxy, Andromeda. The whole Hubble Andromeda Galaxy mosaic, made up of 600 overlapping frames from observations collected between July 2010 and December 2022, covers nearly six full moons across Earth’s sky. The cropped image above is roughly two full moons wide and partially covers Andromeda’s core and inner spiral arms. The Andromeda Galaxy, often known as M31, is approximately 2.5 million light-years away. This makes it the nearest big spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way.

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini

Saturn appears slightly different in infrared light. Cloud bands exhibit excellent organization, as do long-stretching storms. Infrared images reveal an interesting hexagonal cloud formation surrounding Saturn’s North Pole. Each side of the black hexagon is roughly the breadth of the Earth. The hexagon’s existence was not predicted, and its origin and potential stability are still being researched. Saturn’s renowned rings encircle the planet, casting shadows below the equator. In 2014, the robotic Cassini spacecraft captured the highlighted image in a variety of infrared colors. In September 2017, the Cassini mission came to a spectacular end as the spacecraft was ordered to dive into the ringed giant.

Light Pillar over Erupting Etna

Can a torrent of lava reach the sky? No, but the lava flow’s light can. One effect is a volcanic light pillar, which is really unique. Light pillars are more commonly created by sunlight and manifest as a dazzling column that rises or falls above the Sun. As an alternative, additional light pillars have been observed above home and street lights, some of which are rather colorful. However, the red light from the boiling lava of an erupting volcano lit this light pillar. Mount Etna in Italy is the volcano in the featured image, which was taken in a single shot early in the morning in mid-February. Ice crystals were formed by freezing temperatures above the volcano’s lava flow, either in the air above the volcano or in the condensed water vapor that Mount Etna ejected. The light from the volcano’s caldera was then reflected off of these ice crystals, which were fluttering and primarily flat towards the earth.

Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center

Is the ring visible to you? A ring can be seen in the center of the highlighted galaxy NGC 6505 if you look closely. A distant galaxy’s image is being magnified and distorted into a full circle by the gravity of NGC 6505, a nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that is easily visible. The center of the neighboring galaxy and a portion of the background galaxy must line up precisely to form a full Einstein ring.  Determining the mass and dark matter component in the center of NGC 6505 and revealing previously unknown characteristics in the warped galaxy are made possible by the analysis of this ring and the various photos of the background galaxy. ESA’s Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope took the highlighted image in 2023, and it was made public in February.

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: