**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 29 September 2026 **Sh2-188: The Shrimp Nebula** Image: Credit: Pawel Piechnik Explanation: What causes the swirl in the Shrimp Nebula? Its high speed is likely. What is sure is that Sh2-188 is one of the larger planetary nebulas on the night sky, by angular size , spanning about half the diameter of the Moon . Moreover, the white-dwarf core -- leftover from the Sun -like star that shed its outer atmosphere -- is moving unusually fast through interstellar space, creating a bow shock most visible on the upper left that is similar to a boat plowing through water . Although faint, the Shrimp Nebula glows also by compressing and brightening gas on its leading edge. The featured image was taken in the light of hydrogen , sulfur, and oxygen by a backyard telescope in Krakow , Poland and then digitally adjusted to approximate the nebula 's true colors. #APOD #Sh2 #188 #ShrimpNebula #PlanetaryNebula #NebulaPhotography https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260929.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 28 September 2026 **Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe** Image: Credit: Karl Glazebrook, Ivan Baldry, JHU Explanation: 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 . #APOD #CosmicLatte #AverageColorOfUniverse #StellarColors #GalaxyColor #CosmicSpectrum https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260928.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 27 September 2026 **Andromeda before Photoshop** Image: Credit: Kees Scherer Explanation: What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy 's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through Earth 's busy skies and with a digital camera that introduces normal imperfections. The picture is a stack of 223 images, each a 300 second exposure, taken from a garden observatory in Por t ugal during 2019. Obvious image deficiencies include bright parallel airplane trails , long and continuous satellite trails , short cosmic ray streaks , and bad pixels . These imperfections were actually not removed with Photoshop specifically, but rather greatly reduced with a series of computer software packages that included Astro Pixel Processor, DeepSkyStacker, and PixInsight. All of this work was done not to deceive you with a digital fantasy that has little to do with the real likeness of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), but to minimize Earthly artifacts that have nothing to do with the distant galaxy and so better recreate what M31 really does look like . #APOD #Andromeda #AndromedaGalaxy #MilkyWay #GalaxyImaging #AstroPhotography https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260927.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 26 September 2026 **Mirrored Meteor and Milky Way** Image: Credit: Not provided On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The bright and colorful meteor trail was captured next to the central Milky Way, whose dark interstellar dust clouds and luminous starlight reach above the horizon. In the foreground of this tantalizing celestial scene is the 23 meter diameter mirror of the prototype Large-Sized Telescope ( LST-1 ). LST-1 is the first telescope constructed at the northern hemisphere site of the innovative Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory . With 198 hexagonal mirror segments and a large, high-efficiency, pixelized camera, LST-1 is designed to detect extremely brief, atmospheric visible light flashes . Lasting about a billionth of a second, the visible light flashes are triggered by energetic gamma-rays from cosmic sources such as distant active galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. Of course, on that night some individual mirror segments of LST-1 also reflected the atmospheric flash of the bright perseid meteor. #APOD #MirroredMeteor #MilkyWay #PerseidMeteor #NightSkyPhotography #CanaryIslandsAstronomy https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260926.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 25 September 2026 **Globular Cluster Omega Centauri** Image: Credit: Javier O. Cadenas Parra Explanation: Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. With a yellowish hue , Omega Centauri's red giant stars are easy to pick out in this sharp telescopic view. A two-decade-long exploration of the dense star cluster with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed evidence for a massive black hole near the center of Omega Centauri . #APOD #The #account #behind #this #API https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260925.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 24 September 2026 **The Ghosts of Five Supernovas** Image: Credit: Not provided The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary image . It was acquired at Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco with approximately 200 hours of observations and shows a large patch of the sky, equivalent to the area of one thousand full moons tiled together, in the constellation of Auriga (the charioteer ). From left to right, the five supernova remnants visible across the field are G181.1+9.5 , G182.4+4.3 , G179.0+2.6 , G180.0−1.7 (Sh2-240, the Spaghetti Nebula ), and G178.2−4.2 . They are highlighted in the annotated image , together with open cluster M37 and the Tadpole Nebula . As each explosion expanded into space , it created a growing shell of shocked gas and delicate filamentary structures shown in red ( hydrogen ) and blue ( oxygen ), respectively. These ancient stellar explosions happened independently; they are at various distances up to about several thousands of light-years away from Earth and have estimated ages up to tens of thousands of years old . Early humans may have witnessed them as bright new stars, fading over weeks or months. #APOD #SupernovaRemnants #Auriga #Oukaïmeden #MoroccoAstronomy #Astronomy https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260924.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 23 September 2026 **A New Lunar Crater: McGetchin** Image: Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Intuitive Machines Text: Keighley Rockcliffe ( NASA GSFC , UMBC CSST , CRESST II ) A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and May of 2024. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), with its monthly monitoring of the Moon , captured today’s images of the lunar surface before and after the event. The resulting crater, named after Apollo-era lunar scientist McGetchin , is two soccer fields across. Craters of this size are only expected once every 132 years ! Follow up thermal imaging revealed a large cold spot that surrounds the warm crater. Surface impacts will puff up the loose lunar sediment, or regolith , making it less dense and harder to retain heat. This event affected an area much larger than the visible crater , which will inform humanity’s understanding of surface impacts and the evolution of the Moon’s surface. It also reminds us all to be thankful for Earth's atmosphere . #APOD #LunarImpact #McGetchinCrater #MoonCrater #LunarSurface #LRO https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260923.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 22 September 2026 **Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun** Image: Credit: Not provided This shot captured an unexpected silhouette. Which is it? It isn't the sunspots , the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic field s visible around the Sun's bright disk. Sunspots typically last for weeks and were expected, since these spots were seen previously. It isn’t the International Space Station (ISS), the small dark structure on the middle left. This is because the featured picture was planned with sub-second timing to record the iconic structure passing before the Sun . It is the airplane . Just as this exposure was taking place in June, from Prasek in the Czech Republic , an airplane began its own miniature partial eclipse . The result is this triply aligned image of our Sun. The photographer estimates that the chance of any random Sun image containing silhouettes of both a space station and an airplane, from that location, is about 30 million to one. #APOD #Astronomy #Space #Sun #Sunspots #SunEclipse https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260922.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 21 September 2026 **Cocoon Nebula Wide Field** Image: Credit: Not provided When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan ( Cygnus ), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. A compact star forming region, the cosmic Cocoon punctuates a nebula bright in emission and reflection on the lower right, with a long trail of interstellar dust clouds to the left, making the entire complex appear a bit like a comet . Cataloged as IC 5146 , the central bright head of the nebula spans about 10 light years , while the dark dust y tail spans nearly 100 light years. Both are located about 2,500 light years away. A bright star near the colorful nebula's center likely supplies power and helps clear out a cavity. The long dusty filaments of the tail, although dark in this visible light image, hide stars in the process of formation . The featured image was captured in July from Death Valley , California , USA . #APOD #CocoonNebula #IC5146 #Cygnus #Nebulae #StarFormation https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260921.html

**Astronomy Picture of the Day** 20 September 2026 **Analemma over the Callanish Stones** Image: Credit: Not provided If you went outside at the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun , how would the Sun's position change? A visual answer to that question is an analemma , a composite image taken from the same spot at the same time over the course of a year. The featured analemma was composed from images taken every few days at noon near the village of Callanish in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland , UK . In the foreground are the Callanish Stones , a stone circle built around 2700 BC during humanity's Bronze Age . It is not known if the placement of the Callanish Stones has or had astronomical significance. The ultimate causes for the figure-8 shape of this and all analemmas are the tilt of the Earth axis and the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun . At the solstice s, the Sun will appear at the top or bottom of an analemma. The featured image was taken near the December solstice and so the Sun appears near the bottom. Equinox es, however, correspond to analemma middle points -- not the intersection point . In two days there will be an equinox ("equal night"), when day and night are equal over all of planet Earth. Many cultures celebrate a change of season at an equinox . #APOD #The #account #behind #this #API https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260920.html