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NASA’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has completed its five‑year survey, cataloguing over 47 million galaxies and quasars to produce a three‑dimensional map of the universe extending 11 billion light‑years. The map, featured in today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, shows the cosmic web and the dark gaps caused by the Milky Way’s dust. Early DESI results hinted that dark energy may not be a constant, a question that the full dataset will now address. The release opens a massive data trove for cosmologists worldwide.
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Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman released a rare video of Earth setting behind the Moon, captured on an iPhone at 8× zoom during the mission’s lunar flyby. The clip, posted on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, illustrates how the spacecraft’s motion,...
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An astrophotographer stationed on a high Alpine peak captured an unprecedented triple‑arch sky panorama. The image combines the familiar inner and outer Milky Way arches with a faint zodiacal light arc, visible only under exceptionally dark conditions. After 40 hours of...
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Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) brightened dramatically this week, becoming visible in the pre‑dawn northern sky. Long‑exposure photography captured its multi‑degree ion tail over a Himalayan valley, highlighting Earth’s near‑sideways perspective. The comet reached perihelion yesterday, intensifying its tail, and a dust...
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NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 19 2026 showcases a 27‑frame mosaic taken in 2019 from the Atacama Desert’s Ojas de Salar lagoon. The still captures a reflective lake that resembles an eye gazing at the Milky Way’s star‑filled band,...
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NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day showcases Messier 8 (M82), a nearby starburst galaxy known as the Cigar Galaxy. A composite image built from 33 hours of narrow‑band exposure highlights bright red filaments of atomic hydrogen driven by a powerful superwind. The...
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The NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 16, 2026 showcases the "South Celestial Tree," a time‑lapse shot taken in Padre Bernardo, Brazil. The image captures stars tracing a 24‑hour circle around the empty southern celestial pole, illustrating how the Southern Cross...
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NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day highlighted comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), showcasing its bright green coma and long, wispy blue ion tail. The comet, a few‑kilometer‑wide icy nucleus, is currently shedding gas that is ionized by sunlight and swept into a...
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The Hubble Space Telescope captured a detailed view of NGC 602, a 5‑million‑year‑old star cluster on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, located about 200,000 light‑years from Earth. The image spans roughly 200 light‑years and shows massive young stars eroding...
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Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) is brightening dramatically as it nears the Sun on April 19, 2026, and will make its closest approach to Earth on April 25. The comet now displays a tail extending more than 10 degrees across the sky, captured from Switzerland....
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On April 6, 2026, NASA’s Artemis II mission performed a historic lunar flyby, the first since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Orion spacecraft rounded the Moon’s far side, reaching a peak distance of roughly 407,000 km—making it the farthest humans have traveled from Earth...
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NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day showcases a high‑resolution view of the Antennae galaxies, NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, located about 60 million light‑years away in the constellation Corvus. The pair is in the midst of a violent merger, compressing molecular gas and...
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NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the dramatic demise of comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) as it plunged within half the Earth‑Moon distance of the Sun. The 40‑hour composite video shows the comet stretching, vanishing behind the coronagraph’s...
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NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 7, 2026 features a deep‑field image of a nebular formation that resembles a horse’s head. The structure is the reflection nebula IC 4592, not the well‑known Horsehead Nebula in Orion, and its blue hue comes...
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On April 6, 2026, NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft completed a seven‑hour lunar flyby, capturing the striking "Earthset" view as Earth dipped below the Moon’s horizon. The crew surveyed the Moon’s far side, documenting the well‑preserved Orientale basin and discovering two previously unknown...