**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
18 February 2026
**Orion's Cradle**
Image Credit: Piotr Czerski
Explanation:
Cradled in red-glowing hydrogen gas, stars are being born in Orion.
These stellar nurseries lie at the edge of the giant
Orion molecular cloud complex, some 1,500
light-years away.
This detailed view spans about 12
degrees across the
center of the well-known constellation, with the
Great Orion Nebula,
the closest large
star-forming region, visible toward the lower right.
The deep mosaic also includes, near the top center,
the Flame Nebula and the
Horsehead Nebula.
Image data acquired with a
hydrogen-alpha filter adds other remarkable features
to this wide-angle cosmic vista:
pervasive tendrils of energized atomic
hydrogen gas and portions of the surrounding
Barnard's Loop.
While the Orion Nebula and many
stars in Orion
are easy to see with the unaided eye, emission from the extensive
interstellar gas is faint and much
harder to record, even in telescopic views of the nebula-rich complex.
#APOD #OrionNebula #HorseheadNebula #FlameNebula #BarnardsLoop #HydrogenAlpha
Image Credit: Piotr Czerski
Explanation:
Cradled in red-glowing hydrogen gas, stars are being born in Orion.
These stellar nurseries lie at the edge of the giant
Orion molecular cloud complex, some 1,500
light-years away.
This detailed view spans about 12
degrees across the
center of the well-known constellation, with the
Great Orion Nebula,
the closest large
star-forming region, visible toward the lower right.
The deep mosaic also includes, near the top center,
the Flame Nebula and the
Horsehead Nebula.
Image data acquired with a
hydrogen-alpha filter adds other remarkable features
to this wide-angle cosmic vista:
pervasive tendrils of energized atomic
hydrogen gas and portions of the surrounding
Barnard's Loop.
While the Orion Nebula and many
stars in Orion
are easy to see with the unaided eye, emission from the extensive
interstellar gas is faint and much
harder to record, even in telescopic views of the nebula-rich complex.
#APOD #OrionNebula #HorseheadNebula #FlameNebula #BarnardsLoop #HydrogenAlpha
APOD: 2026 February 18 – Orion's Cradle
A different astronomy and space science
related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.
Image Credit: ESO, K. Iłkiewicz, S. Scaringi, et al., Cecilia Chirenti, NASA, GSFC, CRESST II
Explanation:
How is RXJ0528+2838 creating such shock waves?
A recently discovered
white dwarf star,
the farther left of the two largest white spots,
RXJ0528+2838,
was found 730
light-years away from
Earth.
Most stars, when
done fusing nuclei in their cores for energy, become
red giant stars, the cores of which
live on as faint dense
white dwarfs that slowly cool down for the rest of time.
White dwarfs are so dense that the
only thing that stops them from collapsing further is
quantum mechanics.
In about 5 billion years,
our Sun will become a
white dwarf, too.
The featured image, obtained with the
European Southern Observatory’s
Very Large Telescope, shows unexplained
bow shocks around RXJ0528+2838, similar to the
bow wave of water around a fast-moving ship.
Astronomers
don’t yet know what is powering
these shocks, which have existed for at least 1,000 years.
The red, green and blue colors represent trace amounts of glowing
hydrogen,
nitrogen and
oxygen gas.
#APOD #Astronomy #WhiteDwarf #RXJ0528 #AccretionShock #XrayAstronomy
Image Credit: NASA, STS-41B
Explanation:
What would it be like to fly free in space?
About 100 meters from the cargo bay of a
space shuttle,
Bruce McCandless II was living the dream --
floating farther out than anyone had ever been before.
Guided by a
Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless,
pictured, was
floating free in space.
During Space Shuttle mission
41-B in 1984,
McCandless and fellow
NASA astronaut
Robert Stewart were the first to
experience such an
"untethered space walk".
The MMU worked by shooting jets of
nitrogen
and was used to help deploy and
retrieve satellites.
With a mass over 140 kilograms, an
MMU is heavy
on Earth,
but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit.
The MMU was later replaced with the
SAFER backpack propulsion unit.
#APOD #SpaceTravel #ZeroGravity #Spaceflight #Astronomy #CosmicJourney
Image Credit: Keighley Rockcliffe, NASA, GSFC, UMBC, CSST, CRESST II
Explanation:
Roses are red, nebulas are too, and this Valentine's gift is a
stunning view!
Pictured is a loving look at the
Rosette Nebula
(NGC 2237):
a cosmic bloom of bright young stars sitting atop a
stem of glowing hot gas.
The rose’s blue-white speckles are among the
most luminous stars in the galaxy,
with some burning millions of times brighter than the Sun.
Their stellar winds
sculpt the famed rose shape by pushing gas and dust away from the center.
Though only a few million years old, these massive stars are
already nearing the
end of their lives,
while dimmer stars embedded in the nebula will burn for billions
of years to come.
The vibrant red hue comes from
hydrogen gas,
ionized by the
ultraviolet light from the young stars.
The rose’s blue-white center is
color-mapped to indicate the presence of similarly ionized oxygen.
The Rosette Nebula reminds us of the beauty and transformation
woven into the fabric of the universe.
#APOD #Astronomy #Astrophoto #Space #Science
Image Credit: Olaf Filzinger
Explanation:
Dark, smooth regions that cover the Moon's
familiar face
are called by Latin names for oceans and seas.
That naming
convention is
historical,
though it may seem a little ironic to denizens of the space age
who recognize the Moon as a
mostly dry and airless world,
and the smooth, dark areas as
lava-flooded impact basins.
For example, this telescopic lunar vista,
looks over the expanse of the northwestern Mare Imbrium,
or Sea of Rains and into the Sinus Iridum, the
Bay of Rainbows.
Ringed by the
Jura Mountains (montes),
the bay is about 250 kilometers across.
Seen after local sunrise, the mountains form part of the
Sinus Iridum impact crater wall.
Their rugged sunlit arc is bounded at the top by Cape (promontorium) Laplace
reaching nearly 3,000 meters above the bay's surface.
At the bottom of the arc is Cape Heraclides,
depicted
by Giovanni Cassini in his 1679 telescope-based
drawings mapping the moon, as a
moon maiden
seen in profile with
long, flowing hair.
#APOD #Astronomy #Universe #Astronomy #Cosmos
Image Credit: NASA, SDO, Şenol Şanli, Uğur İkizler, Cecilia Chirenti, NASA, GSFC, CRESST II
Explanation:
How many
sunspots can you see?
The central image shows the many sunspots that occurred in 2025, month by month around the circle, and all together in the grand central image.
Each sunspot is magnetically cooled and so appears dark -- and can last from days to months.
Although the
featured images originated from
NASA's
Solar Dynamics Observatory,
sunspots can be easily seen with a small telescope or
binoculars equipped with a
solar filter.
Very large sunspot groups like
recent AR 4366 can even be seen with
eclipse glasses.
Sunspots are still
counted by eye,
but the total number is not considered exact
because they frequently
change and break up.
Last year, 2025, coincided with a
solar maximum, the period of most
intense magnetic activity during its 11-year
solar cycle.
Our Sun remains
unpredictable in many ways,
including when it ejects
solar flares that will impact the
Earth, and
how active
the next solar cycle will be.
#APOD #Sunspots #SolarActivity #SunspotCycle #SolarCycle #Sun
Image Credit: Max Rive
Explanation:
Raise your arms if you see an aurora.
With those instructions, two nights went by with, well,
clouds -- mostly.
On the third night of returning to same peaks, though,
the sky not only cleared up but lit up with a
spectacular auroral display.
Arms went high in the air, patience and experience
paid off, and the creative
featured image was captured as a composite from three separate
exposures.
The setting is a summit of the
Austnesfjorden
(a fjord) close to the town of
Svolvear on the
Lofoten islands in northern
Norway.
The year was 2014.
This year, our
Sun
is just passing
solar maximum, the peak in its 11-year
surface activity cycle.
As expected, some
spectacular
auroras have
recently
resulted.
#APOD #Aurora #NorthernLights #AuroraBorealis #LofotenAurora #NorwayAurora
Image Credit: NASA, JPL, Voyager 2, zelario12, Keighley Rockcliffe, NASA, GSFC, UMBC, CSST, CRESST II
Explanation:
What is Miranda really like?
Visually,
old images from NASA's
Voyager 2 have been recently combined and
remastered to result in the
featured image of
Uranus's 500-kilometer-wide moon.
In the late 1980s,
Voyager 2
flew by
Uranus, coming close to the
cratered, fractured, and unusually grooved moon --
named after a
character from
Shakespeare’s
The Tempest.
Scientifically, planetary scientists are using old data and clear images to
theorize anew about what shaped Miranda's
severe surface features.
A leading hypothesis is that
Miranda, beneath its icy surface, may have once hosted an
expansive liquid water ocean which may be slowly freezing.
Thanks to the legacy of Voyager 2,
Miranda has joined the ranks of
Europa,
Titan,
and other icy moons in the
search for water,
and, possibly, microbial
life, in our
Solar System.
#APOD #Miranda #Uranus #Moon #PlanetaryScience #Astronomy
Image Credit: Daniel Korona
Explanation:
An unusually active sunspot region is now crossing the Sun.
The region, labelled
AR 4366, is much larger than the Earth and has
produced several powerful solar
flares over the past ten days.
In the featured image, the region is marked by large and dark
sunspots
toward the upper right of the Sun's disk.
The image captured the Sun over a hill in
Zacatecas,
Mexico, 5 days ago.
AR 4366 has become a candidate for the most active solar region in this entire 11-year
solar cycle.
Active solar regions
are frequently associated with increased
auroral activity on the
Earth.
Now reaching the edge,
AR 4366 will begin facing away from the
Earth during the coming week.
It is not known, though, if the active region will survive long enough to reappear in about two weeks' time, as the
Sun rotates.
#APOD #Sunspot #AR4366 #SolarActivity #SolarFlares #SolarFlare
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Explanation:
Peering from the shadows, the
Saturn-facing hemisphere of
tantalizing inner moon Enceladus
poses in this Cassini spacecraft image.
North is up in
the
dramatic scene captured during November 2016 as
Cassini's camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction
about 130,000 kilometers from the moon's bright crescent.
In fact, the distant world reflects over 90 percent of the sunlight
it receives, giving its surface about the same reflectivity as
fresh snow.
A mere 500 kilometers in diameter,
Enceladus is a surprisingly
active moon.
Data and images collected during Cassini's flybys have revealed
water vapor and ice grains spewing
from south polar geysers and evidence of an
ocean of liquid water hidden beneath
the moon's icy crust.
#APOD #Enceladus #Cassini #SaturnMoons #IcyMoon #PlanetaryScience
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Explanation:
Massive stars
in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives.
Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces
ignite and create heavy elements in their cores.
After only a few million years for the most massive stars, the
enriched material is blasted
back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew.
The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example
of this final phase of the
stellar life cycle.
Light from the supernova explosion that created this remnant
would have been first
seen in planet Earth's sky
about 350 years ago,
although it took that light 11,000 years to reach us.
This sharp NIRCam image
from the James Webb Space Telescope
shows the still-hot filaments and knots in the supernova remnant.
The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding blast wave
is about 20 light-years across.
A series of light echoes
from the massive star's cataclysmic explosion are also
identified in Webb's detailed images
of the surrounding interstellar medium.
#APOD #Astronomy #Astronomy #NASA #Astrogeek
Image Credit: Michal Wierzbinski, Hellas-Sky
Explanation:
Active galaxy
NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and
relatively nearby
Perseus Cluster of Galaxies.
Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is also a
prodigious source of
x-rays
and
radio
emission.
NGC 1275 accretes matter as entire galaxies fall into it, ultimately
feeding a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core.
Narrowband image data used in this sharp telescopic image
highlights the resulting
galactic debris
and filaments of glowing gas,
some up to 20,000 light-years long.
The filaments persist
in NGC 1275, even though
the turmoil of galactic collisions should destroy them.
What keeps the filaments together?
Observations
indicate that the structures, pushed out
from the galaxy's center by the black hole's activity, are
held together by magnetic fields.
Also known as Perseus A,
NGC 1275 itself spans over 100,000 light years and
lies about 230 million light years away.
#APOD #Universe #Space #Astrophoto Astrophotography
Image Credit: Daniel Stern
Explanation:
Most galaxies don't have any rings -- why does this galaxy have three?
To begin, a ring that's near
NGC 1512's center --
and so hard to see here -- is the
nuclear ring
which glows brightly with recently formed
stars.
Next out is a ring of stars and
dust appearing both red and blue, called,
counter-intuitively, the inner ring.
This inner ring connects ends of a diffuse
central bar
of stars that runs horizontally across the galaxy.
Farthest out in this wide field image is a
ragged structure that might be considered an outer ring.
This outer ring appears spiral-like and is dotted with
clusters of bright blue stars.
All these ring structures are thought to be affected by
NGC 1512's own gravitational asymmetries in a drawn-out process called
secular
evolution.
The featured image was captured last month from a telescope at
Deep Sky Chile in
Chile.
#APOD #NASA #NASAInspires #Astrophoto #Astronomy
Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, J. H. Kastner, RIT
Explanation:
Oh what a
tangled web
a planetary nebula can weave.
The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
shows the complex structure that can result when a
normal star ejects
its outer gases and becomes a
white dwarf star.
Officially tagged
NGC
6537, this two-lobed symmetric
planetary nebula
houses one of the
hottest white dwarfs ever observed,
probably as part of a binary star system.
Internal winds flowing out from the central stars,
have been measured in excess of 1,000 kilometers per second.
These
winds expand the
nebula, flow along the nebula's walls, and cause waves of hot
gas and
dust to collide.
Atoms
caught in these colliding shocks radiate light shown in the
featured false-color
infrared picture by the
James Webb Space Telescope.
The
Red Spider Nebula lies toward the constellation of the Archer
(Sagittarius).
Its distance is not well known but has been
estimated by some to be about 4,000 light-years.
#APOD #Astrogeek #Space #Universe #Astrophoto
Image Credit: Robert G. Lyons, Robservatory
Explanation:
What part of Orion is this?
Just north of the famous
Orion Nebula is a picturesque
star
forming region in
Orion's Sword that contains a lot of intricate
dust -- some of which appears blue
because it reflects the light of
bright embedded stars.
The region's popular name is the
Running Man Nebula because,
looked at from the right, part of the brown dust appears to be running legs.
Cataloged as
Sharpless 279,
the reflection nebula is not only part of the
constellation of
Orion, but part of the greater
Orion molecular cloud complex.
Light from the Running Man's bright stars, including
42 Orionis, the bright star closest to the
featured image center, is slowly
destroying and reshaping the surrounding dust,
which will likely be
completely gone in about 10 million years.
The nebula spans about 15
light years and lies about 1,500 light years away.
#APOD #Space #Astronomy #Science Astrophotography
Image Credit: NASA, MGS, MSSS
Explanation:
Mars has put on a happy face.
The Martian crater
Galle is famous because it has
internal markings that make it look like a face that is both
smiling
and winking.
These markings were
originally
discovered in the 1970s in pictures taken by the
Viking Orbiter.
The
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft that orbited
Mars from 1996 to 2006 captured the
featured picture.
Happy Face Crater and its iconic features were
formed by chance billions of years ago when a
city-sized asteroid
slammed into the Martian surface.
All rocky planets and moons in
our Solar System show
impact craters,
with the highest number of craters found on
Earth's Moon and the planet
Mercury.
Earth and
Venus
would show the most, though, were it not for weather and
erosion.
#APOD #GalleCrater #HappyFaceCrater #Mars #MartianGeology #ImpactCrater
Image Credit: NASA, Artemis I
Explanation:
On flight day 13
(November 28, 2022) of the Artemis 1 mission, the
Orion spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth.
At over 430,000 kilometers from Earth,
its distant retrograde orbit also puts
Orion nearly 70,000 kilometers from the Moon.
In the
same field of view
in this video frame from flight day 13,
planet and large natural satellite
even appear about the same apparent size from
the spacecraft's perspective.
On flight day 26
(December 11, 2022),
the uncrewed spacecraft
splashed down on its home world concluding the historic Artemis I
mission.
The Artemis II
mission,
carrying 4 astronauts around the moon and back
again, will launch no earlier than February 8.
#APOD #ArtemisI #FlightDay13 #OrionSpacecraft #MoonOrbit #EarthDistance
Image Credit: Robert Eder
Explanation:
NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a
reflection nebula,
dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by
interstellar dust.
A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation
Perseus,
it lies at the edge of a large,
star-forming molecular cloud.
This telescopic close-up spans
over two full moons on the sky or just
over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333.
It shows details of the dusty region
along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from
Herbig-Haro
objects, jets and shocked glowing gas
emanating from recently formed stars.
In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than
a million years old, most still
hidden from optical telescopes
by the pervasive stardust.
The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun
formed over 4.5 billion years ago.
#APOD #NGC1333 #StellarNursery #Perseus #ReflectionNebula #MolecularCloud
Image Credit: Mike Selby
Explanation:
Distorted galaxy NGC 2442
can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis)
Volans.
Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two
spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar give it a
hook-shaped appearance in this deep and colorful image,
with foreground stars scattered across the telescopic field of
view.
The image also reveals the distant galaxy's
obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and
reddish star forming regions
surrounding a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars.
But the star forming regions seem more concentrated along
the drawn-out (upper right)
spiral arm.
The distorted structure is likely the result of an ancient
close encounter
with a smaller galaxy that lies off top left of the frame.
This telescopic field of view
spans over 200,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442.
#APOD #NGC2442 #Galaxy #Volans #SouthernSky #SpiralGalaxy
Image Credit: Daniel McCauley
Explanation:
In the vast Orion Molecular Cloud complex,
several bright blue nebulas are particularly apparent.
Pictured here in the center are two of the most prominent
reflection nebulas -
dust clouds lit by the
reflecting light of bright embedded
stars.
The more famous nebula is
M78,
in the image center, cataloged over 200 years ago.
To its upper left is the lesser known
NGC 2071.
Astronomers continue to
study these
reflection nebulas to
better understand how interior stars form.
The overall red glow is from diffuse
hydrogen gas
that covers much of the
Orion complex
that spans much of the
constellation of Orion.
Nearby in the
greater complex,
which lies about 1,500
light years away, are the
Orion Nebula,
the Horsehead Nebula, and
Barnard's Loop --
partially seen here as the white band on the upper left.
#APOD #M78 #OrionNebula #ReflectionNebula #OrionComplex #NGC2071