From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 8/9/25 via the Webb Space Telescope.

The picture shows a nebula spreading out from star IRAS 04302+2247 . The butterfly shape apparently indicates a planet-forming system. (There’s a nice spiral galaxy to the bottom left of the image as well.)

As featured in Astronomy Picture of the Day for 24/8/25.

The Crab Nebula as seen in visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope (purple,) X-ray light as imaged by the Chandra X-ray observatory (blue) and infra-red from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red.) The Crab Pulsar is the bright spot in the swirl’s centre:-

On 18/5/25 and 19/5 25 Astronomy Picture of the Day featured time-lapsed videos of photos of Pluto and Charon taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.

I haven’t embedded the videos as I think they are copyright but the links take you to them.

Stunning stuff.

To think that the first time I posted on the Plutonian system these worlds were mere dots.

A view taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacacraft from above Pluto. From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 15/5/25.

The ice mountains of Norgay Montes on left, with Hillary Montes along the horizon and Sputnik Planum to right. Clouds in the thin atmosphere appear to the top.

Recently (12/5/25 and 13/5/25) Astronomy Picture of the Day published two reconstructions (one each on consecutive days from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft) of how our home galaxy The Milky Way looks from the side and from above.

Side view:-

From above. Our sun is circled below within the galaxy’s Orion Arm:-

Well there is one if only you have the right viewpoint, such as SOHO (the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) has.

This picture of Comet ATLAS (see Astronomy Picture of the Day for 20/1/25) was taken by SOHO as the comet passed closest to the sun and shows at least six tails in four different colours. The dark circle to the lower edge is of course due to SOHO’s sun obscuring barrier.

Froam Astronomy Picture of the Day for 19/1/25.

This is an animation constructed from photos taken during the descent of the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe through Titan’s atmosphere in 2005.

Far out (as they say) gives a particular view of Earth and its Moon.

Astronomy Picture of the Day on 23/11/24 showed a composite of two photographs of Earth from the vicinity of other planets. A picture taken from near Saturn by the Cassini probe and another from Mercury orbit taken by Messenger:-

Such a small dot in a big universe.

I never tire of seeing pictures of this feature of the surface of Mars. Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar system. This one was taken by NASA’s Viking probe and was Astronomy Picture of the Day‘s post for 10/12/24.

Imagine the violence of this. A solar prominence erupting in 2011. This time-lapse video covers 90 minutes (one new frame every 24 seconds.) It was captured in ultra-violet light by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory. From You Tube via Astronomy Picture of the Day for 18/8/24.