**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
15 November 2025
**Andromeda and Friends**
Image Credit & Copyright: Piotr Czerski
This magnificent extragalactic skyscape looks toward the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. It also accomplishes a Messier catalog trifecta by including Andromeda, cataloged as Messier 31 (M31), along with Messier 32 (M32), and Messier 110 (M110) in the same telescopic field of view. In this frame, M32 is just left of the Andromeda Galaxy's bright core with M110 below and to the right. M32 and M110 are both elliptical galaxies themselves and satellites of the larger spiral Andromeda. By combining 60 hours of broadband and narrowband image data, the deep telescopic view also reveals tantalizing details of dust lanes, young star clusters, and star-forming regions along Andromeda's spiral arms, and faint, foreground clouds of glowing hydrogen gas. For now, Andromeda and friends are some 2.5 million light-years from our own large spiral Milky Way.
#APOD #Astroinformatics #StarFormation #Research #Astrotheory
Image Credit & Copyright: Piotr Czerski
This magnificent extragalactic skyscape looks toward the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. It also accomplishes a Messier catalog trifecta by including Andromeda, cataloged as Messier 31 (M31), along with Messier 32 (M32), and Messier 110 (M110) in the same telescopic field of view. In this frame, M32 is just left of the Andromeda Galaxy's bright core with M110 below and to the right. M32 and M110 are both elliptical galaxies themselves and satellites of the larger spiral Andromeda. By combining 60 hours of broadband and narrowband image data, the deep telescopic view also reveals tantalizing details of dust lanes, young star clusters, and star-forming regions along Andromeda's spiral arms, and faint, foreground clouds of glowing hydrogen gas. For now, Andromeda and friends are some 2.5 million light-years from our own large spiral Milky Way.
#APOD #Astroinformatics #StarFormation #Research #Astrotheory
APOD: 2025 November 15 - Andromeda and Friends
A different astronomy and space science
related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.
Image Credit & Copyright: Samil Cabrera
Northern lights have come to Florida skies. In fact, the brilliant streak of a Northern Taurid meteor flashes through the starry night sky above the beach in this sea and skyscape, captured from Shired Island, Florida on November 11. Meteors from the annual Northern Taurid meteor shower are expected this time of year. But the digital camera exposure also records the shimmering glow of aurora, a phenomenon more often seen from our fair planet's higher geographical latitudes. Also known as aurora borealis, these northern lights are part of recent, wide spread auroral activity caused by strong geomagnetic storms. In the last few days, stormy spaceweather has been triggered by multiple Earth impacting coronal mass ejections and intense solar activity.
#APOD #SpaceWeather #Astroinformatics #SpaceObservatory #SpaceAdventures
Image Credit & Copyright: R. Jay Gabany
Few cosmic vistas can excite the imagination like The Great Nebula in Orion. Visible as a faint, bland celestial smudge to the naked-eye, the nearest large star-forming region sprawls across this sharp colorful telescopic image. Designated M42 in the Messier Catalog, the Orion Nebula's glowing gas and dust surrounds hot, young stars. About 40 light-years across, M42 is at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away that lies within the same spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy as the Sun. Including dusty bluish reflection nebula NGC 1977, also known as the Running Man nebula at left in the frame, the natal nebulae represent only a small fraction of our galactic neighborhood's wealth of star-forming material. Within the well-studied stellar nursery, astronomers have also identified what appear to be numerous infant solar systems.
#APOD #Astroeducation #Astroinformatics #SpaceMission #Astronauts
