APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Mostly PerseidsExplanation: Recorded the night of August 12-13, images from four dedicated meteor-monitoring cameras at an astronomical observatory in Czechia were aligned and combined to create this all-night, all-sky view. On that night, the total count came to 1,706 meteors. And since that coincided with the peak activity of the 2026 Perseid Meteor Shower, most are perseids. Their overwhelming numbers make them easy to spot. Quite convincingly, perseid trails all trace back to a single radiant on the sky at the upper right, a region in the annual shower's eponymous constellation Perseus. But meteors belonging to other much less active showers can be revealed by finding their radiants too. For example, seen crossing the perseid trails are meteors from a shower whose radiant lies in Cygnus, known as Kappa Cygnids. The antihelion complex, a general region near Aquarius and opposite the Sun in the sky, is also identifiable as a weak source for meteors.
Tomorrow's picture: interplanetary road trip
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. Random APOD Generator Yesterday's Image APOD: 2026 August 21 – Time-Lapse of the Star S301 Orbiting the Black Hole in the Center of the Galaxy Tomorrow's Image