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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

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.

Photo by Olaf Filzinger

Paper maché figures in Guanajuato Market, Mexico. Intricate color patterns and color combinations are characteristic of Mexican folk art, that often dwells in the magical, death, and fantastic.

Tomas Castelazo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe -  (1808 - 1849) American writer, editor, and literary critic

Grant Porter on Unsplash 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

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.

Heubach and tree-lined wedding avenue, Hausdülmen, Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

"Peyto Lake rarely disappoints. This evening was no different"

Tyler Lillico on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

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. Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Max Rive