NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
Open in Telegram
To find and view past APODs, tap here: t.me/apodQA/3 NASA's APOD presence in Telegram: πapod.nasa.gov Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Show moreπ Analytical overview of Telegram channel NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
Channel NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (@apod_telegram) in the English language segment is an active participant. Currently, the community unites 34 841 subscribers, ranking 408 in the Facts category and 1 013 in the USA region.
π Audience metrics and dynamics
Since its creation on Π½Π΅Π²ΡΠ΄ΠΎΠΌΠΎ, the project has demonstrated rapid growth, gathering an audience of 34 841 subscribers.
According to the latest data from 30 July, 2026, the channel demonstrates stable activity. Although there has been a change in the number of participants by -13 over the last 30 days and by 11 over the last 24 hours, overall reach remains high.
- Verification status: Verified (Officially confirmed by Telegram)
- Engagement rate (ER): The average audience engagement rate is 14.80%. Within the first 24 hours after publication, content typically collects 6.77% reactions from the total number of subscribers.
- Post reach: On average, each post receives 5 157 views. Within the first day, a publication typically gains 2 359 views.
- Reactions and interaction: The audience actively supports content: the average number of reactions per post is 54.
- Thematic interests: Content is focused on key topics such as copyright, orion, jupiter, dust, nasa.
π Description and content policy
The author describes the resource as a platform for expressing subjective opinions:
βTo find and view past APODs, tap here:
t.me/apodQA/3
NASA's APOD presence in Telegram:
πapod.nasa.gov
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astron...β
Thanks to the high frequency of updates (latest data received on 31 July, 2026), the channel maintains relevance and a high level of publication reach. Analytics show that the audience actively interacts with content, making it an important point of influence in the Facts category.
34 841
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Channel Posts
2026 July 31
NGC 4372 and the Dark Doodad
Image Credit & Copyright: Alessandro Cipolat Bares
The Dark Doodad Nebula drifts through southern skies, a tantalizing target for binoculars toward the small constellation Musca, The Fly. A dusty interstellar cloud, it's seen against rich starfields just south of the Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross. Stretching for about 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view, the Dark Doodad is punctuated near its southern tip (upper right) by yellowish globular star cluster NGC 4372. Of course NGC 4372 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy, a background object some 20,000 light-years away and only by chance along our line-of-sight to the Dark Doodad. About 700 light-years distant and over 30 light-years long, the Dark Doodad's well defined silhouette belongs to the potentially star-forming Musca molecular cloud. The dusty Dark Doodad's delightfully alliterative moniker was first coined by astro-imager and writer Dennis di Cicco in 1986 while observing Comet Halley from the Australian outback.
πDiscuss πHD
| 2 | Opinion Poll π | 1 834 |
| 3 |  2026 July 30
Red Sun through Wildfire Smoke
Image Credit & Copyright: Debra Ceravolo
Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)
This could be the view from an exoplanet orbiting around a red dwarf star, but it is our own Sun. This image was taken on July 22, 2026, in the Okanagan region in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Wildfire smoke from the Pacific Northwest acted as a solar filter, allowing the photographer to take this photo of the Sun directly. Several sunspots are also visible in this eerie image; just below and right of the center is AR 4493, a fast evolving, giant active solar region and sunspot group. The smoke is made of tiny particles that help block and scatter light with bluer colors, so the light we see coming from the Sun is dimmer and redder than usual (but it is never safe to stare directly at the Sun). Sunsets and sunrises are also more colorful because of the smoke. Some 6 billion years from now, the Sun will actually start to turn redder as it approaches its red giant phase.
πDiscuss πHD | 2 632 |
| 4 | Tomorrow's picture: a red Sun | 2 780 |
| 5 | Find dark skies and look up this August to witnessΒ the Perseid meteor showerΒ uninhibited by the Moon! | 3 111 |
| 6 |  2026 July 29
Psyche Receives Gravity Assist from Mars
Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/True Story Films
Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)
Solar System bodies make deep space exploration more fuel efficient! Todayβs video shows the Psyche spacecraft gaining speed and changing its trajectory with minimal fuel spent due to a gravity assist from Mars in May 2026. Mars has an average orbital speed of almost 87,000 km/h (54,000 mph) around the Sun. Its orbital motion and its gravity allowed Mars to pull Psyche along with it, increasing the spacecraftβs speed. Gravity assists have been used since 1959βs Luna 3 mission to allow for spacecraft (the Voyagers, Cassini) to reach farther than they could with fuel alone. This assist helped the Psyche spacecraft on its journey to the Psyche asteroid, which it will reach in 2029. While passing Mars, the spacecraft tested instruments that will analyze the asteroidβs composition and magnetic field. This is the first mission to an asteroid thought to be largely made of metal, an essential building block for planets, rather than rock or ice.
πDiscuss | 3 293 |
| 7 |  2026 July 28
Barnards Loop over Twin Volcanoes
Image Credit & Copyright: Gonzalo Laserna Vargas
What's connecting these two volcanoes? In ancient folklore, the two volcanoes, Parinacota (left) and Pomerape (right), are connected by representing a mythical prince and princess who engaged in a forbidden romance. Beneath the ground, the two peaks are not known to be connected by a common pool of hot magma, and neither volcano has erupted in the past 1000 years. Above the ground, there is usually nothing in the sky that connects them -- except if you use careful timing and look from a specific location. The featured well-planned image was captured from Bolivia in mid-April with a series of camera exposures taken on the same day and from the same location. Then, Barnard's Loop appeared to connect the volcanic peaks. Also visible in the image is the Orion Nebula in the center, the star Betelgeuse on the right, and the Rosette Nebula on the upper right.
πDiscuss πHD/Annotated | 3 637 |
| 8 | Tomorrow's picture:Β volcanic connection | 3 287 |
| 9 |  2026 July 27
NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: PaweΕ Piechnik
What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. Taken from Krakow, Poland, the featured view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a mass 10 to 20 times that of the Sun, has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia.
πDiscuss πHD | 4 056 |
| 10 | According to today's APOD, what primarily caused galaxies and galaxy clusters to begin forming? | 3 816 |
| 11 |  2026 July 26
Simulation TNG50: A Galaxy Cluster Forms
Video Credit: IllustrisTNG Project; Visualization: Dylan Nelson (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) et al.
Music: Symphony No. 5 (Ludwig van Beethoven), via YouTube Audio Library
How do clusters of galaxies form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. One famous effort is TNG50 from IllustrisTNG, an upgrade of the famous Illustris Simulation. The first part of the featured video tracks cosmic gas (mostly hydrogen) as it evolves into galaxies and galaxy clusters from the early universe to today, with brighter colors marking faster moving gas. As the universe matures, gas falls into gravitational wells, galaxies forms, galaxies spin, galaxies collide and merge, all while black holes form in galaxy centers and expel surrounding gas at high speeds. The second half of the video switches to tracking stars, showing a galaxy cluster coming together, complete with stellar streams. The outflow from black holes in TNG50 is surprisingly complex and details are being compared with our real universe. Studying how gas coalesced in the early universe helps humanity better understand how our Earth, Sun, and Solar System originally formed.
πDiscuss | 4 367 |
| 12 |  2026 July 25
Tranquility and Serenity
Image Credit & Copyright: NyΓͺrdson Ferreira
The Seas of Tranquility and Serenity are calm today. They're calm most every day though, since they are actually lunar maria, ancient lava flows filling in large impact basins on the Moon. Also known by Latin names Mare Tranquillitatis (right) and Mare Serenitatus, the smooth dark lunar "seas" are in stark contrast to the bright cratered lunar highlands surrounding them in this telescopic view. Of course their names are based on the historical, pre-telescopic designations of lunar maria. Easily visible to the unaided eye, the broad features on the Moon's near side were imagined to be like the expansive oceans of planet Earth. On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle touched down on the Mare Tranquillitatis (at lower right), establishing Tranquility base and the first human presence on the Moon.
πDiscuss πHD | 4 466 |
| 13 | π Opinion Poll | 4 435 |
| 14 | Tomorrow's picture: tranquility and serenity | 4 274 |
| 15 |  2026 July 24
RCW 86: Historical Supernova Remnant
Image Credit & Copyright: David Cowland
In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism. That part of the sky is identified with part of the southern constellation Centaurus on modern star charts. In fact, the new star was reported to be visible to the naked-eye for months before it faded from view, and is now thought to be the earliest recorded supernova. In this 21st century telescopic image, the wispy outlines of a faint emission nebula recognized as the remnant of that historical stellar explosion can be traced against a starry background. The ragged but roughly circular extent of the nebula, cataloged as RCW 86, represents interstellar gas ionized by the supernova's still expanding shock wave. Space-based images indicate an abundance of the element iron in RCW 86 and the absence of a neutron star or pulsar within the remnant, suggesting that the original supernova was Type Ia. Unlike the core collapse supernova explosion of a massive star, a Type Ia supernova is a thermonuclear detonation on a white dwarf star that has accreted material from its companion in a binary star system. Near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and larger than the full moon on the sky this supernova remnant is too faint to be seen by eye though. RCW 86 is some 8,000 light-years distant and around 100 light-years across.
πDiscuss πHD | 5 177 |
| 16 | Tomorrow's picture: 185 AD | 4 241 |
| 17 |  2026 July 23
The Large Magellanic Cloud
Image Credit & Copyright: Monica Mesa
Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)
Have you ever seen another galaxy with your own eyes? The featured image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the closest neighbors of our Milky Way. If you are anywhere south of latitude 20Β° N (but the further south, the better), you can see it with the unaided eye if you go to a dark sky location, away from big cities and light pollution. It is a dwarf irregular galaxy about 163,000 light-years away, and a member of our Local Group of galaxies. Despite being small, with a total mass approximately equivalent to 10% - 20% of the mass of the Milky Way, the LMC is very actively forming stars. This is likely due in part to the gravitational push and pull of tides caused by the Milky Way on the LMC. Some astronomers have predicted that it will collide with the Milky Way in in about 2 billion years.
πDiscuss πHD | 5 614 |
| 18 | Tomorrow's picture:Β a friendly neighborhood galaxy | 4 784 |
| 19 | Why do the Corona Australis Cloud and the Chandelier Cluster appear close together in today's image? | 5 139 |
| 20 |  +12026 July 22
The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud and the Chandelier Cluster
Image Credit: DES/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Image Processing: T.A. Rector (UAA/NOIRLab), R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NOIRLab)
Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)
The Southern Crown (Corona Australis) dazzles with young and ancient celestial jewels. The Corona Australis Cloud is a collage of reflection and emission nebulae on the left of todayβs image. At 430 light years away, this cloud is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. It contains gas cool enough (-260 Celsius or -440 Fahrenheit) to collapse into protostars. Recently formed stars paint blue hues across the cloud as their light reflects off surrounding material. The waltz of the R Coronae Australis binary system stirs up the nebula NGC 6729. The younger of the pair ionizes nearby gas with its ultraviolet light, causing it to glow. The Chandelier Cluster (NGC 6723) dangles from the top right, but is actually tens of thousands of light years farther away than its apparent star-forming neighbor. While NGC 6723 experienced multiple periods of star formation creating slightly younger stars, the chandelier twinkles with stars almost as old as the universe.
πDiscuss πHD/Annotated | 5 162 |
