11 September 2026
Kish from orbit
True colour, from the MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite.
NASA Worldview / GIBS
The Persian Gulf by day
The whole Persian Gulf in one pass, with the coastlines drawn on.
NASA Worldview / GIBS
The Persian Gulf at night
VIIRS is sensitive enough to image city light: this is the region drawn by where people are.
NASA Worldview / GIBS
M83: The Southern Pinwheel
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, the Southern Pinwheel. Still, reddish star forming regions that dot this cosmic pinwheel's spiral arms have suggested another nickname, the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. A mere 40,000 light-years across, smaller than the Milky Way, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp, groundbased telescopic view also features foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. APOD's main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod
This explanation is in English; it has not been translated.
Aldo Zanetti