APOD: 2026 September 24 – The Ghosts of Five Supernovas

EXTRACTO DEL FEED · ATRIBUIDO AL MEDIO

APOD

Science

APOD

APOD: 2026 September 24 –…

Today’s APOD

Archive

Submissions

Index

Search

Calendar

RSS

Education

About

Discuss

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.

OriginalAnnotated

The Ghosts of Five Supernovas

Explanation: The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary image. It was acquired at Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco with approximately 200 hours of observations and shows a large patch of the sky, equivalent to the area of one thousand full moons tiled together, in the constellation of Auriga (the Charioteer). From left to right, the five supernova remnants visible across the field are G181.1+9.5, G182.4+4.3, G179.0+2.6, G180.0−1.7 (Sh2-240, the Spaghetti Nebula), and G178.2−4.2. They are highlighted in the annotated image, together with open cluster M37 and the Tadpole Nebula. As each explosion expanded into space, it created a growing shell of shocked gas and delicate filamentary structures shown in red (hydrogen) and blue (oxygen), respectively. These ancient stellar explosions happened independently; they are at various distances up to about several thousands of light-years away from Earth and have estimated ages up to tens of thousands of years old. Early humans may have seen them as bright new stars, fading over weeks or months.

APOD’s email for image submissions has changed. Please see: APOD Submissions.

APOD’s main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Tomorrow’s picture: what’s next?

Date

September 24, 2026

Credit

Stephane Vetter, Yann Sainty

Authors & editors:

Cecilia Chirenti, Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Keighley Rockcliffe

A service of:

ASD at NASA / GSFC,

NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

Random APOD Generator

Yesterday’s Image

APOD: 2026 September 23 – A New Lunar Crater: McGetchin

Tomorrow’s Image