You Never See the Sun Where It Actually Is — Only Where It Was 8 Minutes Ago
Light takes time to travel, so every glance into space is a glance into the past. The night sky shows stars as they were years, even millennia, ago.
Today’s hidden fact · Sunday, August 9, 2026
Voyager 1 is over 24 billion km away, so far its radio signal takes 22+ hours to arrive, sent by a transmitter weaker than a refrigerator bulb.
A football-field-sized lab, falling around Earth at 8 km every second.
ISS Oleg Kononenko · Nikolai Chub · Tracy Caldwell Dyson · Matthew Dominick · Michael Barratt · Jeanette Epps · Alexander Grebenkin · Butch Wilmore · Sunita Williams
Tiangong Li Guangsu · Li Cong · Ye Guangfu
2018 SP2

Mirrored Meteor and Milky Way
On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The bright and colorful meteor trail was captured next to the central Milky Way, whose dark interstellar dust cl…

Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-385

Starship | Starlink Group 31-1 (Starship Flight 14)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-13

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Transporter 18 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare)

Falcon Heavy | NROL-97

SR75 | Flight 2

Falcon 9 Block 5 | SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A

Nuri | NeonSat-2 to 6

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-25

GSLV Mk II | IRNSS-1L (NVS-03)

H3-24 | Martian Moon eXplorer (MMX)

Ariane 64 Block 2 | Amazon Leo (LE-04)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bandwagon 5 (Dedicated Mid-Inclination Rideshare)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Dragon CRS-2 SpX-35

Long March 12A | Flight 2
2018 SP2
138971 2001 CB21watched by NASA
2013 HO11
2008 ST
2019 SW5
523934 1998 FF14watched by NASA

NASA · today
APOD: 2026 September 26 – Mirrored Meteor and Milky Way
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 September 26 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cos…

NASASpaceflight · today
Flight 14 waits on approval as a near-term manifest sketches Starship’s next steps

NASA · today
NASA, Boeing to Provide Update on Starliner Development

Spaceflight Now · today
SpaceX Falcon 9 to launch classified mission for U.S. Space Force from West Coast

NASA · today
NASA Welcomes San Marino Signing the Artemis Accords

NASA · today
NASA Tests Dual Mode Propulsion CubeSat Ahead of Launch

NASA · today
2026-2027 DWU: Middle School Design Challenge
Scroll from your rooftop to the edge of the observable universe. Every stop is real.
Begin the voyage →The real solar system, computed from orbital mechanics. Scrub time and watch the maths.
Run the simulation →Five questions, one round a day, same for the whole planet. Build your streak.
Play today's round →Put Earth next to the Sun. Then next to a black hole. Watch your brain give up.
Compare anything →Black hole, light-year, quasar — every space term, explained like a human.
Learn the language →Light takes time to travel, so every glance into space is a glance into the past. The night sky shows stars as they were years, even millennia, ago.
In 2015 we caught two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, wobbling spacetime by less than the width of a proton. Einstein predicted it a century earlier.
The Carrington Event made auroras glow over the tropics and shocked telegraph operators. A repeat today could cripple power grids and satellites worldwide.