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
2010 JA

Webb's View of M64
Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Web…

Soyuz 2.1b | Progress MS-35 (96P)

Long March 12 | Unknown Payload

Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-259

Kuaizhou 11 | Unknown Payload

Electron | Owl By The Dozen (StriX Launch 12)

Long March 2D | Unknown Payload

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-27

Kinetica 1 | Unknown Payload

Starship | Flight 14

Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-xxx ("R-3")

Electron | LOXSAT 1

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-13

Falcon 9 Block 5 | SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A

Long March 12A | Flight 2

Long March 8A | Unknown Payload
2010 JA
2012 VB37
2019 GM1
2007 QE3
2018 MC5
2007 GU4

NASA · today
APOD: 2026 September 16 – Webb’s View of M64
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 September 16 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cos…

NASASpaceflight · today
Progress MS-35 poised to launch cargo to ISS from Kazakhstan

SpacePolicyOnline.com · today
Starship to Attempt First Orbital Flight Next Week

NASA · today
NASA Ames Stars of the Month: September 2026

Spaceflight Now · today
Live coverage: SpaceX to launch national security payload for the U.S. Space Force on Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg

European Spaceflight · today
Open Cosmos Raises €300 Million as Investors Back Europe’s Space Push

NASA · today
NASA Invites Media to International Observe the Moon Night
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.