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APOD: 2026 October 23 – Andromeda in Southern Spring

2026-10-23 04:05

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.

The Andromeda galaxy above rolling hills.

Andromeda in Southern Spring

Explanation: Looking toward the north from Mullion, New South Wales, Australia, the Andromeda Galaxy never gets more than a few degrees above the horizon. During the southern hemisphere spring, Andromeda is highest in the sky around midnight though. And in this telephoto scene from October 10/11, multiple exposures were used to reveal the spiral galaxy in tantalizing detail as it climbed above rolling Australian hills. Also known as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest objects in the Messier catalog, but is only visible to the unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch. Digitally tracked and stacked frames were combined with a foreground shot in the deep astro-image composite to reveal the galaxy’s greater extent in planet Earth’s night. In the springtime night skyscape,the closest large spiral galaxy spans nearly 6 full moons.

Tomorrow’s picture: pixels in space

Date	October 23, 2026
Credit & Copyright:	Lucy Yunxi Hu
Authors & editors:	Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, Robert Nemiroff, Keighley Rockcliffe
A service of:	ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

Yesterday’s Image

APOD: 2026 October 22 – The First Green Star, WD J1330+6435

Tomorrow’s Image

El Niño Then and Now

2026-10-23 04:00

october 13, 1997

october 12, 2026

Side-by-side maps of the Pacific Ocean compare sea surface height anomalies in October 1997 (left) and October 2026 (right). In both, red areas of higher-than-normal sea surface height stretch across the central and eastern Pacific and reach South America.

Sea levels are higher than normal across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific in October 2026 (right), a hallmark of El Niño. The pattern closely resembles October 1997 (left), during another one of the strongest El Niño events in the satellite altimetry record.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

october 13, 1997

october 12, 2026

October 13, 1997 – October 12, 2026

El Niño is part of a natural climate pattern that occurs roughly every two to seven years, bringing warmer-than-normal water to parts of the equatorial Pacific. The most recent very strong El Niño events, in 1997-98 and 2015-16, upended weather patterns. Impacts spanned the planet, from fires in Indonesia and the Amazon, to crop failures due to drought in southern Africa, to heavy rain and coastal flooding in Southern California. The current El Niño rivals these past heavyweights.

Every El Niño grows from a feedback loop between the atmosphere and the ocean. Trade winds normally keep warm water piled up in the western Pacific, where it stands higher than in the east. When those winds weaken, that warm water begins to pulse eastward, which further weakens and sometimes reverses the winds, allowing even more warm water to move east. The cycle intensifies as waters continue to warm and pile up in the central and eastern Pacific.

But each El Niño has its own character, shaped by where in the Pacific the warmth builds and how the atmosphere responds. “The search for the ‘typical’ El Niño is very elusive,” said Josh Willis, project scientist for sea level missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “They’re all different in terms of where they land and how their impacts play out.”

Altimetry satellites can track those differences by measuring the height of the sea surface. Because water expands as it warms, higher-than-normal sea levels in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific signal the buildup of heat associated with El Niño. The maps above depict sea surface height anomalies across the Pacific Ocean on October 13, 1997 (left), and on October 12, 2026 (right). Data are from the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite and the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, respectively, and were processed by scientists at JPL.

Shades of red indicate where sea levels were higher than average. Normal sea level conditions appear white, and lower areas are blue. Signals related to seasonal cycles and long-term trends have been removed to highlight sea level anomalies associated with El Niño and other short-term natural phenomena.

“What’s unique about altimetry is that we have a 35-year record from nearly identical satellites flying almost the same ground track, with each mission overlapping the next,” Willis said. “That lets us look back in time and compare this El Niño to what happened in 1997. And right now, this one is on track to be even bigger.”

Compared with the 1997-98 event, El Niño in 2026 came on much more suddenly. But as of October, the two events appear similar in character—the tilt of sea level (low in the west and high in the east) and high, warm water extending all the way to South America—so Willis thinks the impacts could be similar as well. In 1997-98, that meant, for instance, lots of rain in California and across the southern tier of the U.S.

Three stacked maps of the Pacific Ocean compare sea surface height anomalies in October 1997 (top), October 2015 (middle), and October 2026 (bottom). In 1997 and 2026, dark red areas of exceptionally high sea surface height extend across the eastern Pacific and pile up against the coast of South America. In 2015, the dark red stays farther offshore and does not reach the coast.

The 2015-16 El Niño was also very strong, as elevated sea levels in October 2015 (middle) show. But its pattern differed from those in October 1997 (top) and October 2026 (bottom): less of the elevated water reached the coast of South America, which contributed to different weather patterns that year.

The 2015-16 El Niño was another heavy hitter but differed in its character. Sea surface height anomalies on October 12, 2015, based on altimetry data from the Jason-2 satellite, are shown above in context with maps from around the same time in 1997 and 2026. In 2015, the exceptionally warm, high water along the equator didn’t push up against South America to the extent it did in the other years. Rainfall impacts that winter concentrated more over Central America and the southeastern U.S., with significant flooding in Mexico.

NOAA’s El Niño outlook on October 8, 2026, called for an 83 percent chance of a strong-to-very strong El Niño through the first three months of 2027. But exactly how the impacts will play out in winter 2026-27 and beyond remains to be seen. Willis noted that El Niño’s influence propagates through a chaotic atmosphere, and the signal can get muddled as it extends beyond the tropics. “There’s always a bit of a dice roll here,” Willis said. “Just because this El Niño looks like 1997 doesn’t mean it will be exactly the same—it’s just our best guess at the moment.”

NASA Earth Observatory maps by Lauren Dauphin, using NASA-SSH altimetry data provided by Josh Willis, Severine Fournier, and Kevin Marlis, NASA/JPL-Caltech. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Downloads

October 13, 1997

JPEG (1.22 MB)

The 2015-16 El Niño was also very strong, as elevated sea levels in October 2015 show.

October 12, 2015

JPEG (1.21 MB)

October 12, 2026

JPEG (1.24 MB)

References & Resources

NASA Earth (2026, October 15) NASA Satellites Observe Historic 2026 El Niño. Accessed October 22, 2026.
NASA Earth (2026, October 1) El Niño. Accessed October 22, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory (2026, June 18) El Niño is Underway. Accessed October 22, 2026.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2026, October) Ocean Surface Topography from Space. Accessed October 22, 2026.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2026, October 21) El Niño/La Niña Watch & PDO. Accessed October 22, 2026.
National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center (2026, October 8) El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion. Accessed October 22, 2026.

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NASA Invites Media to 2026 von Braun Space Exploration Symposium

2026-10-22 21:39

Members of the media are invited to join NASA at the 2026 von Braun Space Exploration Symposium from Monday, Oct. 26, to Wednesday, Oct. 28, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

This year’s symposium is focused on humanity’s return to the Moon, sustainable lunar infrastructure, advanced space propulsion, and the evolving space workforce.

Panels include discussions on Artemis II and III, space propulsion flash talks, building utilities and infrastructure for sustainable lunar operations, Moon base supply chain resilience, space nuclear technology, navigating the new NASA workforce, and engineering the future, featuring keynotes and awards presentations.

NASA speakers include:

Deputy Associate Administrator Casey Swails
Stephen Cash, director, NASA Marshall
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis II launch director, NASA Kennedy
Steve Creech, Human Landing System program manager, NASA Marshall
Debbie Whitis Korth, acting program manager, Orion Program, NASA Johnson

To request an interview with NASA speakers during the event, media must contact Lance D. Davis, lance.d.davis@nasa.gov, and Joel Wallace, joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov. Media interested in participating in-person or online must contact the American Astronomical Society to register.

Organized by the American Astronautical Society in collaboration with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the annual event gathers leaders from government, industry, policy, and academia to discuss the current landscape of space exploration and help chart a path forward.

For more information on NASA Marshall, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/marshall

-end-

Lance D. Davis
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-640-9065
lance.d.davis@nasa.gov  

Details

Last Updated

Oct 22, 2026

Editor

Lee Mohon

Contact

Lance D. Davis

lance.d.davis@nasa.gov

Location

Marshall Space Flight Center

Related Terms

Marshall Space Flight Center

Spiral’s Edge

2026-10-22 21:35

An edge-on spiral galaxy. Its rusty-brown dust lanes bisect the galaxy lengthwise. Bright-blue points dot the galaxy and seem to be more dense on its left side. A bright foreground star shines just to the left of the galaxy's center. The background is black and dotted with distant galaxies and a smattering of foreground stars, which are easily identified by their diffraction spikes.

NASA, ESA, Michael Jones (California Institute of Technology); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image released on Oct. 16, 2026, features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove. Hubble captured the image as part of a survey looking at 260 satellite galaxies around 22 Milky Way-like host galaxies within a radius of about 32 million light-years from Earth. Low-mass galaxies like the ones in this Hubble observing program provide a way to test the predictions of cosmological models on small scales, which struggle to match observations.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, Michael Jones (California Institute of Technology); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

NASA’s Hubble Charts Path for Roman with Gravitational Lenses

2026-10-22 16:20

4 min read

NASA’s Hubble Charts Path for Roman with Gravitational Lenses

A spiral galaxy with two distinct arms forming a backwards

A sinuous spiral galaxy (center) appears in the same field of view as a vivid gravitational lens (right corner) in this Hubble image. The lens consists of a reddish elliptical foreground galaxy and the blue arcs of a magnified background galaxy.

NASA, ESA, and X. Huang (University of San Francisco); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

A sweeping barred spiral galaxy marks the spot in this image, but the real treasure is the gravitational lens in the lower-right corner, where a distant background galaxy is being magnified and distorted by the gravity of a closer galaxy.

This observation is one of many gravitational lensing images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for science with the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Gravitational lensing occurs when the mass of a foreground object – such as a galaxy – warps spacetime, causing light to bend, distort, and magnify as it passes around the object, similar to a giant lens in space. Lenses like this occur when a precise chance alignment takes place between the foreground and background galaxies, causing light from the background galaxy to curve around the foreground galaxy.

In this image, the gravitational lens features a foreground elliptical galaxy that is about 4.5 billion light-years away. That means the light we see from this galaxy now would have first started traveling toward us when our solar system was still forming. The background galaxy is about eight billion light-years away, almost twice as far. It appears as a pair of arcs, one large and very noticeable to the upper left of the foreground galaxy, the other a much smaller, flipped image of the same background galaxy to the lower right. This configuration is called an arc-counterarc pair.

A Hubble image of gravitational lens DESI J194.5345+03.5358 and a nearby spiral galaxy. The lens is magnified in a callout box. The lens has a spherical yellow galaxy at its center, with a large arc to the upper left of the galaxy and the same arc, flipped and much smaller, to the lower right of the galaxy.

The background galaxy magnified and made visible by this gravitational lens appears twice in this image ― as a large arc and smaller, flipped arc ― on opposite sides of the elliptical foreground galaxy.

NASA, ESA, and X. Huang (University of San Francisco); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The more massive the foreground galaxy is, the stronger the gravitational lens and the more significantly it bends light. By studying the distortion of the background galaxy, researchers can determine how much mass the foreground galaxy contains. This plays a huge role in the study of dark matter, the mysterious, invisible substance that makes up the majority of mass in the universe. The visible matter is not enough to account for the level of distortion in the background galaxy, which allows researchers to calculate both the mass of the foreground galaxy and how much dark matter it contains.

Almost all of the objects in this image are galaxies, except for a few scattered foreground stars. The barred spiral galaxy in this image – so called because its arms extend from a bar of stars in its center – is about the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, which astronomers think is a barred spiral as well. The tiny spiral to the left of the large spiral may be a satellite galaxy, similar to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds that orbit the Milky Way.

Hubble views the cosmos primarily in visible and ultraviolet light with some infrared coverage, and Roman sees mainly infrared wavelengths and some visible light. Hubble can provide high-resolution views of individual objects, while Roman has a much larger field of view conducive to panoramas.

Images like this offer a glimpse of how Hubble and Roman will work together to build an even more comprehensive picture of the cosmos. This is just one of many gravitational lens images captured by Hubble. Astronomers will use them to analyze gravitational distortions to learn more about dark matter in the foreground galaxies and to lay the groundwork for future Roman observations.

Hubble can only view these gravitational lenses one at a time, while Roman’s wide view of the sky will provide a greater sample of these lenses. Astronomers are using Hubble’s sharp images to build a computer model to better analyze dark matter-induced distortions. This tool will help astronomers analyze Roman’s large images. Hubble will also follow up on interesting lenses Roman detects.