Ghosts of Five Supernovas Illuminate Auriga Sky

The Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 24, 2026 showcases a vast field in the constellation Auriga, where five supernova remnants are visible across a sky area equivalent to about a thousand full moons. The image, captured at Morocco’s Oukaïmeden Observatory after roughly 200 hours of exposure, highlights remnants 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, along with the open cluster M37 and the Tadpole Nebula.

These stellar explosions occurred independently at varying distances—up to several thousand light‑years from Earth—and are estimated to be tens of thousands of years old. Their expanding shells emit red hydrogen and blue doubly‑ionized oxygen filaments, visible in the annotated version of the photograph.

The APOD team, credited to photographers Stephane Vetter and Yann Sainty and edited by Cecilia Chirenti, Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, and Keighley Rockcliffe, notes that early humans may have witnessed such events as bright new stars that faded over weeks.

For image submissions, APOD’s email address has changed; see the submission page. The site is transitioning from apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod. Source: NASA APOD, September 24, 2026.