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February 23 in spaceflight
Wikipedia records 7 spaceflight and astronomy events on February 23. Below are the pictures NASA published on February 23 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD7ENTRIES
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1941 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for February 23, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on February 23
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 18-hour exposure, taken from Bory Tucholskie, Poland covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight. Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (after 1995)
© Kamil Fiedosiuk — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
Saturn looks slightly different in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth. The hexagon's existence was not predicted, and its origin and likely stability remain a topics of research. Saturn's famous rings circle the planet and cast shadows below the equator. The featured image was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in 2014 in several infrared colors. In 2017 September, the Cassini mission was brought to a dramatic conclusion when the spacecraft was directed to dive into the ringed giant. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
NASA · public domain
2024
The Pencil Nebula Supernova Shock Wave
This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Centered and moving upward in the sharply detailed color composite its thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge-on. Discovered in the 1840s by Sir John Herschel, the narrow-looking nebula is sometimes known as Herschel's Ray. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its pointed appearance suggests its modern popular name, the Pencil Nebula. The Pencil Nebula is about 800 light-years away. Nearly 5 light-years long it represents only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant though. The enormous Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the section of the shock wave seen as the Pencil nebula was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar material.
© Helge Buesing — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries
Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries. Some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy, the island universe is an enormous 200,000 light-years across. Also known as NGC 772, it sports a prominent, outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's overdeveloped spiral arm is pumped-up by galactic-scale gravitational tides. Interactions with its brightest companion galaxy, the more compact NGC 770 seen above and right of the larger spiral, are likely responsible. Embedded in faint star streams revealed in the deep telescopic exposure, NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with spiky foreground Milky Way stars in matching yellowish hues.
© Josep Drudis — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
Orion over Green Bank
What will the huge Green Bank Telescope discover tonight? Pictured, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) on the lower right is the largest fully-pointable single-dish radio telescope in the world. With a central dish larger than a football field, the GBT is nestled in the hills of West Virginia, USA in a radio quiet zone where the use of cell phones, WiFi emitters, and even microwave ovens are limited. The GBT explores our universe not only during the night -- but during the day, too, since the daytime sky is typically dark in radio waves. Taken in late January, the featured image was planned for months to get the setting location of Orion just right. The image is a composite of a foreground shot taken over a kilometer away from the GBT, and a background shot built up of long exposures during the previous night. The deep background image of Orion is fitting because the GBT is famous for, among many discoveries, mapping the unusual magnetic field in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
© Dave Green — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Video: Perseverance Landing on Mars
What would it look like to land on Mars? To better monitor the instruments involved in the Entry, Decent, and Landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars last week, cameras with video capability were included that have now returned their images. The featured 3.5-minute composite video begins with the opening of a huge parachute that dramatically slows the speeding spacecraft as it enters the Martian atmosphere. Next the heat shield is seen separating and falls ahead. As Perseverance descends, Mars looms large and its surface becomes increasingly detailed. At just past 2-minutes into the video, the parachute is released and Perseverance begins to land with dust-scattering rockets. Soon the Sky Crane takes over and puts Perseverance down softly, then quickly jetting away. The robotic Perseverance rover will now begin exploring ancient Jezero Crater, including a search for signs that life once existed on Earth's neighboring planet.
NASA · public domain
What happened on February 23
1941
Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.
Plutonium ↗
1987
SN 1987A, the first supernova that modern astronomers were able to study in great detail, was observed from Earth occurring in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
SN 1987A ↗
2019
Atlas Air Flight 3591, a Boeing 767 freighter, crashes into Trinity Bay near Anahuac, Texas, killing all three people on board.
Atlas Air Flight 3591 ↗
Sources and licences
Event text and thumbnails come from Wikipedia and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Images are drawn only from Wikimedia Commons, which does not accept non-free content — each thumbnail links to its file page, where its licence and author are recorded.
Launch records are from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2. This archive is still being mirrored, so some days are incomplete. Pictures are NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day; NASA imagery is generally not subject to copyright, but individual APOD entries are frequently the property of the photographer, and each caption says which applies.
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Cosmos — Carl Sagan
Still the best single argument for why any of this matters, and it leaves the arithmetic in. For a reader who wants the science, not just the awe.
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Pale Blue Dot — Carl Sagan
The case for leaving Earth, written by someone unsentimental about how hard that is. Suits readers who want the argument rather than the poster.
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Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
Hard-SF problem solving in The Martian's key — for anyone who liked the engineering more than the peril. The only novel on this list.
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