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November 15 in spaceflight
Wikipedia records 7 spaceflight and astronomy events on November 15. Below are the pictures NASA published on November 15 in 5 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 1889 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED5IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 15, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on November 15
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2025
Andromeda and Friends
This magnificent extragalactic skyscape looks toward the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. It also accomplishes a Messier catalog trifecta by including Andromeda, cataloged as Messier 31 (M31), along with Messier 32 (M32), and Messier 110 (M110) in the same telescopic field of view. In this frame, M32 is just left of the Andromeda Galaxy's bright core with M110 below and to the right. M32 and M110 are both elliptical galaxies themselves and satellites of the larger spiral Andromeda. By combining 60 hours of broadband and narrowband image data, the deep telescopic view also reveals tantalizing details of dust lanes, young star clusters, and star-forming regions along Andromeda's spiral arms, and faint, foreground clouds of glowing hydrogen gas. For now, Andromeda and friends are some 2.5 million light-years from our own large spiral Milky Way. Fun Fact: It has been 11,111 days since APOD was founded.
© Piotr Czerski — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3
Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze across the western Ocean of Storms on the surface of the Moon. The 3D anaglyph features Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in November of 1969. Surveyor 3 had landed at the site on the inside slope of a small crater about 2 1/2 years earlier in April of 1967. Visible on the horizon beyond the far crater wall, Apollo 12's Lunar Module Intrepid touched down less than 200 meters (650 feet) away, easy moonwalking distance from the robotic Surveyor spacecraft. This stereo image was carefully created from two separate pictures (AS12-48-7133, AS12-48-7134) captured on the lunar surface. They depict the scene from only slightly different viewpoints, approximating the separation between human eyes.
NASA · public domain
2023
M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab
Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the death explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years across, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second. You can see the expansion by comparing these sharp images from the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. The Crab's dynamic, fragmented filaments were captured in visible light by Hubble in 2005 and Webb in infrared light in 2023. This cosmic crustacean lies about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.
NASA · public domain
2022
Wolf's Cave Nebula
The mysterious blue reflection nebula found in catalogs as VdB 152 or Ced 201 really is very faint. It lies at the tip of the long dark nebula Barnard 175 in a dusty complex that has also been called Wolf's Cave. At the center of this deep telescopic view, the cosmic apparitions are nearly 1,400 light-years away along the northern Milky Way in the royal constellation Cepheus. Interstellar dust in the region blocks light from background stars and scatters light from the embedded bright star, giving the end nebula its characteristic blue color. Though stars do form in molecular clouds, this star seems to have only accidentally wandered into the area, as its measured velocity through space is very different from the cloud's velocity. At the image bottom is the planetary nebula Dengel-Hartl 5, while red glowing gas from an ancient supernova remnant is also visible along the image's right side.
© Gianni Lacroce — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Light Pillar over Volcanic Etna
What happening above that volcano? Something very unusual -- a volcanic light pillar. More typically, light pillars are caused by sunlight and so appear as a bright column that extends upward above a rising or setting Sun. Alternatively, other light pillars -- some quite colorful -- have been recorded above street and house lights. This light pillar, though, was illuminated by the red light emitted by the glowing magma of an erupting volcano. The volcano is Italy's Mount Etna, and the featured image was captured with a single shot a few hours after sunset in mid-June. Freezing temperatures above the volcano's ash cloud created ice-crystals either in cirrus clouds high above the volcano -- or in condensed water vapor expelled by Mount Etna. These ice crystals -- mostly flat toward the ground but fluttering -- then reflected away light from the volcano's caldera. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
© Giancarlo Tinè — used with the credit NASA publishes
What happened on November 15
1889
Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.
Brazil ↗
1959
Two men murdered a family in Holcomb, Kansas; the events became the subject of Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, a pioneering work of the true crime genre.
Clutter family murders ↗
1966
Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
Project Gemini ↗
1967
The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
North American X-15 ↗
1988
The Soviet spacecraft Buran, a reusable vehicle built in response to NASA's Space Shuttle program, was launched, uncrewed, on its only flight.
Buran (spacecraft) ↗
1990
Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-38, a classified mission for the Department of Defense.
Space Shuttle Atlantis ↗
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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General-audience astronomy and spaceflight — none of it a textbook.
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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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