February 4, 2026
Another birthday means another year in which the universe got to experience itself through your particular combination of wonder and will.
Spiral Galaxy NGC 1512: Wide Field
Birthday · February 4, 2026
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APOD published February 4, 2026. Credit: Daniel Stern. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Most galaxies don't have any rings -- why does this galaxy have three? To begin, a ring that's near NGC 1512's center -- and so hard to see here -- is the nuclear ring which glows brightly with recently formed stars. Next out is a ring of stars and dust appearing both red and blue, called, counter-intuitively, the inner ring. This inner ring connects ends of a diffuse central bar of stars that runs horizontally across the galaxy. Farthest out in this wide field image is a ragged structure that might be considered an outer ring. This outer ring appears spiral-like and is dotted with clusters of bright blue stars. All these ring structures are thought to be affected by NGC 1512's own gravitational asymmetries in a drawn-out process called secular evolution. The featured image was captured last month from a telescope at Deep Sky Chile in Chile.
Image credit: Daniel Stern