t was from the Oukaimeden Observatory, in the High Atlas south of Marrakech, that the image NASA chose on September 24 as its Astronomy Picture of the Day was taken.
Titled “The Ghosts of Five Supernovas” and signed by the astrophotographers Stephane Vetter and Yann Sainty, it adds up to nearly two hundred hours of observation, exposures over ten fields then assembled into a mosaic.
The frame covers a patch of sky in the constellation of Auriga equal to a thousand full moons, and gathers the remnants of five supernovas, among them the so-called Spaghetti Nebula.
The filaments are the gas blown out by each explosion, red for hydrogen and blue for oxygen. The five blasts happened independently, at distances of up to several thousand light-years.
The image belongs to the observatory’s PRO-AM program, which pairs high-level astrophotographers with scientific rigor.
Photo: Stephane Vetter and Yann Sainty.
NASA - Astronomy Picture of the Day, The Ghosts of Five Supernovas, 24 septembre 2026
Médias24 - Cinq “fantômes” stellaires captés depuis l’Oukaïmeden, l’image du jour de la NASA
