313 nebulas, around 800 hours

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for October 2, 2026 is not one nebula but 313: the complete Sharpless Catalog of H II regions, the glowing clouds of ionized hydrogen the catalog is named for. Astrophotographer Bing Xin shot all of them from the dark skies of Eastern China and Inner Mongolia. Each object took two to six hours to capture, and the whole set came to roughly 800 hours. The picture is a record of patience as much as of gas.