APOD: 2025 July 18 Б ISS Meets Saturn
18.07.2025

This month, bright planet Saturn rises in evening skies, its rings oriented nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. And in the early morning hours on July 6, it posed very briefly with the International Space Station when viewed from a location in Federal Way, Washington, USA.

Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
6.12.2025

Fifty three years ago, in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This snapshot from another world was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the lunar valley's floor.

Candor and Ophir Chasmata
18.02.2003

First imaged by the Mariner 9 spacecraft, Valles Marineris, the grand canyon of Mars, is a system of enormous depressions called chasmata that stretch some 4,000 kilometers along the Martian equator. Looking north...

A Complete Aurora
2.04.1997

Aurora frequently make complete rings around a pole of the Earth. This particular "crown", visible in orange near the top of this image, was taken by the orbiting Polar spacecraft about one year ago and released by NASA last month.

La Nina Earth
15.02.1999

La Niña is a temporary climate change caused by unusually cold water in the central Pacific Ocean. Cold water topping an unusually low sea level is shown as purple in the above false-color picture taken by the orbiting TOPEX/Poseidon satellite in mid-January.

Shoreline Terrain on Saturns Titan
21.09.2005

What could have created this unusual terrain on Saturn's moon Titan? The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped once again, earlier this month, past the Solar System's most enigmatic moon and radar imaged a rich but unusual region that appears to be some sort of shoreline.

3D Full Moon
2.06.2007

Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this satisfying stereo anaglyph of the Full Moon. A corresponding stereo image pair, intended for cross-eyed viewing, is also available through this link. Regardless of your...

A Prominent Solar Prominence from SOHO
15.03.2009

What's happened to our Sun? It was sporting a spectacular -- but not very unusual -- solar prominence. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field.

Explore Rosettas Comet
3.10.2016

What would it be like to fly around a comet nucleus? To find out, just wait for your WebGL-compatible browser to load a detailed digital model of Comet 67P and then -- go exploring! With...

Comet 45P Passes Near the Earth
12.02.2017

A large snowball has just passed the Earth. Known as Comet 45P/HondaMrkosPajduАkovА", or 45P for short, the comet came 10 times closer to Earth yesterday than the Earth ever gets to the Sun. During this passage, the comet was photographed sporting a thin ion tail and a faint but expansive green coma.