M100: A Grand Design
3.02.2001

Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a Grand Design spiral galaxy. A large galaxy of over 100 billion or so stars with well defined spiral arms, it is similar to our own Milky Way.

Aurora Alaskan Style
29.03.2001

Have you checked the space weather report lately? With a coronal mass ejection (CME) headed our way and an immense sunspot group tracking across the solar photosphere, skygazers should be on the alert.

Sunspot Region 30
18.07.2002

The solar active region designated number 0030 is now appearing on the visible hemisphere of the closest star. Dwarfed by the Sun's disk, the group of sunspots which make up region 30 actually cover an enormous area -- nearly 10 times the size of Earth.

Moons and Bright Mars
1.08.2003

In this serene view, the moons of Earth along with the bright planet Mars shine above the city of Turku near the southwestern tip of Finland. Of course Earth's large natural satellite, the Moon, at a distance of 400,000 kilometers, is by far the brightest object in this sky.

Pangea Ultima: Earth in 250 Million Years
22.09.2007

Is this what will become of the Earth's surface? The surface of the Earth is broken up into several large plates that are slowly shifting. About 250 million years ago, the plates...

A Spherule from the Earths Moon
10.01.2010

How did this spherule come to be on the Moon? When a meteorite strikes the Moon, the energy of the impact melts some of the splattering rock, a fraction of which might cool into tiny glass beads. Many of these glass beads were present in lunar soil samples returned to Earth by the Apollo missions.

Spiral Galaxies in Collision
19.01.2014

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars.

Ripples Through a Dark Sky
30.07.2016

Sunlight ripples through a dark sky on this Swedish summer midnight as noctilucent or night shining clouds seem to imitate the river below. In fact, the seasonal clouds often appear at high latitudes in corresponding summer months. Also known as polar mesospheric clouds, they form as water vapor is driven into the cold upper atmosphere.

Soyuz vs Supermoon
17.11.2016

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, this Soyuz rocket stands on the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 14.

Daphnis and the Rings of Saturn
3.11.2019

What's happening to the rings of Saturn? A little moon making big waves. The moon is 8-kilometer Daphnis and it is making waves in the Keeler Gap of Saturn's rings using just its gravity -- as it bobs up and down, in and out.