A Partial Solar Eclipse Sequence Reflected
27.12.2019

What's happened to the Sun? Yesterday, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could see the Sun rise partially eclipsed by the Moon. The unusual sight was captured...

Posters of the Solar System
19.05.2020

Would you like a NASA astronomy-exploration poster? You are just one page-print away. Any of the panels you see on the featured image can appear on your wall. Moreover, this NASA page has, typically, several more posters of each of the Solar System objects depicted.

The Geminid
16.12.2022

Returning from beyond the Moon, on December 11 the Orion spacecraft entered Earth's atmosphere at almost 11 kilometers per second. That's half the speed of the grain of dust that created this long fireball meteor when it entered the atmosphere on December 13, near the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower.

Shakespeare in Space
29.12.2023

In 1986, Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to explore ice giant planet Uranus close up. Still, this newly released image from the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the James Webb Space Telescope offers a detailed look at the distant world. The tilted outer planet rotates on its axis once in about 17 hours.

APOD: 2026 August 9 Б Contemplating the Sun
9.08.2026

Have you contemplated your home star recently? Featured here, a Sun partially eclipsed on the top left by the Moon is also seen eclipsed by earthlings contemplating the eclipse below. This spectacular menagerie...

Daphnis the Wavemaker
21.01.2017

Plunging close to the outer edges of Saturn's rings, on January 16 the Cassini spacecraft captured this closest yet view of Daphnis. About 8 kilometers across and orbiting within the bright ring system's Keeler gap, the small moon is making waves.

Mercury as Revealed by MESSENGER
23.07.2017

Mercury had never been seen like this before. In 2008, the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft buzzed past Mercury for the second time and imaged terrain mapped previously only by comparatively crude radar. The featured image was recorded as MESSENGER looked back 90 minutes after passing, from an altitude of about 27,000 kilometers.

Great Conjunction: Saturn and Jupiter Converge
15.12.2020

It's happening. Saturn and Jupiter are moving closer and will soon appear in almost exactly the same direction. Coincidentally, on the night of the December solstice -- the longest night of the year in the north and the longest day in the south -- the long-awaited Great Conjunction will occur.

SMART 1: Pythagoras Crater
3.02.2005

Stark shadows show off the central peaks and terraced walls of 120 kilometer wide Pythagoras Crater in this mosaic of images from ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft. Characteristic of large, complex impact craters on the Moon, the central uplift was produced by a rebound of the suddenly molten lunar crust during the violent impact event.

In Ganymede s Shadow
7.10.2022

At opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's sky, late last month Jupiter is also approaching perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in its elliptical orbit, early next year. That makes Jupiter exceptionally close to our fair planet, currently resulting in excellent views of the Solar System's ruling gas giant.