Io: The Prometheus Plume
11.02.2007

What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.

Jupiter: The Great Yellow Spot
11.03.1997

What happened to Jupiter's Great Red Spot? Operating at a chilly 55 degrees Kelvin, the Galileo Spacecraft's Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) recorded this composite image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot in late June 1996.

Europe at Night
7.10.1997

This is what Europe looks like at night! Can you find your favorite European city? Although not all of Europe is shown, city lights might make this task possible. Continental outlines have been artificially drawn in yellow. The above picture is actually a composite of over 200 images made by satellites orbiting the Earth.

The Pillars of Eagle Castle
10.07.2009

What lights up this castle of star formation? The familiar Eagle Nebula glows bright in many colors at once. The above image is a composite of three of these glowing gas colors. Pillars of dark dust nicely outline some of the denser towers of star formation.

Sunrise, Moonrise
6.01.2011

For many Europeans, the Sun and New Moon rose together on January 4 in a partial solar eclipse. Arriving close on the heels of the new year, it was the first of a series of four(!) partial solar eclipses due in 2011.

Moon Meets Morning Star
24.08.2012

Rising in the dark hours before dawn, wandering Venus now shines as the brilliant morning star. Its close conjunction with the Moon on August 13 was appreciated around planet Earth. But skygazers in eastern...

Comet Wirtanen Passes by the Earth
16.12.2018

Today Comet Wirtanen passes by the Earth. The kilometer-sized dirty snowball orbits the Sun every 5.4 years, ranging as far out as Jupiter and as close in as the Earth. Today Comet 46P/Wirtanen passes within only 31 lunar distances to the Earth, the closest approach in 70 years.

Comet NEOWISE over the Swiss Alps
15.07.2020

Comet NEOWISE has been wowing photographers around much of the world during dawn and dusk, at the margins of day and night. For the most northern residents of planet Earth, however, the comet circles the North Star and never sets.

The Crab Nebula in Blue and White
11.07.2000

The Crab Nebula is a complex shell of expanding gas. The Crab Nebula formed from a star that was seen to explode in a supernova about 1000 years ago. This two color composite image taken with the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope shows in great detail filamentary structure of the glowing hydrogen gas.

Big Beautiful Saturn
25.12.2004

As a present to APOD readers, digital imager Mattias Malmer offers a very high resolution view of big beautiful Saturn. A labor of love, his full mosaic, composite image is contained in a large 5 megabyte jpeg file (preview here, download here) and spans the gorgeous gas giant from ring tip to ring tip.