Calderas And Cliffs Near Io's South Pole
27.04.2000

Braving intense radiation belts, the Galileo spacecraft once again flew past the surface of Jupiter's moon Io (sounds like EYE-oh) on February 22. Combining high resolution black and white images from that flyby...

Expansive Comet Holmes
21.11.2007

The spherical coma of Comet Holmes has swollen to a diameter of over 1.4 million kilometers, making the tenuous, dusty cloud even bigger than the Sun. Scattering sunlight, all that dust and gas came...

Distortion from a Distant Cluster
23.08.2001

This stunning color deep sky view toward the constellation Pisces was made with data from a fast, sensitive, digital detector known as the Big Throughput Camera operating at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

NGC 2264: Stars, Dust, and Gas
24.04.2001

The nebula surrounding bright star S Mon is filled with dark dust and glowing gas. The strange shapes that haunt this star forming region originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways to the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars.

M77: Spiral Galaxy with an Active Center
17.03.2020

What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster (Cetus). At that estimated distance, this gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across.

APOD: 2025 June 24 Б In the Center of Spiral Galaxy M61
24.06.2025

Is there a spiral galaxy in the center of this spiral galaxy? Sort of. Image data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory, and smaller telescopes on planet Earth are combined in this detailed portrait of face-on spiral galaxy Messier 61 (M61) and its bright center.

Fast Stars and Rogue Planets in the Orion Nebula
21.03.2017

Start with the constellation of Orion. Below Orion's belt is a fuzzy area known as the Great Nebula of Orion. In this nebula is a bright star cluster known as the Trapezium, marked by four bright stars near the image center.

Marius Hills: Holes in the Moon
25.10.2017

Could humans live beneath the surface of the Moon? This intriguing possibility was bolstered in 2009 when Japan's Moon-orbiting SELENE spacecraft imaged a curious hole beneath the Marius Hills region on the Moon, possibly a skylight to an underground lava tube.

Three Views of Jupiter's Io
3.10.1996

The Galileo spacecraft orbiting Jupiter continues to return impressive results. The Galileo team has just released three more photographs of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io taken in June. These three photos are reflected at the bottom of the above picture, digitally enhanced to better show important features.

A Continuous Eruption on Jupiters Moon Io
6.06.2000

A volcano on Jupiter's moon Io has been photographed recently during an ongoing eruption. Hot glowing lava is visible on the left on this representative-color image. A glowing landscape of plateaus and valleys covered in sulfur and silicate rock surrounds the active volcano.