New York at Night
19.11.1995

This tantalizingly clear photo of New York City at night was taken by the astronauts during the Space Radar Laboratory mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavor in March of 1990. In this view, oriented with East up and North to the left, a dense constellation of lights defines the major metropolitan areas.

Scorpius Enhanced
16.06.2021

If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well-known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, a dark sky, and some sophisticated image processing.

Saturn in the Milky Way
10.06.2017

Saturn is near opposition in planet Earth's sky. Rising at sunset and shining brightly throughout the night, it also lies near a line-of-sight to crowded starfields, nebulae, and obscuring dust clouds along the Milky Way.

Starry Night Over the Rhone
21.09.2010

How can the majesty of the night sky best be captured in a painting? This was a continual challenge for Vincent van Gogh, a famous painter in the late 1800s who pioneered stirring depictions of star filled skies into several of his works.

Milky Way Over Abandoned Kilns
25.07.2011

What's that below the Milky Way? Historic kilns. Built in the 1870s in rural Nevada, USA to process local wood into charcoal, the kilns were soon abandon due to a town fire and flooding, but remain in good condition even today.

Jupiter Season, Hawaiian Sky
2.06.2018

Volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawaii has increased since this Hawaiian night skyscape was recorded earlier this year. Recent vents and lava flows are about 30 kilometers to the east, the direction...

Great Rift Near the Center of the Milky Way
10.11.2016

Over 100 telescopic image panels in this stunning vertical mosaic span about 50 degrees across the night sky. They follow part of the Great Rift, the dark river of dust and molecular gas that stretches along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Venus, Zodiacal Light, and the Galactic Center
18.10.2013

The bulging center of our Milky Way Galaxy rests on a pillar of light in this luminous skyscape. Recorded on September 22nd in dark South African skies, rivers of dust seem to flow downward from the galactic center towards Antares, yellowish alpha star of the constellation Scorpius, near the top of the scene.

Curiosity on Mars: A Wall of Gale Crater
15.08.2012

If you could stand on Mars, what would you see? The above image is a digitally re-colored approximation of what you might see if the above Martian landscape had occurred on Earth. Images from...

Bright Lights, Dark City
18.08.2003

Last Thursday, millions of people had an unexpectedly good view of a dark night sky. Usually, the reflection of city lights off of local air impurities makes it hard for casual observers to see more than a handful of stars from a bright urban area.