The South Pole of Mars
13.12.2001

The south pole of Mars is the bright area near the center of the detailed, subtly shaded color image above. Recorded in September of this year by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, the picture shows a region surrounding the 400 kilometer wide martian polar cap in the midst of southern hemisphere spring.

Comet Halleys Nucleus: An Orbiting Iceberg
4.01.2010

What does a comet nucleus look like? Formed from the primordial stuff of the Solar System, comet nuclei were thought to resemble very dirty icebergs. But ground-based telescopes revealed only the surrounding cloud of gas and dust of active comets nearing the Sun, clearly resolving only the comet's coma, and the characteristic cometary tails.

Venus at Night in Infrared from Akatsuki
30.01.2018

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure around the inner Solar System.

NGC 3603: From Beginning To End
4.06.1999

From beginning to end, different stages of a star's life appear in this exciting Hubble Space Telescope picture of the environs of galactic emission nebula NGC 3603. For the beginning, eye-catching "pillars" of glowing hydrogen at the right signal newborn stars emerging from their dense, gaseous, nurseries.

A Total Lunar Eclipse Over Tajikistan
28.01.2018

If the full Moon suddenly faded, what would you see? The answer during the total lunar eclipse in 2011 was recorded in a dramatic time lapse video from Tajikistan. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the Moon and the Sun, causing the moon to fade dramatically.

APOD: 2023 October 10 Б Hidden Orion from Webb
10.10.2023

The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red and very near infrared light.

Rho Ophiuchus Wide Field
24.05.2010

The clouds surrounding the star system Rho Ophiucus compose one of the closest star forming regions. Rho Ophiucus itself is a binary star system visible in the light-colored region on the image right.

Canaries Sky
5.03.1998

This gorgeous view of stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way comes from the dark night sky above the lovely island of La Palma in the Canaries archipelago. The picture was made by a group...

An Atlas V Rocket Launches OSIRIS REx
17.10.2016

Have you ever seen a rocket launched into the Solar System? Last month a large Atlas V rocket blasted off from Launch Complex 41 in Florida carrying the ORISIX-REx spacecraft. This robotic spacecraft will attempt to land on Asteroid Bennu and return some of its soil to Earth.

Space Station Lookout
10.04.2013

If you glanced out a side window of the International Space Station, what might you see? If you were Expedition 34 flight engineer Chris Hadfield, and you were looking out one of windows of Japan's Kibo Research Module on February 26, you might have seen the above vista.