Extra Solar Planetary Atmosphere Detected
28.11.2001

By directly detecting the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System, humanity has taken another small step toward finding extraterrestrial life. The unexpected detection by David Charbonneau (Caltech) and associates came from Hubble Space Telescope observations of Sun-like star HD 209458.

When Z is for Mars
15.04.2023

A composite of images captured about a week apart from mid August 2022 through late March 2023, this series traces the retrograde motion of ruddy-colored Mars. Progressing from lower right to upper left Mars...

Columbia Launches
10.11.1996

Rocket engines blazing, the Space Shuttle Columbia arcs into Florida's morning sky after lifting off from pad 39-A at Kennedy Space Center. Seen here in January of 1996, this space shuttle has been...

Aurora from Space
5.11.2005

From the ground, spectacular auroras seem to dance high above. But the International Space Station (ISS) orbits at nearly the same height as many auroras, sometimes passing over them, and sometimes right through them. Still, the auroral electron and proton streams pose no direct danger to the ISS.

3D Face on Mars
21.04.2007

Get out your red/blue glasses and gaze down on this weathered mesa on Mars. Of course, described as a rock formation which resembles a human head in a 1976 NASA press release, this mesa is also famous as the Face on Mars.

Comet and Orion
2.10.2009

These colorful panels both feature a familiar northern hemisphere astronomical sight: the stellar nursery known as the Great Orion Nebula. They also offer an intriguing and unfamiliar detail of the nebula rich skyscape -- a passing comet.

Shadows at the Lunar South Pole
23.04.2011

What is it? It's a multi-temporal illumination map, of course. To make it, the wide angle camera on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft collected 1,700 images over a period of 6 lunar days (6 Earth months), repeatedly covering an area centered on the Moon's south pole.

Saturn's Moon Dione
9.10.1995

Dione, one of Saturn's larger moons, is remarkable for its bright surface streaks. These streaks run across some of Dione's many craters, which indicate that the process which created the streaks occurred later than the process which created the craters.

Earth Rise
25.12.1995

During the 1968 Christmas season Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders flew the Apollo 8 command module From the Earth to the Moon and back (launched Dec. 21, achieved 10 lunar orbits, landed Dec. 27).

Saturns Moon Epimetheus from the Cassini Spacecraft
11.02.2008

How did Epimetheus form? No one is yet sure. To help answer that question, this small moon has recently been imaged again in great detail by the robot spacecraft Cassini now orbiting Saturn. Epimetheus sometimes orbits Saturn in front of Janus, another small satellite, but sometimes behind.