Huygens Images Titan s Surface
14.01.2005

After a seven year interplanetary voyage on board the the Cassini spacecraft, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe parachuted to a historic landing on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14. Above...

Jupiters Moons Thebe, Amalthea, and Metis
8.05.2000

The robot spacecraft Galileo in orbit around Jupiter has recently photographed the inner moons of Jupiter in greater detail than ever before. These pictures of Thebe, Amalthea, and Metis are shown to scale, and reveal details as small as three kilometers across. Amalthea, by contrast, has a total length of about 200 kilometers.

Cracks and Ridges on Europa
2.06.2002

Which way to the interstate? What appears to be a caricature of a complex highway system on Earth is actually a system of ridges and cracks on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The distance between parallel ridges in the above photograph is typically about 1 kilometer.

Stereo Saturn
28.10.1997

Get out your red/blue glasses and launch yourself into this stereo picture of Saturn! The picture is actually composed from two images recorded weeks apart by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during its visit to the Saturnian System in August of 1981.

Mammatus Clouds over Saskatchewan
10.08.2021

When do cloud bottoms appear like bubbles? Normally, cloud bottoms are flat. This is because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height. As water droplets grow, an opaque cloud forms.

APOD: 2024 July 9 Б Noctilucent Clouds over Florida
8.07.2024

These clouds are doubly unusual. First, they are rare noctilucent clouds, meaning that they are visible at night -- but only just before sunrise or just after sunset. Second, the source of these noctilucent clouds is actually known.

Callisto Full Face
19.01.2002

Callisto's surface shows its age. While probably formed at the same time as Io, the difference between the surfaces of these two moons of Jupiter could hardly be greater. Io's surface is young, shows practically no impact craters, and is continually being repaved by the lava exploding from its many large volcanoes

Quaoar: Large Asteroid in the Outer Solar System
9.10.2002

Asteroids almost as large as planets are still being discovered in our own Solar System. Recently an asteroid more than half the size of Pluto was found orbiting at a distance only a little further than the Solar System's most distant planet.

Mars Volcano Apollinaris Patera
13.05.1999

Dwarfed by Olympus Mons and the other immense shield volcanos on Mars, Apollinaris Patera rises only 3 miles or so into the thin martian atmosphere, but bright water-ice clouds can be still be seen hovering around its summit.

Dark Slope Streaks Split on Mars
17.07.2018

What is creating these dark streaks on Mars? No one is sure. Candidates include dust avalanches, evaporating dry ice sleds, and liquid water flows. What is clear is that the streaks occur through light surface dust and expose a deeper dark layer.