The Cracked Ice Plains of Europa
22.10.1996

What caused the cracks in this giant ice-ball? Jupiter's moon Europa has smoothest surface in the solar system and is composed mostly of cracked water-ice. In the above false-colored picture released last week...

IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula
9.12.2016

South of Antares, in the tail of the nebula-rich constellation Scorpius, lies emission nebula IC 4628. Nearby hot, massive stars, millions of years young, irradiate the nebula with invisible ultraviolet light, stripping electrons from atoms. The electrons eventually recombine with the atoms to produce the visible nebular glow, dominated by the red emission of hydrogen.

A Partial Solar Eclipse over Texas
22.05.2012

It was a typical Texas sunset except that most of the Sun was missing. The location of the missing piece of the Sun was not a mystery -- it was behind the Moon. Sunday night's partial eclipse of the Sun by the Moon turned into one of the best photographed astronomical events in history.

Worlds of a Distant Sun: 47 Ursae Majoris b
1.07.1996

Within the last few years, observational astronomy has given humanity evidence of the existence of worlds beyond the solar system. Indeed, solar-type stars are now inferred to harbor planets of approximately Jupiter mass - some residing in temperature zones which could conceivably support liquid water and therefore life!

Saturn s Ancient Rings
17.12.2007

How old are Saturn's rings? No one is quite sure. One possibility is that the rings formed relatively recently in our Solar System's history, perhaps only about 100 million years ago when a moon-sized object broke up near Saturn.

Hyperion: Sponge Moon of Saturn
26.07.2005

Why is Saturn's moon Hyperion textured like a sponge? Recent high-resolution images from the robot Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn show Hyperion to be an even stranger place than thought before. Previously, it was known that the length of a day on Hyperion is unpredictable.

Giant Dust Ring Discovered Around Saturn
13.10.2009

What has created a large dust ring around Saturn? At over 200 times the radius of Saturn and over 50 times the radius of Saturn's expansive E ring, the newly discovered dust ring is the largest planetary ring yet imaged. The ring was found in infrared light by the Earth-orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope.

Kembles Cascade
14.08.2000

A picturesque chain of unrelated stars is visible with strong binoculars towards the constellation of Camelopardalis. Known as Kemble's Cascade, the asterism contains about 20 stars nearly in a row stretching over five times the width of a full moon.

Kembles Cascade
5.12.2004

A picturesque chain of unrelated stars is visible with strong binoculars towards the constellation of Camelopardalis. Known as Kemble's Cascade, the asterism contains about 20 stars nearly in a row stretching over five times the width of a full moon.

A Total Eclipse of the Sun
11.03.1998

On February 26th, it was dark during the day. This total solar eclipse was the last visible from the Americas for this millennium. A total solar eclipse is exciting partly because it is so short.