Rotating Titan in Infrared Light
15.02.2006

Titan is one of the strangest places in our Solar System. The only moon known with thick clouds, this unusual satellite of Saturn shows evidence of evaporating lakes created by methane rain. The clouds...

America and the Sea of Serenity
17.01.2024

Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo view of another world. The scene was recorded by Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan on December 11, 1972, one orbit before descending to land on the Moon.

NGC 1427A: Galaxy in Motion
4.03.2005

In this tantalizing image, young blue star clusters and pink star-forming regions abound in NGC 1427A, a galaxy in motion. The small irregular galaxy's swept back outline points toward the top of this...

NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Local Group
24.02.2017

Far beyond the local group of galaxies lies NGC 3621, some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation Hydra, the winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous blue star clusters, pinkish starforming regions, and dark dust lanes.

APOD: 2025 June 24 Б In the Center of Spiral Galaxy M61
24.06.2025

Is there a spiral galaxy in the center of this spiral galaxy? Sort of. Image data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory, and smaller telescopes on planet Earth are combined in this detailed portrait of face-on spiral galaxy Messier 61 (M61) and its bright center.

Colorful Arcs over Buenos Aires
15.12.2015

What are those colorful arcs in the sky? Like rainbows that are caused by rain, arcs of sunlight broken up into component colors can also result when ice crystals floating in Earth's atmosphere act together as a gigantic prism.

IFN and the NGC 7771 Group
31.08.2024

Galaxies of the NGC 7771 Group are featured in this intriguing skyscape. Some 200 million light-years distant toward the constellation Pegasus, NGC 7771 is the large, edge-on spiral near center, about 75,000 light-years across, with two smaller galaxies below it. Large spiral NGC 7769 is seen face-on to the right.

Galaxies of the Perseus Cluster
8.05.2009

This colorful telescopic skyscape is filled with galaxies that lie nearly 250 million light-years away, the galaxies of the Perseus cluster. Their extended and sometimes surprising shapes are seen beyond a veil of foreground stars in our own Milky Way.

Perseverance Selfie with Ingenuity
7.06.2025

On the Mars rover's mission Sol 46 or Earth date April 6, 2021, Perseverance held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera...

Betelgeuse Resolved
5.08.2009

The sharpest image ever of Betelgeuse shows a mammoth star that is slowly evaporating. Betelgeuse (sounds a lot like "beetle juice"), also known as Alpha Orionis, is one of the largest and brightest stars known. The star is a familiar orange fixture easily visible to the unaided eye toward the constellation of Orion.