Southwest Mercury
13.02.2000

The planet Mercury resembles a moon. Mercury's old surface is heavily cratered like many moons. Mercury is larger than most moons but smaller than Jupiter's moon Ganymede and Saturn's moon Titan. Mercury is much denser and more massive than any moon, though, because it is made mostly of iron.

Movie: Cassini Crosses Saturns Ring Plane
31.01.2007

What would the rings of Saturn look like if you passed right through the ring plane? To find out, NASA aimed cameras from the Cassini spacecraft right at Saturn's rings as the robotic explorer passed from the sunlit side of the rings to the shadowed side.

Globular Cluster M15 from Hubble
3.05.2011

Stars, like bees, swarm around the center of bright globular cluster M15. This ball of over 100,000 stars is a relic from the early years of our Galaxy, and continues to orbit the Milky Way's center.

Stereo Helene
5.01.2013

Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to Helene, small, icy moon of Saturn. Appropriately named, Helene is one of four known Trojan moons, so called because it orbits at a Lagrange point. A Lagrange point is a gravitationally stable position near two massive bodies, in this case Saturn and larger moon Dione.

Road to Mars
9.07.2018

What's that light at the end of the road? Mars. This is a good month to point out Mars to your friends and family because our neighboring planet will not only be its brightest in 15 years, it will be visible for much of night.

Phobos: Moon over Mars
22.03.2024

A tiny moon with a scary name, Phobos emerges from behind the Red Planet in this timelapse sequence from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Over 22 minutes the 13 separate exposures were captured near the 2016 closest approach of Mars to planet Earth. Martians have to look to the west to watch Phobos rise, though.

APOD: 2026 February 1 Б Galle: Happy Face Crater on Mars
1.02.2026

Mars has put on a happy face. The Martian crater Galle is famous because it has internal markings that make it look like a face that is both smiling and winking. These markings were originally discovered in the 1970s in pictures taken by the Viking Orbiter.

Phobos: Moon over Mars
21.07.2017

A tiny moon with a scary name, Phobos emerges from behind the Red Planet in this timelapse sequence from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Over 22 minutes the 13 separate exposures were captured near the 2016 closest approach of Mars to planet Earth. Martians have to look to the west to watch Phobos rise, though.

Red Sun through Wildfire Smoke
30.07.2026

This could be the view from an exoplanet orbiting around a red dwarf star, but it is our own Sun. This image was taken on July 22, 2026, in the Okanagan region in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Frosty Mountains on Mars
30.07.2003

What causes the unusual white color on some Martian mountains? The answer can be guessed by noticing that the bright areas disappear as springtime takes hold in the south of Mars: dry ice. Unlike water ice, dry carbon dioxide ice sublimates directly to gas from its frozen state.