Europa Full Face
20.11.1996

What mysteries might be solved by peering into this crystal ball? This crystal ball is quite unusual because it is actually a moon of Jupiter, the crystals are ice-crystals, and the ball is not only dirty and opaque but cracked beyond repair.

Ireson Hill on Mars
19.07.2017

What created this unusual hill on Mars? Its history has become a topic of research, but its shape and two-tone structure makes it one of the more unusual hills that the robotic Curiosity rover on Mars has rolled near. Dubbed Ireson Hill, the mound rises about 5 meters high and spans about 15 meters across.

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.

Desolate Mars: Rub al Khali
22.08.2005

Sometimes on Mars, there is nothing to see but red sand. Traveling two kilometers south of Endurance Crater, the robotic rover Opportunity now exploring Mars stopped and took a 360 degree panorama of a desolate and rusted Martian landscape.

Mercury as Revealed by MESSENGER
23.07.2017

Mercury had never been seen like this before. In 2008, the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft buzzed past Mercury for the second time and imaged terrain mapped previously only by comparatively crude radar. The featured image was recorded as MESSENGER looked back 90 minutes after passing, from an altitude of about 27,000 kilometers.

Stereo Helene
15.06.2019

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.

Ancient Layered Hills on Mars
29.11.2009

Is this a picture of Mars or Earth? Oddly enough, it is a picture of Mars. What may appear to some as a terrestrial coastline is in fact a formation of ancient layered hills and wind-blown sand on Mars. The above-pictured region spans about three kilometers in Schiaparelli Crater.

Curiosity Rover Lifts Off for Mars
30.11.2011

Next stop: Mars. This past weekend the Mars Science Laboratory carrying the Curiosity Rover blasted off for the red planet atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, as pictured above.

APOD: 2025 June 18 Б Space Station Silhouette on the Moon
18.06.2025

What's that unusual spot on the Moon? It's the International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit gibbous Moon in 2019. The featured image was taken from Palo Alto, California, USA with an exposure time of only 1/667 of a second.

The Colorful Moon
7.01.1998

Do you recognize the Earth's Moon when you see it? The crazy, patchwork appearance of this false color image makes this nearly full view of our Moon's familiar nearside look very strange. The image was taken in 1992 by the Galileo spacecraft enroute to Jupiter.