The Galaxy Within Centaurus A
24.06.2004

Peering deep inside Centaurus A, the closest active galaxy to Earth, the Spitzer Space Telescope's penetrating infrared cameras recorded this startling vista. About 1,000 light-years across, the twisted cosmic dust cloud apparently shaped like a parallelogram is likely the result of a smaller spiral galaxy falling into the giant Centaurus A.

Supernova Factory NGC 2770
18.01.2008

The stellar explosions known as supernovae are among the most powerful events in the universe. Triggered by the collapsing core of a massive star or the nuclear demise of a white dwarf, supernovae occur in average spiral galaxies only about once every century.

CoRoT Satellite Discovers Rocky Planet
23.09.2009

How similar is exoplanet CoRoT-7b to Earth? The newly discovered extra-solar planet is the closest physical match yet, with a mass about five Earths and a radius of about 1.7 Earths. Also, the home star to CoRoT-7b, although 500 light years distant, is very similar to our Sun.

All of Mercury
28.04.2019

Only six years ago, the entire surface of planet Mercury was finally mapped. Detailed observations of the innermost planet's surprising crust began when the robotic have been ongoing since the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft first passed Mercury in 2008 and continued until its controlled crash landing in 2015.

NGST 10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet
26.02.2020

This hot jupiter is doomed. Hot jupiters are giant planets like Jupiter that orbit much closer to their parent stars than Mercury does to our Sun. But some hot jupiters are more extreme than others. NGTS-10b, illustrated generically, is the closest and fastest-orbiting giant planet yet discovered, circling its home star in only 18 hours.

A Flight over Jupiter Near the Great Red Spot
19.10.2020

Are you willing to wait to see the largest and oldest known storm system in the Solar System? In the featured video, Jupiter's Great Red Spot finally makes its appearance 2 minutes and 12 seconds into the 5-minute video.

Dark Matter in a Simulated Universe
25.10.2020

Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters...

Ringed Ice Giant Neptune
23.09.2022

Ringed, ice giant Neptune lies near the center of this sharp near-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The dim and distant world is the farthest planet from the Sun, about 30 times farther away than planet Earth.

Ringed Ice Giant Neptune
19.08.2023

Ringed ice giant Neptune lies near the center of this sharp near-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The dim and distant world is the farthest planet from the Sun, about 30 times farther away than planet Earth.

Encke and the Tadpoles
27.10.2023

History's second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke's orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury.