The Surface of Venus from Venera 13
17.03.2021

If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 13, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982.

HD 163296: Jet from a Star in Formation
22.06.2021

How are jets created during star formation? No one is sure, although recent images of the young star system HD 163296 are quite illuminating. The central star in the featured image is still forming but seen already surrounded by a rotating disk and an outward moving jet.

APOD: 2025 February 16 Б Perijove 11: Passing Jupiter
16.02.2025

Here comes Jupiter. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its highly elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11 in early 2018, the eleventh time Juno passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016.

Gamma Ray Burst, Supernova Bump
17.05.2002

On the 21st of November 2001, satellites detected yet another burst of gamma-rays from the cosmos. While this flash of high-energy photons lasted for less than a minute, eager astronomers have been following the fading optical light from the location of the burst source ever since.

Counting Stars in the Infrared Sky
19.07.2002

The bulging center of our Milky Way Galaxy, dark cosmic clouds, the thin galactic plane, and even nearby galaxies are easy to spot in this sky view. But each pixel in the digital image is actually based on star counts alone -- as derived from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) database.

DEM L71: When Small Stars Explode
14.03.2003

Large, massive stars end their furious lives in spectacular supernova explosions -- but small, low mass stars may encounter a similar fate. In fact, instead of simply cooling off and quietly fading away, some white...

SIRTF Streak
5.09.2003

Streaking skyward, a Boeing Delta 2-Heavy rocket carries NASA's Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) aloft during the early morning hours of August 25th. The dramatic scene was recorded in a time exposure from...

A Giant Planet for Beta Pic
3.07.2010

A mere 50 light-years away, young star Beta Pictoris became one of the most important stars in the sky in the early 1980s. Satellite and ground-based telescopic observations revealed the presence of a surrounding...

The Kepler 90 Planetary System
18.12.2017

Do other stars have planetary systems like our own? Yes -- one such system is Kepler-90. Cataloged by the orbiting Kepler satellite, an eighth planet has now been discovered giving Kepler-90 the same number of known planets as our Solar System.

MAGIC NEOWISE
24.07.2020

The multi-mirror, 17 meter-diameter MAGIC telescopes reflect this starry night sky from the Roque de los Muchachos European Northern Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma. MAGIC stands for Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging...