Approaching Jupiter
23.05.2017

What would it look like to approach Jupiter? To help answer this, a team of 91 amateur astrophotographers took over 1,000 pictures of Jupiter from the Earth with the resulting images aligned and digitally merged into the featured time-lapse video. Image taking began in 2014 December and lasted just over three months.

A Northern Winter Sky Panorama
24.12.2019

What stars shine in Earth's northern hemisphere during winter? The featured image highlights a number of bright stars visible earlier this month. The image is a 360-degree horizontal-composite panorama of 66 vertical frames taken consecutively with the same camera and from the same location at about 2:30 am.

Lewins Challenge: 360 Degree Star Trails
17.07.2011

You could be the first person ever to take a real single-exposure image like this. The above image from Vienna, Austria is not real in the sense that the 360 degree star trails in the sky appear only because of a digital trick.

A Dark Sky over Death Valley
8.05.2007

This eerie glow over Death Valley is in danger. Scrolling right will show a spectacular view from one of the darkest places left in the continental USA: Death Valley, California. The above 360-degree full-sky panorama is a composite of 30 images taken two years ago in Racetrack Playa.

Crescent Saturn
23.10.2007

Saturn never shows a crescent phase -- from Earth. But when viewed from beyond, the majestic giant planet can show an unfamiliar diminutive sliver. This image of crescent Saturn in natural color was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in May.

Saturn and Titan from Cassini
24.03.2008

Spectacular vistas of Saturn and its moon continue to be recorded by the Cassini spacecraft. Launched from Earth in 1997, robotic Cassini entered orbit around Saturn in 2004 and has revolutionized much of humanity's knowledge of Saturn, its expansive and complex rings, and it many old and battered moons.

Unusual Rocks near Pahrump Hills on Mars
29.09.2014

How did these Martian rocks form? As the robotic Curiosity rover has approached Pahrump Hills on Mars, it has seen an interesting and textured landscape dotted by some unusual rocks. The featured image shows a curiously round rock spanning about two centimeters across.

Enceladus: Ringside Water World
3.12.2015

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus poses above the gas giant's icy rings in this Cassini spacecraft image. The dramatic scene was captured on July 29, while Cassini cruised just below the ring plane, its cameras looking back in a nearly sunward direction about 1 million kilometers from the moon's bright crescent.

The Holographic Principle
18.05.2003

Is this image worth a thousand words? According to the Holographic Principle, the most information you can get from this image is about 3 x 10⁶⁵ bits for a normal sized computer monitor.

Microlensing of the Einstein Cross
15.12.1996

The famous "Einstein Cross" is a case where a single object is seen four times. Here a very distant QSO happened to be placed right behind a massive galaxy. The gravitational effect...