Eclipse on the Beach
30.07.2010

As the New Moon's shadow slid across the southern Pacific on July 11, people gathered along the white, sandy Anakena Beach on the north side of Easter Island to watch a total solar eclipse. The experience was captured in this tantalizing composite image, constructed from a sequence of 50 consecutive exposures.

APOD: 2024 May 30 Б A Lunar Corona over Paris
30.05.2024

Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently.

All Sky Moon Shadow
27.04.2024

If the Sun is up but the sky is dark and the horizon is bright all around, you might be standing in the Moon's shadow during a total eclipse of the Sun. In fact, the all-sky Moon shadow shown in this composited panoramic view was captured from a farm near Shirley, Arkansas, planet Earth.

Diamonds in a Cloudy Sky
8.08.2009

Cloudy skies over Wuhan, China hid the delicate solar corona during July's total eclipse of the Sun. Still, the Moon's silhouette was highlighted by these glistening diamonds as the total eclipse phase ended.

Northern Equinox Eclipse
20.03.2015

Snowy and cold is weather you might expect at the start of spring for Longyearbyen on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. But that turned out to be good weather for watching the Moon's umbral shadow race across northern planet Earth.

6 Minutes 42 Seconds
30.07.2009

The July 22nd total solar eclipse was the longest of the 21st century. From the point of maximum eclipse along the Moon's shadow track across the Pacific Ocean, the Moon completely blocked the Sun for a total of 6 minutes and 39 seconds.

A Lunar Corona with Jupiter and Saturn
19.01.2021

Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently.

Madagascar Totality
26.07.2001

When the Moon's shadow reached out and touched Earth's southern hemisphere on 2001 June 21, the first total solar eclipse of the 21st century began. Starting in the Atlantic, the dark, central...

S is for Sun
21.03.2002

Taken yesterday from the SOHO spacecraft, this false-color image shows the active Sun near the March Equinox, the beginning of Fall in the south and Spring in the northern hemisphere. Recorded in a band...

Sunshine, Earthshine at the Lunar Limb
30.05.1996

This dramatic image of the Moon's edge against a background of distant stars is from a perspective impossible for groundbased telescopes. It was taken by a star tracker camera onboard the Clementine spacecraft.