Goldilocks Zones and Stars
30.01.2020

The Goldilocks zone is the habitable zone around a star where it's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of orbiting planets. This intriguing infographic...

LL Ori and the Orion Nebula
19.01.2006

This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun.

Pluto Flyover from New Horizons
30.07.2017

What if you could fly over Pluto -- what might you see? The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it shot past the distant world at a speed of about 80,000 kilometers per hour.

The 47 Ursae Majoris System
17.08.2001

Watching and waiting, astronomers have uncovered the presence of more than 70 planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. So far almost all these extrasolar planets have crazy elongated orbits, lie uncomfortably close to their parent stars, or are found in bizarre, inhospitable systems.

APOD: 2026 May 12 Б The Conjunction of Comet R3 PanSTARRS and the Orion Nebula
11.05.2026

TodayБs composite image features something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue! Comet R3 PanSTARRS, streaking across the right of the image, likely originated from the Oort Cloud, meaning it is an old Solar System relic from billions of years ago.

The South Pole of Mars
12.12.2001

The south pole of Mars is the bright area near the center of the detailed, subtly shaded color image above. Recorded in September of this year by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, the picture shows a region surrounding the 400 kilometer wide martian polar cap in the midst of southern hemisphere spring.

An Atlas V Rocket Launches OSIRIS REx
16.10.2016

Have you ever seen a rocket launched into the Solar System? Last month a large Atlas V rocket blasted off from Launch Complex 41 in Florida carrying the ORISIX-REx spacecraft. This robotic spacecraft will attempt to land on Asteroid Bennu and return some of its soil to Earth.

LL Ori and the Orion Nebula
17.02.2018

Stars can make waves in the Orion Nebula's sea of gas and dust. This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift...

APOD: 2023 February 1 Б The Seventh World of Trappist 1
31.01.2023

Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. A mere 40 light-years away, many of the exoplanets were discovered in 2016 using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) located in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and later confirmed with telescope including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Brightest Spot on Ceres
10.12.2015

Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the Solar System's main asteroid belt with a diameter of about 950 kilometers. Exploring Ceres from orbit since March, the Dawn spacecraft's camera...