Comet Hale-Bopp Returns
5.02.1997

Comet Hale-Bopp has returned from behind the Sun. In December and early January, Comet Hale-Bopp was too near the Sun to be easily visible from Earth. Now the comet graces the morning sky and is visible from dark locations even without binoculars.

Mercury And The Moon
10.11.1999

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and never moves far from our parent star in Earth's sky. Racing around its tight orbit, this well-done world is a little over 1/3 the diameter of Earth and is often lost to our view in the solar glare.

Movie: Analemma Over New Jersey
3.12.2007

An analemma is that figure-8 curve that you get when you mark the position of the Sun at the same time each day throughout planet Earth's year. Above, 26 separate exposures were recorded to illustrate the regular solar motion -- a difficult project performed mostly during the calendar year 2006.

Venus and the Sisters
6.04.2012

After wandering about as far from the Sun on the sky as Venus can get, the brilliant evening star crossed paths with the Pleiades star cluster earlier this week. The beautiful conjunction was enjoyed by skygazers around the world. Taken on April 2, this celestial group photo captures the view from Portal, Arizona, USA.

Comet Wirtanen Passes by the Earth
15.12.2018

Today Comet Wirtanen passes by the Earth. The kilometer-sized dirty snowball orbits the Sun every 5.4 years, ranging as far out as Jupiter and as close in as the Earth. Today Comet 46P/Wirtanen passes within only 31 lunar distances to the Earth, the closest approach in 70 years.

Heaven on Earth
5.11.2000

If sometimes it appears that the entire Milky Way Galaxy is raining down on your head, do not despair. It happens twice a day. As the Sun rises in the East, wonders of the night sky become less bright than the sunlight scattered by our own Earth's atmosphere, and so fade from view.

The Gegenschein
25.12.2006

If you look carefully enough, you can even see the glow of the Sun in the opposite direction. At night this glow is known as the gegenschein (German for "counter glow"), and can be seen as a faint glow in an extremely dark sky. The gegenschein is sunlight back-scattered off small interplanetary dust particles.

X Class Flare
16.02.2011

On Valentine's Day (ET) the Sun unleased one of its most powerful explosions, an X-class flare. The blast was the largest so far in the new solar cycle. Erupting from active region AR1158...

Planet Line over New York Bridge
19.04.2022

There's an interesting sky to see if you wake up before the Sun. Lined up on toward the eastern horizon are four planets in a row. The planets are so bright they can even be seen from the bright sky inside a city.

Solar Granules at Record High Resolution
2.02.2020

Why does the Sun's surface keep changing? The help find out, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has built the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, USA. The Inouye telescope...