Titan Through the Haze
26.10.2004

What are these surface features on Titan? This planet-sized moon of Saturn had much of its south polar surface imaged during an initial flyby by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft back in early July.

Fresh Tiger Strips on Saturns Enceladus
6.09.2005

The tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus might be active. Even today, they may be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring.

Giant Cluster Bends, Breaks Images
23.04.2000

What are those strange blue objects? Many are images of a single, unusual, beaded, blue, ring-like galaxy which just happens to line-up behind a giant cluster of galaxies. Cluster galaxies here appear yellow and -- together with the cluster's dark matter -- act as a gravitational lens.

Fast Stars and Rogue Planets in the Orion Nebula
21.03.2017

Start with the constellation of Orion. Below Orion's belt is a fuzzy area known as the Great Nebula of Orion. In this nebula is a bright star cluster known as the Trapezium, marked by four bright stars near the image center.

Night of the Perseids
28.09.2021

Have you ever experienced a meteor shower? To help capture the wonder, a video was taken during the peak of the recent Perseid meteor shower above the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, India, high up in the Himalayan mountains.

APOD: 2023 June 7 Б M94: A Double Ring Galaxy
7.06.2023

Most galaxies don't have any rings of stars and gas -- why does M94 have two? First, spiral galaxy M94 has an inner ring of newly formed stars surrounding its nucleus, giving it not only an unusual appearance but also a strong interior glow.

Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822
23.01.2002

Nearby galaxy NGC 6822 is irregular in several ways. First, the galaxy's star distribution merits a formal classification of dwarf irregular, and from our vantage-point the small galaxy appears nearly rectangular. What strikes...

Local Group Galaxy NGC 205
8.01.1996

The Milky Way Galaxy is not alone. It is part of a gathering of about 25 galaxies known as the Local Group. Members include the Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31), M32, M33, the Large Magellanic Clouds, the Small Magellanic Clouds, Dwingeloo 1, several small irregular galaxies, and many dwarf elliptical galaxies.

X Ray Saturn
12.03.2004

Above, the ringed planet Saturn shines in x-rays. Otherwise beyond the range of human vision, the eerie x-ray view was created by overlaying a computer generated outline of the gas giant's disk and ring system on a false-color picture of smoothed, reconstructed x-ray data from the orbiting Chandra Observatory.

Mosaic of Endurance Crater on Mars
11.10.2004

Where should this Martian rover explore next? Possible choices for the Opportunity rover team on Earth in early August were to send the Martian robot inside Endurance crater toward the arc-shaped sand dunes...