Degas Ray Crater on Mercury
16.12.2000

Like the Earth's Moon, Mercury is scarred with craters testifying to an intense bombardment during the early history of the Solar System. In 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft surveyed this innermost planet up close, producing the only detailed images of its tortured surface.

Springtime on Mars
22.04.2003

Vast canyons, towering volcanoes, sprawling fields of ice, deep craters, and high clouds can all be seen in this image of the Solar System's fourth planet: Mars. The orbiting robot Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft took the above mosaic of images as springtime dawned in Northern Mars in 2002 May.

SOHO Composite: Coronal Mass Ejection
20.08.1998

This complex composite image of an ominous and spectacular event - an expanding storm of energetic particles from the Sun - was constructed using data recorded by the SOHO spacecraft on November 6, 1997. Four images...

Titan Disguised
21.12.2004

Will the Huygens probe land or splash down? In the next few days, the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn will release a probe that will descend toward Saturn's largest moon in mid-January. That moon, Titan, has a surface normally hidden from view by thick methane cloud decks.

Enceladus Close Up
17.03.2005

The surface of Enceladus is as white as fresh snow. Still, an impressive variety of terrain is revealed in this contrast enhanced image. At a resolution of about 30 meters per pixel, the close-up view spans over 20 kilometers - recorded during the touring Cassini spacecraft's March flyby of the icy Saturnian moon.

Thin Rings Around Polarized Saturn
19.12.2005

How thin are the rings of Saturn? Brightness measurements from different angles have shown Saturn's rings to be about one kilometer thick, making them many times thinner, in relative proportion, than a razor blade. This thinness sometimes appears in dramatic fashion during an image taken nearly along the ring plane.

Enceladus Near Saturn
22.03.2006

Some images of Saturn appear surreal. Earlier this year, the robot spacecraft Cassini now orbiting Saturn took this surreal image of the gas giant Saturn, its majestic rings, and its enigmatic world Enceladus all in one frame.

Titan Beyond the Rings
5.05.2009

When orbiting Saturn, be sure to watch for breathtaking superpositions of moons and rings. One such picturesque vista was visible recently to the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. In 2006 April, Cassini captured Saturn's A and F rings stretching in front of cloud-shrouded Titan.

Ganymede: The Largest Moon
14.05.2017

What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter's moon Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges.

Pluto s Bladed Terrain
5.10.2017

Imaged during the New Horizons spacecraft flyby in July 2015, Pluto's bladed terrain is captured in this close-up of the distant world. The bizarre texture belongs to fields of skyscraper-sized, jagged landforms made almost entirely of methane ice, found at extreme altitudes near Pluto's equator.