Mercury And The Sun
19.11.1999

Just days before the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, skywatchers were offered another astronomical treat as planet Mercury crossed the face of the Sun on November 15. Viewed from planet Earth, a transit of Mercury is not all that rare. The last occurred in 1993 and the next will happen in 2003.

A Galilean Night
23.10.2009

Driving along on a summer evening, near the small town of Weikersheim in southern Germany, photographer Jens Hackmann had to stop. He couldn't resist pointing his camera and telephoto lens at this lovely conjunction of a Full Moon and planet Jupiter looming near the steeple of a local church.

The Moons Saturn
7.04.2013

Just days after sharing the western evening sky with Venus in 2007, the Moon moved on to Saturn - actually passing in front of the ringed planet Saturn when viewed in skies over Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia.

The Launch of OSIRIS REx
10.09.2016

Near sunset on Thursday, clear skies saw the launch of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Sporting a single solid rocket booster, its Atlas V vehicle blasts off from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 in this low, wide-angle view toward launch pad and setting Sun. OSIRIS-REx is bound for Bennu, scheduled to encounter the mountain-sized asteroid in 2018.

Enceladus in Silhouette
15.02.2018

One of our Solar System's most tantalizing worlds, Enceladus is backlit by the Sun in this Cassini spacecraft image from November 1, 2009. The dramatic illumination reveals the plumes that continuously spew into space from the south pole of Saturn's 500 kilometer diameter moon.

Venus and the Da Vinci Glow
25.03.2023

On March 23 early evening skygazers could watch Venus and a young crescent moon, both near the western horizon. On that date Earth's brilliant evening star, faint lunar night side and slender sunlit crescent were captured in this telephoto skyscape posing alongside a church tower from Danta di Cadore, Dolomiti, Italy.

Crescent Enceladus
16.12.2023

Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of tantalizing inner moon Enceladus poses in this Cassini spacecraft image. North is up in the dramatic scene captured during November 2016 as Cassini's camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction about 130,000 kilometers from the moon's bright crescent.

Crescent Enceladus
7.02.2026

Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of tantalizing inner moon Enceladus poses in this Cassini spacecraft image. North is up in the dramatic scene captured during November 2016 as Cassini's camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction about 130,000 kilometers from the moon's bright crescent.

Io: The Prometheus Plume
22.06.2002

Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite Galileo image. On the left, over Io's limb, a new bluish plume rises about 86 miles above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera.

Sunset at the Spiral Jetty
4.12.2010

In dwindling twilight at an August day's end, these broad dark bands appeared in the sky for a moment, seen from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty on the eastern shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake.