3D Bennu
13.12.2018

Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu. Shaped like a spinning top toy with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about 1 Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across.

Saturn s Infrared Glow
12.10.2006

Known for its bright ring system and many moons, gas giant Saturn looks strange and unfamiliar in this false-color view from the Cassini spacecraft. In fact, in this Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) mosaic the famous rings are almost invisible, seen edge-on cutting across picture center.

Saturn s Infrared Glow
29.12.2007

(xxxedit and linkxxx) Known for its bright ring system and many moons, gas giant Saturn looks strange and unfamiliar in this false-color view from the Cassini spacecraft. In fact, in this Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) mosaic the famous rings are almost invisible, seen edge-on cutting across picture center.

Shepherd Moon Prometheus from Cassini
1.02.2010

Another moon of Saturn has been imaged in detail by the Cassini spacecraft. Orbiting Saturn since 2004, the robotic Cassini got its closest look yet at Saturn's small moon Prometheus last week. Visible...

Lunar Nearside
3.03.2011

About 1,300 images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft's wide angle camera were used to compose this spectacular view of a familiar face - the lunar nearside. But why is there a lunar nearside? The Moon rotates on its axis and orbits the Earth at the same rate, about once every 28 days.

Touchdown on Asteroid Ryugu
12.03.2019

Last month, humanity bounced a robot off an asteroid. The main reason was to collect a surface sample. Despite concern over finding a safely reboundable touchdown spot, Japan's robotic Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully touched down -- and bounced right back from -- asteroid Ryugu.

APOD: 2023 November 26 Б A Dust Jet from the Surface of Comet 67P
26.11.2023

Where do comet tails come from? There are no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. In 2016, though, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft not only imaged a jet emerging from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but flew right through it.

APOD: 2024 February 26 Б Martian Moon Eclipses Martian Moon
26.02.2024

What if there were two moons in the sky -- and they eclipsed each other? This happens on Mars. The featured video shows a version of this unusual eclipse from space. Pictured are the two moons of Mars: the larger Phobos, which orbits closer to the red planet, and the smaller Deimos, which orbits further out.

Southern Neptune
29.05.1997

Neptune, the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet, is 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth. Twelve years after a 1977 launch, Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and found surprising activity on a planet that receives only 3 percent as much sunlight as Jupiter.

SWAN Meets Galaxy
19.10.2006

This cosmic portrait recorded October 9th features the lovely blue-green coma of Comet SWAN posing with spiral galaxy NGC 5005 in the northern constellation Canes Venatici. At the time the comet (center) was in the close foreground, a mere 9 light-minutes from planet Earth, with the galaxy a more substantial 60 million light-years distant.