A Persistent Electrical Storm on Saturn
5.05.2008

How do large storms evolve on Saturn? On Earth, a hurricane can persist for weeks, while the Great Red Spot on Jupiter has been in existence for over 150 years. On Saturn, a storm system has now set a new endurance record, now being discernable for greater than three months.

The Milky Way Over Ontario
29.07.2008

Sometimes, after your eyes adapt to the dark, a spectacular sky appears. Such was the case earlier this month over Ontario, Canada, when part of a spectacular sky also became visible in a reflection off a lake.

HUDF Infrared: Dawn of the Galaxies
9.12.2009

When did galaxies form? To help find out, the deepest near-infrared image of the sky ever has been taken of the same field as the optical-light Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) in 2004. The new image was taken this summer by the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 on the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.

An Unusual Mountain on Asteroid Ceres
30.06.2015

What created this large mountain on asteroid Ceres? No one is yet sure. As if in anticipation of today being Asteroid Day on Earth, the robotic spacecraft Dawn in orbit around Ceres took the best yet image of an unusually tall mountain on the Asteroid Belt's largest asteroid.

Distant Supernova Dark Energy
4.04.2001

Light from a star that exploded over 10 billion light-years away is revealed in the panel at the lower right, a cosmic snapshot of the most distant supernova. The ancient stellar detonation was detected...

White Boat Rock on Mars
25.02.2004

What caused this rock to have an unusual shape? Earlier this month the robot Spirit rover on Mars stopped to examine a rock dubbed "white boat", named for its unusually light color and shape.

Barnards Loop around the Horsehead Nebula
17.04.2006

Why is the Horsehead Nebula surrounded by a bubble? Although glowing like an emission nebula, the origin of the bubble, known as Barnard's Loop, is currently unknown. Progenitor hypotheses include the winds from bright Orion stars and the supernovas of stars long gone.

Young Moon and Sister Stars
26.03.2010

A young crescent Moon shares the western sky with sister stars of the Pleiades cluster in this pretty, evening skyscape recorded on the March equinox from San Antonio, Texas. In the processed digital image, multiple exposures of the celestial scene were combined to show details of the bright lunar surface along with the Pleiades stars.

Crescent Venus and Moon
16.05.2010

There's something behind these clouds. Those faint graceful arcs, upon inspection, are actually far, far in the distance. They are the Earth's Moon and the planet Venus. Both the Moon and Venus are bright enough to be seen during the day, and both are quite capable of showing a crescent phase.

Curiosity on the Move
10.09.2012

Curiosity is on the move across Mars -- but where is it going? The car-sized rover's path after 29 Martian days on the surface is shown on the above map. Curiosity is still almost...