Astro 2 In Orbit
16.03.2001

Six years ago, a cluster of three ultraviolet telescopes flew into orbit on the Astro-2 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. Seen here perched in Endeavour's payload bay about 350 kilometers above the Australian desert are the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT), the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT), and the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE).

Red Mars from Spirit
6.01.2004

Rocks are strewn across the broad, flat Gusev crater floor in this sharp color picture from NASA's Spirit rover. Recorded by the rover's panoramic camera, the picture is part of Spirit's first color image of Mars - the highest resolution picture yet taken on the surface of another planet.

Earth at Night
22.08.2004

This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan.

SMART 1: Pythagoras Crater
2.02.2005

Stark shadows show off the central peaks and terraced walls of 120 kilometer wide Pythagoras Crater in this mosaic of images from ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft. Characteristic of large, complex impact craters on the Moon, the central uplift was produced by a rebound of the suddenly molten lunar crust during the violent impact event.

Miranda, Chevron, and Alonso
5.03.1999

Miranda is a bizarre world which surely had a tempestuous past. The innermost of the larger Uranian moons, Miranda is almost 300 miles in diameter and was discovered in 1948 by American planetary astronomer Gerard Kuiper.

Fullerenes as Miniature Cosmic Time Capsules
29.03.2000

Scientists have found, unexpectedly, tiny time capsules from billions of years in the past. The discovery involves small molecules that can apparently become trapped during the formation of large enclosed molecules known as fullerenes, or buckyballs. Luann Becker (U.

The Bay of Rainbows
7.02.2008

Dark, smooth regions that cover the Moon's familiar face are called by Latin names for oceans and seas. The naming convention is historical, though it may seem a little ironic to denizens...

A Sailing Stone in Death Valley
22.02.2012

How did this big rock end up on this strange terrain? One of the more unusual places here on Earth occurs inside Death Valley, California, USA. There a dried lakebed named Racetrack Playa exists that is almost perfectly flat, with the odd exception of some very large stones, one of which is pictured above.

Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope
28.09.2016

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is nestled within a natural basin in China's remote and mountainous southwestern Guizhou province. Nicknamed Tianyan, or the Eye of Heaven, the new radio telescope is seen in this photograph taken near the start of its testing phase of operations on September 25.

Southwest Mare Fecunditatis
2.03.2018

Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders journeyed from Earth to the Moon and back again in December of 1968. From lunar orbit, their view of craters in southwest Mare Fecunditatis is featured in this stereo anaglyph, best experienced from armchairs on planet Earth with red/blue glasses.