APOD: 2026 March 23 Б Light Pillars and Orion over Mohe
23.03.2026

What's happening at the end of that street? Pictured here are not auroras but light pillars, a phenomenon typically much closer. In most places on Earth, a lucky viewer...

Lightning Over Athens
20.07.2010

Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, nobody knows exactly how lightning is produced. What is known is that charges slowly separate in some clouds causing rapid electrical discharges (lightning), but how electrical charges get separated in clouds remains a topic of much research.

A Venus Landing
27.09.1995

This image is part of the first color panoramic view from Venus. It was transmitted by a TV camera on the Soviet Venera 13 lander which parachuted to the surface on March 1, 1982.

Planets Around Sun-Like Stars
31.01.1996

Do many Sun-like stars have planets? Speculation on this point has been ongoing since humanity's realization that other stars existed. Only in the past year, however, have answers and discoveries been realized. The above plot summarizes the four known cases of normal stars having planets.

The First Explorer
18.05.1997

The first US spacecraft was Explorer 1. The cylindrical 30 pound satellite was launched (above) as the fourth stage of a Jupiter-C rocket (a modified US Army Redstone ballistic missile) and achieved orbit on January 31, 1958.

Follow The Spots
21.10.1999

The Sun rotates on its axis about once every 27 days. How can you tell? Just follow the sunspots. This composite picture was constructed from solar images recorded daily by the MDI instrument on board the space-based SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

Jupiter Swallows Comet Shoemaker Levy 9
5.11.2000

What happens when a comet encounters a planet? If the planet has a rocky surface, a huge impact feature will form. A giant planet like Jupiter, however, is mostly gas. When Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter in 1994, each piece was swallowed into the vast Jovian atmosphere.

The First Explorer
10.02.1996

The first US spacecraft was Explorer 1. The cylindrical 30 pound satellite was launched (above) as the fourth stage of a Jupiter-C rocket (a modified US Army Redstone ballistic missile) and achieved orbit on January 31, 1958.

A Lonely Neutron Star
26.09.1997

How massive can a star get without imploding into a black hole? These limits are being tested by the discovery of a lone neutron star in space. Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope released...

Sagittarius Star Cloud
20.05.2001

Stars come in all different colors. The color of a star indicates its surface temperature, an important property used to assign each star a spectral type. Most stars in the above Sagittarius Star Cloud are orange or red and relatively faint, as our Sun would appear.