Shadows and Plumes Across Enceladus
4.08.2014

Why does Enceladus have ice plumes? The discovery of jets spewing water vapor and ice was detected by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The origin of the water feeding the jets, however, remained a topic of research.

Pluto in Enhanced Color
31.08.2015

Pluto is more colorful than we can see. Color data and images of our Solar System's most famous dwarf planet, taken by the robotic New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in July, have been digitally combined to give an enhanced view of this ancient world sporting an unexpectedly young surface.

The Day After Mars
1.11.2019

October 31, 1938 was the day after Martians encountered planet Earth, and everything was calm. Reports of the invasion were revealed to be part of a Halloween radio drama, the now famous broadcast based on H.G. Wells' scifi novel War of the Worlds.

Saturnian Aurora
9.01.1998

Girdling the second largest planet in the Solar System, Saturn's Rings are one of the most spectacular sights for earthbound telescopes. This recently released image, from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope's STIS instrument, offers a striking view of another kind of ring around Saturn - pole encircling rings of ultraviolet aurora.

APOD: 2024 January 28 Б Pluto in True Color
28.01.2024

What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi-spectral frames to approximate what the human eye would see was challenging.

APOD: 2026 May 2 Б Seeing Titan
2.05.2026

Shrouded in a thick atmosphere, the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is really hard to see. Small particles suspended in Titan's upper atmosphere cause an almost impenetrable haze, strongly scattering light at visible wavelengths and hiding surface features from prying eyes.

Crater On Ice
14.07.2000

Impact craters are common on Earth's moon but on Jupiter's large ice moon Europa, they are very rare. Over time, both bodies have been subjected to an intense pounding by the solar system's formative debris, but geological activity on Europa's surface seems to have erased most of these impact scars.

THEMIS of Mars
2.11.2001

Not an ancient Greek goddess, THEMIS is modern acronese for THermal EMission Imaging System. Above is this remarkable instrument's premier infrared image of Mars, from the newly orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Taken...

Green and Black Auroras Over Norway
29.03.2006

What causes gaps between aurora curtains? These unusual gaps can make Research using data from four Cluster spacecraft orbiting the Earth has likely found the secret: auroral gaps, sometimes knows as black auroras, are actually anti-auroras. In normal auroras, electrons and/or predominantly negatively charged particles fall toward Earth along surfaces of constant magnetic field.

Martian Dust Devil Trails
17.03.2000

Who's been marking up Mars? This portion of a recent high-resolution picture from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft shows twisting dark trails criss-crossing a relatively flat rippled region about 3 kilometers wide on the martian surface.