Apollo 15 Panorama
5.08.2016

On July 31, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts Jim Iwrin and Dave Scott deployed the first Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon. Using it to explore their Hadley-Apennine landing site they spent nearly three days on the Moon while Al Worden orbited above.

An Unusual Hole in Mars
12.06.2017

What created this unusual hole in Mars? Actually, there are numerous holes pictured in this Swiss cheese-like landscape, with all-but-one of them showing a dusty, dark, Martian terrain beneath evaporating, light, carbon-dioxide ice. The most unusual hole is on the upper right, spans about 100-meters, and seems to punch through to a lower level.

The Solar Spectrum
15.08.2000

It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Shown above are all the visible colors of the Sun, produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism-like device.

SM3B: Mission to Hubble
14.03.2002

Now complete, Servicing Mission 3B (SM3B) was really the fourth trip to the Hubble Space Telescope, as the originally planned mission 3 was split into two parts. Falling around planet Earth, about 320 nautical...

Islands in the Photosphere
25.10.2003

Awash in a sea of plasma and anchored in magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized, dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Before the enlightened(!) age of cameras, solar observers created detailed drawings of sunspots as they changed and progressed across the visible solar disk.

Spiral Eddies On Planet Earth
16.01.1999

Can you identify this wispy stellar nebula? How many light-years from Earth did you say? Resembling a twisting cloud of gas and dust between the stars this swirling form is actually close by - a spiral eddy formed near the North Atlantic Gulf Stream off the East coast of the U. S.

Io Shadow
23.04.1999

Orbiting Jupiter once every 43 hours, the volcanic moon Io cruises 500,000 kilometers above swirling, banded cloud-tops. Orbiting Earth once every 1.5 hours, the Hubble Space Telescope watched as Io accompanied by its shadow crossed the face of the reigning gas giant planet in 1997.

The Last Panorama of the Spirit Rover on Mars
30.05.2011

This is the last thing that the Spirit rover on Mars ever saw. Operating years beyond original expectations, Spirit eventually got mired in martian dirt and then ran out of power when investigating the unusual Home Plate surface feature on Mars.

APOD: 2011 December 7 Kepler 22b: An Almost Earth Orbiting an Almost Sun
7.12.2011

Its the closest match to Earth that has yet been found. Recently discovered planet Kepler 22b has therefore instantly become the best place to find life outside our Solar System. The planet's host...

Airglow Over Germany
5.09.2012

Does air glow? It does, but it is usually hard to see. When conditions are right, however, a faint glow about 90 kilometers up can be observed, most easily with a wide-angle long-duration camera exposure.