APOD: 2026 August 5 Б Spokes on Saturn's B Ring
4.08.2026

DonБt get spooked by SaturnБs ghostly spokes! Today we feature a nearly two-hour timelapse of Saturn and its rings looping forwards and backwards. A day on Saturn is only 10 hours long, so two hours of observation covers quite a bit of its rotation.

Warped Sky: Star Trails Panorama
11.07.2010

What's happened to the sky? A time warp, of sorts, and a digital space warp too. The time warp occurs because this image captured in a single frame a four hour exposure of the night sky. As a result, prominent star trails are visible.

APOD: 2024 March 18 Б Comet Pons Brooks Swirling Coma
17.03.2024

A bright comet will be visible during next month's total solar eclipse. This very unusual coincidence occurs because Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks's return to the inner Solar System places it by chance only 25 degrees away from the Sun during Earth's April 8 total solar eclipse.

Outbound from Mercury
16.07.2002

After just passing Mercury, the robot spacecraft Mariner 10 looked back. The above picture is what it saw. Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is heavily cratered much like Earth's Moon.

A Gemini Sky
9.09.2003

Where will Gemini take us tonight? It is dusk and Gemini North, one of the largest telescopes on planet Earth, prepares to peer into the distant universe. Gemini's flexible 8.1-mirror has taken...

Mercury Visualized from MESSENGER
10.12.2017

What would it be like to fly over the planet Mercury? Images and data taken from NASA's robotic MESSENGER spacecraft that orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015 have been digitally combined to envision a virtual flight that highlights much of the hot planet's surface.

Stereo Jupiter near Opposition
4.12.2024

Jupiter looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope images. Both were captured last year on November 17 from Singapore, planet Earth, about two weeks after Jupiter's 2023 opposition. Climbing high in midnight skies the giant planet was a mere 33.4 light-minutes from Singapore. That's about 4 astronomical units away.

APOD: 2023 July 3 Б Venus in Ultraviolet from Akatsuki
2.07.2023

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure around the inner Solar System.

Venus at Night in Infrared from Akatsuki
29.01.2018

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure around the inner Solar System.

Descending Toward Asteroid Bennu
11.10.2020

What would it be like to land on an asteroid? Although no human has yet done it, NASA's robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to attempt to touch the surface of asteroid 101955 Bennu next week.