Io: A Volcanic Moon
3.08.1995

In 1610, Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens and discovered that the planet Jupiter had four bright moons. The innermost of these Galilean moons, Io, turned out to be one of the most exotic objects in the solar system.

Callisto: Dark Smashed Iceball
6.09.1995

Callisto is a dirty battered world, showing the most beaten surface of Jupiter's major moons. Made of a rocky core covered by fractured ice, Callisto's past collisions with large meteors are evident as large craters surrounded by concentric rings.

APOD: 2004 August 24- Supply Ship Approaches the Space Station
24.08.2004

The crew on board the International Space Station sometimes needs supplies. As the US Space Shuttle fleet prepares to return to flight, supplies usually now come from a robot Progress supply vessel launched from Kazakhstan.

Microwave Hotspots: The Oldest Structures Known
29.10.2000

These spots are the oldest, most distant structures known. They are seen on the above two images of the microwave sky, north and south of our galaxy's equator, based on four-year's worth of data from NASA's COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite (1989-1993). The spots represent temperature variations in the early universe.

Degas Ray Crater on Mercury
16.12.2000

Like the Earth's Moon, Mercury is scarred with craters testifying to an intense bombardment during the early history of the Solar System. In 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft surveyed this innermost planet up close, producing the only detailed images of its tortured surface.

Ganymede: The Largest Moon
14.05.2017

What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter's moon Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges.

The Mysterious Rings of Supernova 1987A
31.03.2002

What's causing those odd rings in supernova 1987A? In 1987, the brightestsupernova in recent history occurred in the Large Magellanic Clouds. At the center of the picture is an object central to the remains of the violent stellar explosion.

The Cartwheel Galaxy
2.07.1995

The Cartwheel Galaxy shows a ring that is the result of a collision between a small and a large galaxy. After a small galaxy has moved through a big galaxy - in this case...

Fields of Minerals on Ganymede
7.11.1996

What treasures lie on the surface of Ganymede? Last week, NASA released a map of Jupiter's largest moon made by the Galileo Orbiter highlighting ice and minerals deposits. The leftmost photograph by Voyager...

Looking Out Over Mars
23.08.2004

What would it be like to climb a hill and look out over Mars? That opportunity was afforded the Spirit rover earlier this month as it rolled to a high perch in the Columbia Hills.