Astronaut Exploring: An Apollo 15 Panorama
10.11.2018

What would it be like to explore the Moon? NASA's Apollo missions gave humans just this chance in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In particular, the Apollo 15 mission was dedicated to better understanding the surface of the Moon by exploring mountains, valleys, maria, and highlands.

An Apollo 15 Panorama: Astronaut Exploring
29.11.2008

What would it be like to explore the Moon? NASA's Apollo missions gave humans just this chance in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In particular, the Apollo 15 mission was dedicated to better understanding the surface of the Moon by exploring mountains, valleys, maria, and highlands.

The Topography of Mars
28.06.2001

Mars has its ups and downs. Visible on the above interactive topographic map of the surface of Mars are giant volcanoes, deep valleys, impact craters, and terrain considered unusual and even mysterious. Particularly notable...

Mars, Pleiades, and Andromeda over Stone Lions
12.10.2020

Three very different -- and very famous -- objects were all captured in a single frame last month. On the upper left is the bright blue Pleiades, perhaps the most famous cluster of stars on the night sky. The Pleiades (M45) is about 450 light years away and easily found a few degrees from Orion.

Apollo 17 s Moonship
18.12.2019

Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit.

The Potsdam Gravity Potato
14.12.2014

Why do some places on Earth have higher gravity than others? Sometimes the reason is unknown. To help better understand the Earth's surface, sensitive measurments by the orbiting satellites GRACE and CHAMP were used to create a map of Earth's gravitational field.

A Protected Night Sky Over Flagstaff
16.04.2008

This sky is protected. Yesterday marked the 50 year anniversary of the first lighting ordinance ever enacted, which restricted searchlight advertisements from sweeping the night skies above Flagstaff, Arizona, USA. Flagstaff now enjoys...

APOD: 2023 September 17 Б Moon Mountains Magnified during Ring of Fire Eclipse
16.09.2023

What are those dark streaks in this composite image of a solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from Xiamen, China, has the Moon's center directly in front of the Sun's center.

Stereo Eros
12.02.2021

Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 433 Eros. Orbiting the Sun once every 1.8 years, the near-Earth asteroid is named for the Greek god of love. Still, its shape more closely resembles a lumpy potato than a heart.

Lunar Module at Taurus Littrow
28.06.2002

Can the Hubble Space Telescope take a picture that shows the Apollo lunar modules on the Moon? With its 2.4 meter diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across.