Voyager's Preview of Galileo at Ganymede
27.06.1996

NASA's robot spacecraft Galileo began its long voyage to Jupiter in October of 1989. In December of last year it arrived in the Jovian system, beginning its unprecedented, detailed exploration by dropping a probe into the gas giant's atmosphere. By early this morning it will have accomplished another milestone in its ambitious mission.

Help Search for Interstellar Dust
25.10.2006

What caused that hole? The hole in question appears as a small dark circle on the far right. If the above image of aerogel seems dull and uninteresting, then welcome to one aspect of real world science.

Flying Over the Columbia Hills of Mars
19.05.2008

What it would be like to fly over Mars? Combining terrain data from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft (now dormant) with information about the robotic Spirit rover currently rolling across Mars has resulted in a digital movie that shows what a flight over the Columbia Hills might look like.

Jupiter in Infrared from Gemini
12.05.2020

In infrared, Jupiter lights up the night. Recently, astronomers at the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii, USA, created some of the best infrared photos of Jupiter ever taken from EarthБs surface, pictured. Gemini...

In, Through, and Beyond Saturn's Rings
3.04.2021

Four moons are visible on the featured image -- can you find them all? First -- and farthest in the background -- is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and one of the larger moons in the Solar System. The dark feature across the top of this perpetually cloudy world is the north polar hood.

APOD: 2023 June 18 Б Saturns Northern Hexagon
17.06.2023

Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System.

The High Energy Heart Of The Milky Way
29.07.1998

These high resolution false color pictures of the Galactic center region in high energy X-ray and gamma-ray light result from a very long exposure of roughly 3,000 hours performed from 1990 to 1997 by the French SIGMA telescope onboard the Russian GRANAT spacecraft.

STS 1: First Shuttle Launch
12.04.2001

On April 12, 1981, twenty years ago today, the Space Shuttle Columbia became the first shuttle to orbit the Earth. In this gorgeous time exposure, flood lights play on the Columbia and service structures (left) as it rests atop Complex 39's Pad A at Kennedy Space Center in preparation for first launch.

SOHO Comet 367: Sungrazer
8.11.2001

The most prolific comet discovering instrument in history rides aboard the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft, 1.5 million kilometers sunward of planet Earth. Of course, most of these SOHO comets have been sungrazers - like the one illustrated in the dramatic montage above.

Six Worlds for Kepler 11
2.02.2011

Six worlds orbit Kepler-11, a sunlike star 2,000 light-years distant in the constellation Cygnus. The new discovery, based on data from NASA's planet hunting Kepler spacecraft, makes the Kepler-11 system the fullest exoplanetary system known.