Martian Dust Devil Trails
21.10.2009

Who's been marking up Mars? This portion of a recent high-resolution picture from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows twisting dark trails criss-crossing light colored terrain on the martian surface.

Comet 45P Passes Near the Earth
11.02.2017

A large snowball has just passed the Earth. Known as Comet 45P/HondaMrkosPajduАkovА", or 45P for short, the comet came 10 times closer to Earth yesterday than the Earth ever gets to the Sun. During this passage, the comet was photographed sporting a thin ion tail and a faint but expansive green coma.

APOD: 2020 July 22 Б The Structured Tails of Comet NEOWISE
21.07.2020

What is creating the structure in Comet NEOWISE's tails? Of the two tails evident, the blue ion tail on the left points directly away from the Sun and is pushed out by the flowing and charged solar wind.

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence
22.02.2003

A huge eruptive prominence is seen moving out from our Sun in this condensed half-hour time-lapse sequence. Ten Earths could easily fit in the "claw" of this seemingly solar monster. This large prominence, though, is significant not only for its size, but its shape.

Moon over ISS
5.11.2020

Completing one orbit of our fair planet in 90 minutes the International Space Station can easily be spotted by eye as a very bright star moving through the night sky. Have you seen it? The next time you do, you will have recognized the location of over 20 years of continuous human presence in space.

Comet McNaught Over Catalonia
14.01.2007

This past weekend Comet McNaught peaked at a brightness that surpassed even Venus. Fascinated sky enthusiasts in the Earth's northern hemisphere were treated to an instantly visible comet head and a faint elongated tail near sunrise and sunset.

APOD: 2025 August 27 Б WISPIT 2b: Exoplanet Carves Gap in Birth Disk
26.08.2025

That yellow spot -- what is it? It's a young planet outside our Solar System. The featured image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile surprisingly captures a distant scene much like our own Solar System's birth, some 4.5 billion years ago.

DEM L71: When Small Stars Explode
13.03.2003

Large, massive stars end their furious lives in spectacular supernova explosions -- but small, low mass stars may encounter a similar fate. In fact, instead of simply cooling off and quietly fading away, some white...

The Brightest Spot on Ceres
10.12.2015

Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the Solar System's main asteroid belt with a diameter of about 950 kilometers. Exploring Ceres from orbit since March, the Dawn spacecraft's camera...

Dry Ice Sled Streaks on Mars
17.06.2013

What creates these long and nearly straight grooves on Mars? Dubbed linear gullies, they appear on the sides of some sandy slopes during Martian spring, have nearly constant width, extend for as long as two kilometers, and have raised banks along their sides.