Sun and Moon and ISS
3.09.2022

On August 25 Sun and Moon could both be seen in planet Earth's daytime skies. And so could the International Space Station. The ISS crossed the disk of the waning crescent Moon as seen from Shunyi district, Beijing, China at about 11:02 am local time.

MyCn18: An Hourglass Nebula
4.06.2000

The sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected - its core becoming a cooling, fading White Dwarf.

The Hubble Deep Field
9.07.2000

Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Deep Field - one of humanity's most distant optical views of the Universe. The dimmest, some as faint as 30th magnitude (about four billion times...

Astro 2 In Orbit
17.03.2001

Six years ago, a cluster of three ultraviolet telescopes flew into orbit on the Astro-2 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. Seen here perched in Endeavour's payload bay about 350 kilometers above the Australian desert are the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT), the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT), and the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE).

Ganymede: Torn Comet Crater Chain
15.12.2001

This striking line of 13 closely spaced craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede was photographed by the Galileo spacecraft in 1997. The picture covers an area about 120 miles wide and the chain of craters cuts across a sharp boundary between dark and light terrain. What caused this crater chain?

Star Forming Region Hubble V
25.12.2001

How did stars form in the early universe? Astronomers are gaining insight by studying NGC 6822, a nearby galaxy classified as irregular by modern standards but appearing more typical of galaxies billions of years ago. Inspection of NGC 6822 shows several bright star groups, including two dubbed Hubble-X and Hubble-V.

Behind CL1358+62: A New Farthest Object
31.07.1997

What if we could see back to the beginning of the universe? At one tenth the universe's present age, we might see galaxies forming. But what did galaxies look like when they were forming?

The Hydra Cluster of Galaxies
9.08.1997

You are flying through space and come to ... the Hydra Cluster of Galaxies. Listed as Abell 1060, the Hydra Cluster contains well over 100 bright galaxies. Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally-bound objects in the universe.

Red Mars from Spirit
7.01.2004

Rocks are strewn across the broad, flat Gusev crater floor in this sharp color picture from NASA's Spirit rover. Recorded by the rover's panoramic camera, the picture is part of Spirit's first color image of Mars - the highest resolution picture yet taken on the surface of another planet.

Northern Lights
30.07.2004

While enjoying the spaceweather on a gorgeous summer evening in mid-July, astronomer Philippe Moussette captured this colorful fish-eye lens view looking north from the Observatoire Mont Cosmos, Quebec, Canada, planet Earth. In the foreground, lights along the northern horizon give an orange cast to the low clouds.