Find the Moon
11.07.2021

Where's the Moon? Somewhere in this image, the Earth's Moon is hiding. The entire Moon is visible, in its completely full phase, in plain sight. Even the photographer's keen eye couldn...

APOD: 2025 May 21 Б International Space Station Crosses the Sun
21.05.2025

Typically, the International Space Station is visible only at night. Slowly drifting across the night sky as it orbits the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen as a bright spot about once a month from many locations.

APOD: 2025 October 22 Б Comet Lemmon over the High Tatras
22.10.2025

Comet Lemmon putting on a show for cameras around the globe. Passing nearest to the Earth this week, the photogenic comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now extending two long tails : a blue ion tail and a white dust tail.

Portrait of an Infant Solar System
7.06.2002

This infant solar system was discovered posing along the lonely outskirts of the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud, a star forming region 500 light-years from Earth. Enlarged in this infrared false-color portrait from the European...

A Sharper View of a Tilted Planet
18.11.2004

These sharp views of tilted gas giant Uranus show dramatic details of the planet's atmosphere and ring system. The remarkable ground-based images were made using a near-infrared camera and the Keck Adaptive Optics system to reduce the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere.

Comet 46P Wirtanen
15.11.2018

Periodic Comet 46P/Wirtanen is now the brightest comet in the night sky, but too faint to be seen by eye. From dark sky sites it could just become naked-eye visible though, as it's 5.4 year long looping orbit takes it closest to Earth and the Sun in mid December.

Zodiacal Light and Mars
11.03.2021

Just after sunset on March 7, a faint band of light still reaches above the western horizon in this serene, rural Illinois, night skyscape. Taken from an old farmstead, the luminous glow is zodiacal light, prominent in the west after sunset during planet Earth's northern hemisphere spring.

Solar Eclipse from a Ship
29.04.2023

Along a narrow path that mostly avoided landfall, the shadow of the New Moon raced across planet Earth's southern hemisphere on April 20 to create a rare annular-total or hybrid solar eclipse. From...

APOD: 2023 June 25 Б Lightning on Jupiter
25.06.2023

Does lightning occur only on Earth? No. Spacecraft in our Solar System have detected lightning on other planets, including Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and lightning is likely on Venus, Uranus, and Neptune. Lightning is a sudden rush of electrically charged particles from one location to another.

APOD: 2024 October 6 Б The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught
6.10.2024

Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, grew a spectacularly long and filamentary tail. The magnificent tail spread across the sky and was visible for several days to Southern Hemisphere observers just after sunset. The amazing ion tail showed its greatest extent on long-duration, wide-angle camera exposures.