Blasting Off from the Moon
12.12.1998

How did the astronauts get back from the Moon? The Lunar Module that landed two astronauts on the Moon actually came apart. The top part containing the astronauts carried additional rocket fuel which allowed it to blast away, leaving the bottom part on the Moon forever.

The Sun Also Rises
16.11.1995

Sunrise seen from low Earth orbit by the shuttle astronauts can be very dramatic indeed (and the authors apologize to Hemingway for using his title!). In this breathtaking view, the Sun is just visible...

18 Miles From Deimos
21.12.1996

Diminutive Deimos is the smallest of the two tiny Moons of Mars. Potato shaped and barely 6 miles wide this asteroid-like body was visited by the Viking 2 orbiter in 1977. This image was made when the spacecraft approached to within 18 miles of Deimos' surface.

Ida and Dactyl: Asteroid and Moon
29.06.1997

This asteroid has a moon! The robot spacecraft Galileo currently exploring the Jovian system, encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long journey to Jupiter. The second asteroid it photographed, Ida, was discovered to have a moon which appears as a small dot to the right of Ida in this picture.

Mars: A Mist In Mariner Valley
17.10.1997

An icy mist and late afternoon clouds cover much of this section of Valles Marineris on Mars. The Valles Marineris or Mariner Valley is a huge canyon system about 2,000 miles long and up to 5 miles deep.

Eagle Eggs in M16
27.02.1998

Star forming regions known as "EGGs" are uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). EGGs, short for evaporating gaseous globules, are dense regions of mostly molecular hydrogen gas that fragment and gravitationally collapse to form stars.

Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3
7.10.1995

Apollo 12 was the second mission to land humans on the Moon. The landing site was picked to be near the location of Surveyor 3, a robot spacecraft that had landed on the moon three years earlier. Pictured above, Apollo 12 astronauts Conrad and Bean retrieve parts from the Surveyor.

Cracks and Ridges on Europa
9.03.1998

Which way to the interstate? What appears to be a caricature of a complex highway system on Earth is actually a system of ridges and cracks on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The distance between parallel ridges in the above photograph is typically about 1 kilometer.

Eagle EGGs in M16
2.04.2000

Star forming regions known as "EGGs" are uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). EGGs, short for evaporating gaseous globules, are dense regions of mostly molecular hydrogen gas that fragment and gravitationally collapse to form stars.

The Sun Erupts
13.08.1995

The sun was captured in 1973 throwing one of the largest eruptive prominences ever recorded. Sol, our sun, is a normal star. It formed about 5 billion years ago, and will last about another 5 billion years. The sun will never explode, and a solar flare will never destroy the earth.