Asteroid Eros Reconstructed
5.06.2001

Orbiting the Sun between Mars and Earth, asteroid 433 Eros was visited by the robot spacecraft NEAR-Shoemaker in 2000 February. Some of the 100,000+ images taken by NEAR of the tumbling space rock have been combined into the above high-resolution composite.

Apollo 12: Self-Portrait
15.03.2003

Is it art? In November of 1969, Apollo 12 astronaut-photographer Charles "Pete" Conrad recorded this masterpiece while documenting colleague Alan Bean's lunar soil collection activities on the Oceanus Procellarum. The image is dramatic and stark. Bean is faceless.

Twilight with Moon and Planets
21.02.2026

Only two days after the February New Moon's annular eclipse of the Sun, a slender lunar crescent poses above the western horizon after sunset in this wintry twilight skyscape. Its nightside faintly illuminated...

Our Solar System from Voyager
19.08.1995

After taking its spectacular pictures of the outer solar system planets, Voyager 1 looked back at six planets from the inner solar system. Here Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, were all visible across the sky.

Sizzling Io
6.07.1998

What's cooking on Io? This active moon of Jupiter is marked with volcanoes spewing lava that is now known to be hotter than any lava on Earth. Above is the highest resolution color-enhanced image yet composed of the most active surface in our Solar System. Features as small as three kilometers are visible.

Swift Launches
22.11.2004

Where do gamma ray bursts occur? To help find out, NASA launched the Swift satellite on Saturday, as pictured above. What Swift is designed to do better than any previous satellite is to quickly locate these enigmatic explosions in both sky position and distance.

Moonless Perseid Sky
16.08.2007

Last weekend, dark, moonless night skies brought many sightings of Perseid meteors to skygazers all over planet Earth. Early Sunday morning astronomer John Chumack's camera captured this Perseid meteor streak with a flare near the end of its track over Yellow Springs, Ohio.

When Gemini Sends Stars to Paranal
15.12.2012

From a radiant point in the constellation of the Twins, the annual Geminid meteor shower rained down on planet Earth this week. Recorded near the shower's peak in the early hours of December...

A Falcon 9 Nebula
4.09.2021

Not the Hubble Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 29. The snapshot was taken at 3:17am from Space View Park in Titusville, Florida.

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence
23.02.2003

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.