Mars Pathfinder's Landing Site
24.07.1997

Where is Mars Pathfinder? Follow the arrow in the above picture taken by the Viking Orbiter in 1976. From the surface Mars appears covered with rocks, but from orbit Mars appears covered with craters. However, several familiar features are visible in this photograph.

Shackleton from ShadowCam
4.05.2023

Shackleton crater lies at the lunar south pole. Peaks along the 21 kilometer diameter are in sunlight, but Shackleton's floor is in dark permanent shadow. Still, this image of the shadowed rim wall...

Callisto Enhanced
12.05.1998

Callisto is half rock and half ice. This moon of Jupiter is approximately the size of the planet Mercury, making it the third largest moon in the Solar System, after Ganymede and Titan. Callisto...

Saturn's Moon Tethys
23.11.1995

Tethys is one of the larger and closer moons of Saturn. It was visited by both Voyager spacecraft - Voyager 1 in November 1980 and by Voyager 2 in August 1981. Tethys is now known to be composed almost completely of water ice. Tethys shows a large impact crater that nearly circles the planet.

APOD: 2024 July 24 Б Exaggerated Moon
23.07.2024

Our Moon doesn't really have craters this big. Earth's Moon, Luna, also doesn't naturally show this spikey texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on reality.

Miranda, Chevron, and Alonso
5.03.1999

Miranda is a bizarre world which surely had a tempestuous past. The innermost of the larger Uranian moons, Miranda is almost 300 miles in diameter and was discovered in 1948 by American planetary astronomer Gerard Kuiper.

Apollo 14 on the Moon
8.12.1995

The jewel-like glare from a brilliant sun reflects off the lunar module of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon as it rests on the lunar surface in February 1971. Astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon's surface while astronaut Stuart Roosa piloted the orbiting command module.

Janus: Potato Shaped Moon of Saturn
6.11.2006

Janus is one of the stranger moons of Saturn. First, Janus travels in an unusual orbit around Saturn where it periodically trades places with its sister moon Epimetheus, which typically orbits about 50 kilometers away. Janus, although slightly larger than Epimetheus, is potato-shaped and has a largest diameter of about 190 kilometers.

Miranda, Chevron, and Alonso
15.02.2002

Miranda is a bizarre world which surely had a tempestuous past. The innermost of the larger Uranian moons, Miranda is almost 300 miles in diameter and was discovered on today's date in 1948 by American planetary astronomer Gerard Kuiper.

Burns Cliff Anaglyph
4.08.2006

Get out your red/blue glasses and gaze across Burns Cliff along the inner wall of Endurance crater on Mars! The view from the perspective of Mars rover Opportunity is a color anaglyph - two different images are presented to the left and right eyes by color filters to produce the 3D effect.