Lunar Craters Langrenus and Petavius
11.11.2019

The history of the Moon is partly written in its craters. Pictured here is a lunar panorama taken from Earth featuring the large craters Langrenus, toward the left, and Petavius, toward the right. The craters formed in separate impacts.

Jupiter and Ring in Infrared from Webb
20.07.2022

Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that...

APOD: 2023 March 28 Б A Multiple Green Flash Sunset
28.03.2023

Yes, but can your green flash do this? A green flash at sunset is a rare event that many Sun watchers pride themselvesбon having seen.б Once thought to be a myth, a green flash is now understood to occur when the Earth's atmosphere acts like both a prism and a lens.

APOD: 2026 May 6 Б The Retrograde Dance of Saturn and Neptune
6.05.2026

What does it mean for Saturn and Neptune to be in retrograde? Featured is a composite of images taken over 34 nights from May 2025 to February 2026 tracing Saturn (brighter, foreground) and Neptune (dimmer, background). Over that time, the two planets exhibited retrograde motion, meaning they appeared to move backward in the sky.

Distortion from a Distant Cluster
23.08.2001

This stunning color deep sky view toward the constellation Pisces was made with data from a fast, sensitive, digital detector known as the Big Throughput Camera operating at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

SOHOs Twin Sungrazers
11.06.1998

This four frame animation (courtesy D. Biesecker) shows two comets arcing toward a fatal fiery encounter with the Sun. These discovery images were recorded by the LASCO instrument on board the space-based SOHO solar observatory on June 1-2.

West Valley Panorama from the Spirit Rover on Mars
29.01.2008

What does Mars look like from here? Last September, before hiking across rugged and slippery terrain to reach its winter hibernation point, the robotic Spirit rover climbed a small plateau known as Home Plate and captured the spectacular vista pictured above.

NGC 7008: The Fetus Nebula
25.08.2008

Compact and round, NGC 7008 is recognized as a planetary nebula about 2,800 light-years distant in the nebula rich constellation of Cygnus. This impressive telescopic view shows off NGC 7008's remarkable colors...

A Halo for NGC 6164
7.05.2009

Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million years old.

Across the Center of Centaurus A
29.11.2011

A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope has been processed to present a natural color picture of this cosmic maelstrom.