Opportunity Rover Indicates Ancient Mars Was Wet
3.03.2004

Was Mars ever wet enough to support life? To help answer this question, NASA launched two rover missions to the red planet and landed them in regions that satellite images indicated might have been covered with water.

A Twisted Meteor Train
2.02.2005

Did this meteor leave a twisting path? Evidently. Meteor trains that twist noticeably are rare - and even more rarely photographed - but have been noted before. The underlying reason for unusual meteors trains is that many meteors are markedly non-spherical in shape and non-uniform in composition.

Reflections on vdB 9
21.02.2019

Centered in a well-composed celestial still life, pretty, blue vdB 9 is the 9th object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this telescopic field of view, about...

Touchdown on Asteroid Ryugu
12.03.2019

Last month, humanity bounced a robot off an asteroid. The main reason was to collect a surface sample. Despite concern over finding a safely reboundable touchdown spot, Japan's robotic Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully touched down -- and bounced right back from -- asteroid Ryugu.

Venusian Volcano Imagined
27.10.2020

What would an erupting volcano on Venus look like? Evidence of currently active volcanoes on Venus was announced earlier this year with the unexplained warmth of regions thought to contain only ancient volcanoes. Although...

APOD: 2025 April 16 Б Halo of the Cats Eye
16.04.2025

What created the unusual halo around the Cat's Eye Nebula? No one is sure. What is sure is that the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae on the sky.

Alpha Centauri: The Closest Star System
23.03.2003

The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima Centauri -- is actually the nearest star. The bright stars Alpha Centauri...

Water Found in Space Rock
7.09.1999

What would you do if it rained blue water from space? On 1998 March 22, no umbrella was needed, as the blue water came attached to a stony meteorite that landed in Monahans, Texas. The meteorite fall was seen by several boys, and was being carefully scrutinized by NASA scientists within 72 hours.

Rolling Across the Rocky Plains of Mars
4.10.2010

You stare out across the rocky plains of Mars. Before you, in every direction, is dark sand and bright rock. Although little has changed here for millions of years, no one has ever seen this view before. You are being sent on a long journey to a distant crater, the largest crater in the region.

Where Your Elements Came From
24.10.2017

The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen.