Eight Kilometers Above Titan
19.01.2005

What are these surface features on Titan? Scroll right to see the panoramic view captured last week by the Huygens probe as it descended toward Saturn's mysterious moon. Scientists are not yet sure what the above image is showing.

JWST: Mirrors and Masked Men
12.03.2010

Who are these masked men? Technicians from Ball Aerospace and NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center's X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, of course, testing primary mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The First Rocket Launch from Cape Canaveral
19.07.2015

A new chapter in space flight began this week in 1950 July with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida: the Bumper V-2. Shown above, the Bumper V-2 was an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a WAC Corporal rocket.

GL 105C: The Coolest Star?
20.09.1995

Is the dim star to the upper right of this false-color picture the coolest possible normal star? From this recent picture by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have estimated its mass is just high enough for it to fuse hydrogen into helium in its core.

HH1/HH2: Star Jets
19.06.1997

A cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapses and a star is born. At its core temperatures rise, a nuclear furnace ignites, and a rotating dusty disk forms surrounding the newborn star. According...

M32: Blue Stars in an Elliptical Galaxy
3.11.1999

Elliptical galaxies are known for their old, red stars. But is this old elliptical up to new tricks? In recent years, the centers of elliptical galaxies have been found to emit unexpectedly high amounts of blue and ultraviolet light.

Four Billion BCE: Battered Earth
5.08.2014

No place on Earth was safe. Four billion years ago, during the Hadean eon, our Solar System was a dangerous shooting gallery of large and dangerous rocks and ice chunks. Recent examination of lunar...

TRACE and the Active Sun
15.05.1998

This dramatic high resolution picture looking across the edge of the Sun was taken April 24th by a telescope on board the newly launched Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite. It shows graceful arcs of intensely hot gas suspended in powerful looping magnetic fields which soar above a solar active region.

NGC 6302: Big Bright Bug Nebula
5.05.2004

The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees...

Three Worlds for TRAPPIST 1
7.05.2016

Three new found worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 40 light-years away. Their transits were first detected by the Belgian robotic TRAnsiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, TRAPPIST, at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The newly discovered exoplanets are all similar in size to Earth.