Apollo 17s Moonship
15.04.1999

Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the vacuum of space. This sharp picture from the command module America, shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit.

Sol 4: Mars Color Panorama
9.07.1997

These mosaicked images form a color panorama of the region immediately surrounding the Sagan Memorial Station on Mars. The most recent images were recorded on Sol 4 - the 4th day of operations on the martian surface. The composite view reveals the reddish soil and rock-strewn terrain of an ancient martian flood channel.

Bats And The Barren Moon
31.10.1998

This picture, taken as the Apollo 17 astronauts orbited the Moon in 1972, depicts the stark lunar surface around the Eratosthenes and Copernicus craters. Images of a Moon devoid of life are familiar to denizens of the space age.

The Ring
7.01.1999

Except for the Rings of Saturn, The Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. This planetary nebula's simple, graceful appearance is thought to be due to perspective -- our view from planet Earth looking straight into what is actually a barrel-shaped cloud of gas shrugged off by a dying central star.

SN 1006: Supernova Remnant in X Rays
26.12.2005

This huge puff ball was once a star. One thousand years ago, in the year 1006, a new star was recorded in the sky that today we know was really an existing star exploding.

Massive Stars in Open Cluster Pismis 24
26.10.2008

How massive can a normal star be? Estimates made from distance, brightness and standard solar models had given one star in the open cluster Pismis 24 over 200 times the mass of our Sun, making it a record holder. This star is the brightest object located just above the gas front in the above image.

Saturns Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters
18.01.2009

What lies at the bottom of Hyperion's strange craters? Nobody knows. To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in late 2005 and took an image of unprecedented detail.

Prometheus Remastered
5.04.2010

What does Saturn's shepherd moon Prometheus really look like? The raw images from the robotic Cassini spacecraft's January flyby of the small moon showed tantalizing clues on grainy images, but now that the Cassini team has digitally remastered these images, many more details have come out.

Unusual Spiral Galaxy M66 from Hubble
13.04.2010

Why isn't spiral galaxy M66 symmetric? Usually density waves of gas, dust, and newly formed stars circle a spiral galaxy's center and create a nearly symmetric galaxy. The differences between...

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.