NGC 6960: The Witch's Broom Nebula
23.08.2000

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula.

Full Moondark
12.12.2003

The brilliant full Moon might not have looked quite like this to skygazers this week, but the image is a mosaic of 18 digital frames recorded on December 9th at 3:30 UT.

The First Explorer
31.01.2018

Sixty years ago, on January 31, 1958, the First Explorer was successfully launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency on a Jupiter-C rocket. Inaugurating the era of space exploration for the United States, Explorer...

NEAR Spacecraft Survives Landing on Asteroid Eros
13.02.2001

Yesterday NEAR-Shoemaker became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid and send signals back from its surface. Since the robot spacecraft was not designed for such a contingency, the success of the landing on asteroid 433

A Crescent Nebula Star Field
15.04.2003

What caused the Crescent Nebula? Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible on the right, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago.

NGC 6960: The Witchs Broom Nebula
2.03.2004

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula.

APOD: 2026 February 1 Б Galle: Happy Face Crater on Mars
1.02.2026

Mars has put on a happy face. The Martian crater Galle is famous because it has internal markings that make it look like a face that is both smiling and winking. These markings were originally discovered in the 1970s in pictures taken by the Viking Orbiter.

Spirit Pan from Bonneville Crater s Edge
18.03.2004

Scroll right and follow this breathtaking view of the martian surface from the southern edge of a small crater dubbed Bonneville. NASA's Spirit rover recorded the sharp 180-degree panorama on sols...

Eagle Aurora over Norway
23.10.2016

What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days before this 2012 image was taken, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth.

The First Rocket Launch from Cape Canaveral
22.10.2001

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