Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater
21.10.2014

Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest moons. The crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is pictured above.

Global Ocean Suspected on Saturns Enceladus
20.09.2015

Do some surface features on Enceladus roll like a conveyor belt? A leading interpretation of images taken of Saturn's most explosive moon indicate that they do. This form of asymmetric tectonic activity, very...

A Hybrid Solar Eclipse over Kenya
24.07.2017

Chasing solar eclipses can cause you to go to the most interesting places and meet the most interesting people. Almost. For example, chasing this eclipse brought this astrophotographer to Kenya in 2013. His contact...

The Orion Nebula in Infrared from WISE
2.01.2019

The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken...

The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared from Hubble
12.04.2020

While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42).

Perseverance in Jezero Crater s Delta
17.09.2022

The Perseverance rover's Mastcam-Z captured images to create this mosaic on August 4, 2022. The car-sized robot was continuing its exploration of the fan-shaped delta of a river that, billions of years ago, flowed into Jezero Crater on Mars.

APOD: 2025 September 9 Б Up from the Earth: Gigantic Jet Lightning
9.09.2025

What's that rising up from the Earth? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early in July, astronaut Nicole Ayers saw an unusual type of lightning rising up from the Earth: a gigantic jet. The powerful jet appears near the center of the featured image in red, white, and blue.

APOD: 2025 December 2 Б M77: Spiral Galaxy with an Active Center
2.12.2025

What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster (Cetus). At that estimated distance, this gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across.

Stars Without Galaxies
3.02.1997

Galaxies are made up of stars, but are all stars found within galaxies? Apparently not. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers exploring the Virgo Cluster of galaxies have now found about 600 red giant stars adrift in intergalactic space.

The Clouds of Jupiter
20.09.1997

What makes the colors in Jupiter's clouds? With a mean temperature of 120 degrees Kelvin (-153 degrees Celsius) and a composition dominated by hydrogen (about 90%), and helium (about 10%) with a smattering...