Galileo's First Color Image of Io
19.07.1996

Above is the first color image of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io released by the Galileo Project. (Io sounds like "eye-oh".) The image was made on June 25 when the Galileo spacecraft approached within 1.4 million miles.

Saturn in Blue and Gold
3.05.2006

Why is Saturn partly blue? The above picture of Saturn approximates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The above picture was taken in mid-March by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Here Saturn's majestic rings appear directly only as a thin vertical line.

Atmospheres Detected on Two Extrasolar Planets
27.02.2007

Do extrasolar planets have water? In an attempt to find out, the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope made detailed observations of the atmospheres of two planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. Unfortunately, water vapor was not detected in either exoplanet.

Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble
25.04.2007

In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebula.

A Dangerous Summer on HD 80606b
4.02.2009

On the distant planet HD 80606b, summers might be dangerous. Hypothetic life forms floating in HD 080606b's atmosphere or lurking on one of its (presently hypothetical) moons might fear the 1,500 Kelvin summer heat, which is hot enough not only to melt lead but also nickel.

The Hubble Extreme Deep Field
14.10.2012

What did the first galaxies look like? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope has just finished taking the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light.

M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy in Dust and Stars
24.02.2013

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one of the brightest and most picturesque galaxies on the sky.

A Flight through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
27.08.2013

What would it look like to fly through the distant universe? To find out, a team of astronomers estimated the relative distances to over 5,000 galaxies in one of the most distant fields of galaxies ever imaged: the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF).

Mars, Ceres, Vesta
10.04.2014

That bright, ruddy star you've recently noticed rising just after sunset isn't a star at all. That's Mars, the Red Planet. Mars is now near its 2014 opposition (April 8) and closest approach (April 14), looping through the constellation Virgo opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky.

Propeller Shadows on Saturns Rings
26.10.2016

What created these unusually long shadows on Saturn's rings? The dark shadows -- visible near the middle of the image -- extend opposite the Sun and, given their length, stem from objects having heights up to a few kilometers.