Io: The Prometheus Plume
22.05.2011

What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 Passes the Earth
9.11.2011

Asteroid 2005 YU55 passed by the Earth yesterday, posing no danger. The space rock, estimated to be about 400 meters across, coasted by just inside the orbit of Earth's Moon. Although the passing...

Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturns Ring Plane
23.02.2014

If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's "appendages" disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn's unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on rings will appear to disappear.

Starburst Cluster in NGC 3603
6.11.2016

A mere 20,000 light-years from the Sun lies NGC 3603, a resident of the nearby Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 3603 is well known to astronomers as one of the Milky Way's largest star-forming regions.

APOD: 2023 February 26 Б Saturns Iapetus: Moon with a Strange Surface
26.02.2023

What would make a moon look like a walnut? A strange ridge that circles Saturn's moon Iapetus's equator, visible near the bottom of the featured image, makes it appear similar to a popular edible nut.

APOD: 2026 May 6 Б The Retrograde Dance of Saturn and Neptune
6.05.2026

What does it mean for Saturn and Neptune to be in retrograde? Featured is a composite of images taken over 34 nights from May 2025 to February 2026 tracing Saturn (brighter, foreground) and Neptune (dimmer, background). Over that time, the two planets exhibited retrograde motion, meaning they appeared to move backward in the sky.

SOHOs Twin Sungrazers
11.06.1998

This four frame animation (courtesy D. Biesecker) shows two comets arcing toward a fatal fiery encounter with the Sun. These discovery images were recorded by the LASCO instrument on board the space-based SOHO solar observatory on June 1-2.

Solar Eclipse and SOHO
31.03.2006

Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night can keep the space-based SOlar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) from watching the Sun. In fact, from its vantage point 150 million kilometers sunward of planet Earth, SOHO's cameras can always monitor the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.

The Far Infrared Sky
17.05.2000

Three major sources contribute to the far-infrared sky: our Solar System, our Galaxy, and our Universe. The above recently released image, in representative colors, is the highest resolution projection yet created of the entire far-infrared sky (60 - 240 microns) created from years of observations by the now-defunct robot spacecraft COBE.

4000 Kilometers Above Saturns Iapetus
19.09.2007

What does the surface of Saturn's mysterious moon Iapetus look like? To help find out, the robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn was sent soaring last week just 2,000 kilometers from the unique equatorial ridge of the unusual walnut-shaped two-toned moon.