GOES 16: Moon over Planet Earth
26.01.2017

Launched last November 19 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the satellite now known as GOES-16 can now observe planet Earth from a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. Its Advanced Baseline Imager captured this contrasting view of Earth and a gibbous Moon on January 15.

Venus Unveiled
30.03.2002

The surface of Venus is perpetually covered by a veil of thick clouds and remains hidden from even the powerful telescopic eyes of earth-bound astronomers. But in the early 1990s, using imaging radar...

The Weather on Mars
24.03.1997

Would Mars be a nice place to visit? Sometimes. Much of Mars undergoes severe changes in climate during its orbit around the Sun, ranging from extreme cold to temperatures enjoyable by humans. But Mars...

ISS from Wallasey
6.04.2019

After sunset on March 28, the International Space Station climbed above the western horizon, as seen from Wallasey, England at the mouth of the River Mersey. Still glinting in the sunlight some 400 kilometers...

Tiangong Space Station Transits the Moon
25.08.2022

The rugged lunar south polar region lies at the top of this colorful portrait of a last quarter Moon made on August 20. Constructed from video frames and still images taken at Springrange, New South Wales, Australia it also captures a transit of China's Tiangong Space Station.

Aurora and Orion
14.11.1995

Looking toward the south from low Earth orbit, the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor made this stunning time exposure of the Aurora Australis (southern lights) in April of 1994. The aurora are caused by high energy electrons from the Solar Wind which are funneled into the atmosphere by the Earth's magnetic field.

On The Trail Of A Fireball
19.02.1999

This exceptionally bright fireball meteor trail was photographed with a fish-eye camera at a Czech Republic station of the European Fireball Network on January 21, 1999. Of the star trails visible in this night-long exposure, the bright short arc in the upper left is due to Polaris, the north star.

Circling the Sun
13.01.2024

Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a circle, it's an ellipse. The point along its elliptical orbit where our fair planet is closest to the Sun is called perihelion. This year...

The Ecliptic Plane
14.10.2000

The Plane of the Ecliptic is well illustrated in this picture from the 1994 lunar prospecting Clementine spacecraft. Clementine's star tracker camera image reveals (from right to left) the Moon lit by Earthshine, the Sun's corona rising over the Moon's dark limb, and the planets Saturn, Mars, and Mercury.

Lunation
5.02.2012

Our Moon's appearance changes nightly. This time-lapse sequence shows what our Moon looks like during a lunation, a complete lunar cycle. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The Moon always keeps the same face toward the Earth.