A Radar View of Titan
24.11.2004

Where are Titan's craters? Throughout our Solar System's five billion-year history, dangerous rocks and chunks of ice have continually slammed into planets and moons - usually creating numerous long lasting impact craters. When the robot spacecraft Cassini swooped past Saturn's moon Titan last month, however, radar images showed few craters.

SNR 0103 72.6: Oxygen Supply
13.08.2005

A supernova explosion, a massive star's inevitable and spectacular demise, blasts back into space debris enriched in the heavy elements forged in its stellar core. Incorporated into future stars and planets, these are the elements ultimately necessary for life. Seen here in a false-color x-ray image, supernova remnant SNR 0103-72

Moon Slide Slim
20.02.2008

No special filters - or even a telescope - are required to enjoy a leisurely lunar eclipse. In fact, watched from all over the night side of planet Earth, these regular celestial performances have entertained many casual skygazers. Still, this eye-catching picture of a lunar eclipse may look unfamiliar.

The Big Picture
11.04.2009

Intricate, glowing nebulae that shine in planet Earth's night sky are beautiful to look at in deep images made with telescopes and sensitive cameras. But they are faint and otherwise invisible to the naked-eye. That makes their relative location and extent on the sky difficult to appreciate.

Atlantis over Rhodes
28.05.2010

A moonlit chapel stands in the foreground of this night-scape from the historic Greek island of Rhodes. The tantalizing sky above features a colorful lunar corona, where bright moonlight is diffracted by water droplets in the thin clouds drifting in front of the lunar disk.

The Small Cloud of Magellan
3.09.2010

Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two celestial wonders easily visible for southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan.

Opposite the Sun
18.09.2010

Chances are the brightest star you've seen lately is actually planet Jupiter. Jupiter rules the sky in this labeled view of a starry September night from the Alborz mountains in Iran, complete with the trail of a red flashlight illuminating the mountain road.

Gale Crater
29.07.2011

This sharp view from the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is centered on 154 kilometer (96 mile) wide Gale crater, near the martian equator. Within Gale, an impressive layered mountain rises about 5 kilometers (3 miles) above the crater floor.

Shell Galaxy NGC 7600
23.12.2011

Similar in size to the Milky Way, elliptical galaxy NGC 7600 is about 150 thousand light-years distant. In this deep image, spanning about 1/2 degree on the sky toward the constellation Aquarius, NGC 7600 sports a remarkable outer halo of nested shells and broad circumgalactic structures.

All of Mercury
12.06.2013

For the first time, the entire surface of planet Mercury has been mapped. Detailed observations of the innermost planet's surprising crust have been ongoing since the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft first passed Mercury in 2008 and began orbiting in 2011.