A Solar Ballet
15.01.2013

Sometimes, the Sun itself seems to dance. On just this past New Year's Eve, for example, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressive prominence erupting from the Sun's surface. The dramatic explosion was captured in ultraviolet light in the above time lapse video covering four hours.

Persistent Saturnian Auroras
22.06.2014

Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's South Pole simultaneously as Cassini closed in on the gas giant in January 2004. Hubble snapped images in ultraviolet light, while Cassini recorded radio emissions and monitored the solar wind.

Orions Belt and Sword over Teides Peak
27.03.2016

The southern part of Orion, the famous constellation and mythical hunter, appears quite picturesque posing here over a famous volcano. Located in the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, the snow-peaked Teide is one of the largest volcanoes on Earth.

M63: Sunflower Galaxy Wide Field
3.08.2016

The Sunflower Galaxy blooms near the center of this wide field telescopic view. The scene spans about 2 degrees or 4 full moons on the sky toward the loyal constellation Canes Venatici. More formally...

Boulders on Bennu
23.05.2019

An abundance of boulders litters the surface asteroid 101955 Bennu in this dramatic close-up from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Taken on March 28 from a distance of just 3.4 kilometers (2.1 miles) the field of view is about 50 meters across while the light colored boulder at top right is 4.8 meters tall.

Night of the Perseids
27.09.2021

Have you ever experienced a meteor shower? To help capture the wonder, a video was taken during the peak of the recent Perseid meteor shower above the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, India, high up in the Himalayan mountains.

APOD: 2024 March 26 Б Comet Pons Brooks Ion Tail
25.03.2024

Comet Pons-Brooks has quite a tail to tell. First discovered in 1385, this erupting dirty snowball loops back into our inner Solar System every 71 years and, this time, is starting to put on a show for deep camera exposures.

Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822
22.01.2002

Nearby galaxy NGC 6822 is irregular in several ways. First, the galaxy's star distribution merits a formal classification of dwarf irregular, and from our vantage-point the small galaxy appears nearly rectangular. What strikes...

S is for Sun
20.03.2002

Taken yesterday from the SOHO spacecraft, this false-color image shows the active Sun near the March Equinox, the beginning of Fall in the south and Spring in the northern hemisphere. Recorded in a band...

M24: A Sagittarius Starscape
21.09.2004

Many vast star fields in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy are rich in clouds of dust, and gas. First and foremost, visible in the above picture are millions of stars, many of which are similar to our Sun.