APOD: 2026 April 18 Б PanSTARRS and Planets
18.04.2026

Near the eastern horizon before sunrise, Comet C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS is getting brighter. Readily visible in binoculars and small telescopes, the comet may be just on the verge of naked-eye visibility from dark sky sites.

The Solar System s Planet Trails
1.07.2022

Stars trail through a clear morning sky in this postcard from a rotating planet. The timelapse image is constructed from consecutive exposures made over nearly three hours with a camera fixed to a tripod beside the Forbidden City in Beijing, China on June 24.

Eris: The Largest Known Dwarf Planet
18.09.2006

Is Pluto the largest dwarf planet? No! Currently, the largest known dwarf planet is (136199) Eris, renamed last week from 2003 UB313. Eris is just slightly larger than Pluto, but orbits as far as twice Pluto's distance from the Sun.

An Evening Sky Full of Planets
11.01.2025

Only Mercury is missing from a Solar System parade of planets in this early evening skyscape. Rising nearly opposite the Sun, bright Mars is at the far left. The other naked-eye planets Jupiter, Saturn...

Solar System Family Portrait
29.06.2022

Yes, but have you ever seen all of the planets at once? A rare roll-call of planets has been occurring in the morning sky for much of June. The featured fisheye all-sky image, taken...

A Sky Full Of Planets
4.12.1997

Look up tonight. Just after sunset, the crescent moon and all five "naked-eye" planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) will be visible (depending on your latitude), lying near our solar system's ecliptic plane.

All Planets Panorama
25.02.2017

For 360 degrees, a view along the plane of the ecliptic is captured in this remarkable panorama, with seven planets in a starry sky. The mosaic was constructed using images taken during January 24-26, from Nacpan Beach, El Nido in Palawan, Philippines.

Betelgeuse Imagined
1.01.2020

Why is Betelgeuse fading? No one knows. Betelgeuse, one of the brightest and most recognized stars in the night sky, is only half as bright as it used to be only five months ago.

New Horizons
22.06.2015

In three weeks, the robotic New Horizons spacecraft will reach Pluto. As the featured video makes clear, though, humanity has been on an unprecedented epoch of robotic exploration of our Solar System's planets for the past half century.