APOD: 2024 December 8 Б Aurora around Saturns North Pole
8.12.2024

Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's North Pole simultaneously during Cassini's final orbits around the gas giant in September 2017. During this time, Saturn's tilt caused its North Pole to be clearly visible from Earth.

24 Million Kilometers to Saturn
31.05.2004

Next stop: Saturn. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is approaching Saturn and will fire its engines to break into orbit around the ringed giant on July 1. The robot spacecraft was launched in 1997 and rounded Jupiter in 2001.

NGC 2346: A Butterfly-Shaped Planetary Nebula
28.10.2001

It may look like a butterfly, but it's bigger than our Solar System. NGC 2346 is a planetary nebula made of gas and dust that has evolved into a familiar shape. At the heart of the bipolar planetary nebula is a pair of close stars orbiting each other once every sixteen days.

NGC 3603: From Beginning To End
4.06.1999

From beginning to end, different stages of a star's life appear in this exciting Hubble Space Telescope picture of the environs of galactic emission nebula NGC 3603. For the beginning, eye-catching "pillars" of glowing hydrogen at the right signal newborn stars emerging from their dense, gaseous, nurseries.

APOD: 2025 September 3 Б Cir X1: Jets in the Africa Nebula
3.09.2025

How soon do jets form when a supernova gives birth to a neutron star? The Africa Nebula provides clues. This supernova remnant surrounds Circinus X-1, an X-ray emitting neutron star and the companion star it orbits.

Emerging Planetary Nebula CRL 618
6.09.2000

CRL 618 may look to some like an Olympian declaring victory. Only a few hundred years ago, however, CRL 618 appeared as a relatively modest red giant star. Since then it has run out of core material to fuse and so has started to become a planetary nebula.

NGC 2346: A Butterfly Shaped Planetary Nebula
12.10.1999

It may look like a butterfly, but it's bigger than our Solar System. NGC 2346 is a planetary nebula made of gas and dust that has evolved into a familiar shape. At the heart of the bipolar planetary nebula is a pair of close stars orbiting each other once every sixteen days.

Uranus: The Tilted Planet
26.08.2001

Uranus is the third largest planet in our Solar System after Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus is composed mostly of rock and ices, but with a thick hydrogen and helium atmosphere. The blue hue of Uranus' atmosphere arises from the small amount of methane which preferentially absorbs red light.

APOD: 2025 July 18 Б ISS Meets Saturn
18.07.2025

This month, bright planet Saturn rises in evening skies, its rings oriented nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. And in the early morning hours on July 6, it posed very briefly with the International Space Station when viewed from a location in Federal Way, Washington, USA.

Approaching Jupiter
26.09.2000

In 1979 the Voyager 1 spacecraft compiled this view as it approached the gas giant Jupiter. Snapping a picture every time the Great Red Spot was properly aligned, the above time-lapse sequence shows not only spot rotation but also the swirling of neighboring clouds.