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.

TT Cygni: Carbon Star
18.12.1998

TT Cygni is a cool red giant star with a wind. This false-color picture of TT Cyg was made using a coordinated array of millimeter wavelength radio telescopes and shows radio emission from carbon monoxide (CO) molecules in the surrounding gas.

Crater On Ice
14.07.2000

Impact craters are common on Earth's moon but on Jupiter's large ice moon Europa, they are very rare. Over time, both bodies have been subjected to an intense pounding by the solar system's formative debris, but geological activity on Europa's surface seems to have erased most of these impact scars.

Saturn Storm
19.01.2011

Late last year, a new, remarkably bright storm erupted in Saturn's northern hemisphere. Amateur astronomers first spotted it in early December, with the ringed gas giant rising in planet Earth's predawn sky.

TT Cygni: Carbon Star
4.03.2001

TT Cygni is a cool red giant star with a wind. This false-color picture of TT Cyg was made using a coordinated array of millimeter wavelength radio telescopes and shows radio emission from carbon monoxide (CO) molecules in the surrounding gas.

Circling a Black Hole at its Photon Sphere
2.07.2013

What would it look like to go right up to a black hole? One particularly interesting place near a black hole is its photon sphere, where photons can orbit in circles, a sphere 50 percent further out than the event horizon.

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
3.04.2017

Many details of Saturn appear clearly in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth.

Moon Over Mongolia
9.02.2002

Fighting clouds and the glow of city lights, a young Moon shines over the western horizon of Mongolia's capital, Ulaan-Baatar. The thin sunlit crescent is about 2 days old and strongly over exposed in this image taken on March 10, 1997.

The Lonely Neutron Star in Supernova E0102 72.3
30.09.2018

Why is this neutron star off-center? Recently a lone neutron star has been found within the debris left over from an old supernova explosion. The "lonely neutron star" in question is the blue dot at the center of the red nebula near the bottom left of E0102-72