Sun, Moon, Hot Air Balloon
6.06.2003

Anticipating the celestial shadow play of a solar eclipse, sky gazers across Germany watched the Sun rise on May 31. In Bonn, astrophotographer Thilo Kranz had set up his small refractor telescope and camera on the Kennedy Bridge across the Rhein river to get a good view to the northeast.

Phoebe Craters in Stereo
10.07.2004

Get out your red/blue glasses and gaze across the spectacular, cratered terrain of Saturn's icy moon Phoebe in stereo. The dramatic 3-D perspective spans roughly 50 kilometers and is based...

Vista Inside Gusev Crater on Mars
28.11.2005

What is the geologic history of Mars? To help find out, the robot Spirit rover explored the terrain on the way up to the top of Husband Hill and took pictures along the way.

Astronomer s Moon
24.08.2007

Jupiter is an astronomer's planet -- its large size and contrasting global cloud belts and zones allow detailed studies with a range of earthbound telescopes. On the other hand, most telescopic views of Jupiter's moons usually show only featureless, tantalizing points of light hovering near the ruling gas giant.

Apollo 17 VIP Site Anaglyph
6.07.2008

Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo scene from Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon! The color anaglyph features a detailed 3D view of Apollo 17's Lunar Rover in the foreground -- behind it lies the Lunar Module and distant lunar hills.

On the Road to Carina
18.02.2012

This rugged road through the dark Atacama Desert seems to lead skyward toward the bright stars and glowing nebulae of the southern Milky Way. If you follow the road you will get to Cerro Armazones peak in Chile, future construction site for the 40-meter class European Extremely Large Telescope.

The Milky Way over Snow Capped Himalayas
26.05.2020

WhatБs higher than the Himalayas? Although the Himalayan Mountains are the tallest on planet Earth, they don't measure up to the Milky Way. Visible above the snow-capped mountains in the featured image is the arcing central band of our home galaxy.

APOD: 2023 May 10 Б Milky Way over Egyptian Desert
10.05.2023

For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt's Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formations sculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind.

The Dark Horsehead Nebula
29.12.2000

While drifting through the cosmos, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this magnificent interstellar dust cloud has chanced to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named The Horsehead Nebula it is embedded in the immense complex of star forming gas and dust surrounding the Orion Nebula some 1,500 light-years distant.

Filaments in the Cygnus Loop
18.01.2003

Subtle and delicate in appearance, these are filaments of shocked interstellar gas -- part of the expanding blast wave from a violent stellar explosion. Recorded in November 1997 with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope, the picture is a closeup of a supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop.