Apollo 16: Exploring Plum Crater
19.03.2000

Apollo 16 spent three days on Earth's Moon in April 1972. The fifth lunar landing mission out of six, Apollo 16 was famous for deploying and using an ultraviolet telescope as the first lunar observatory, and for collecting rocks and data on the mysterious lunar highlands. In the above picture, astronaut John W.

Lunar Module at Taurus Littrow
28.06.2002

Can the Hubble Space Telescope take a picture that shows the Apollo lunar modules on the Moon? With its 2.4 meter diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across.

The Sky in Motion
31.12.2008

Still need to come up with a good new year's resolution? Consider one appropriate for 2009, the International Year of Astronomy; just look up -- experience, learn, and enjoy the changing sky. This 4-minute, time-lapse video is composed from a series of 7,000 images highlighting much of what you could see.

Moonrise Through Mauna Keas Shadow
5.12.2010

How can the Moon rise through a mountain? It cannot -- what was photographed here is a moonrise through the shadow of a large volcano. The volcano is Mauna Kea, Hawai'i, USA, a frequent spot for spectacular photographs since it is arguably the premier observing location on planet Earth.

RCW 114: A Dragon s Heart in Ara
11.01.2018

Large and dramatically shaped, this cosmic cloud spans nearly 7 degrees or 14 full moons across planet Earth's sky toward the southern constellation Ara. Difficult to image, the filamentary apparition is cataloged as RCW 114 and traced in this telescopic mosaic by the telltale reddish emission of ionized hydrogen atoms.

Apollo 14 Deploys ALSEP
10.12.1995

After the lunar module of Apollo 14 set down on the Moon, Astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) and collected samples of lunar material. The ALSEP scientific experiments included a seismometer sensitive to slight lunar surface movements, and charged particle detectors which measured the solar wind.

Mercurys Transit: An Unusual Spot on the Sun
14.11.2006

What's that dot on the Sun? If you look closely, it is almost perfectly round. The dot is the result of an unusual type of solar eclipse that occurred last week. Usually it is the Earth's Moon that eclipses the Sun.

The Iron Moon
1.06.1996

In March and April of 1994 the unmanned Clementine spacecraft demonstrated the technique of prospecting on the Moon from lunar orbit. To accomplish this, Clementine turned an array of cameras sensitive to ultraviolet-visible and near-infrared light toward the lunar surface, producing the first broad-spectrum global imaging of the moon.

Mercurys Transit: An Unusual Spot on the Sun
8.05.2016

What's that dot on the Sun? If you look closely, it is almost perfectly round. The dot is the result of an unusual type of solar eclipse that occurred in 2006. Usually it is the Earth's Moon that eclipses the Sun. This time, the planet Mercury took a turn.

Soaring over Titan
23.11.2014

What would it look like to fly over Titan? Radar images from NASA's robotic Cassini satellite in orbit around Saturn have been digitally compiled to simulate such a flight. Cassini has swooped past Saturn's cloudiest moon several times since it arrived at the ringed planet in 2004.