Simulated Transit of Mercury
8.11.2006

Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet, will spend about five hours crossing in front of the Sun today - beginning at 1912 UT (2:12pm EST), November 8. Specially equipped telescopes are highly recommended...

Comet Ikeya-Zhangs Busy Tail
18.03.2002

One of the brightest comets of the past five years will likely reach its peak brightness this week. Comet Ikeya-Zhang, officially known as C/2002 C1, can now be seen without aide from a dark location above the western horizon shortly after sunset.

Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse
22.01.1996

Betelgeuse (sounds a lot like "beetle juice"), a red supergiant star about 600 lightyears distant, is shown here in this Hubble Space Telescope image which represents the first direct picture of the surface of a star other than the Sun.

Steep Cliffs on Mars
15.03.2005

Vertical cliffs of nearly two kilometers occur near the North Pole of Mars. Also visible in the above image of the Martian North Polar Cap are red areas of rock and sand, white areas of ice, and dark areas of unknown composition but hypothesized to be volcanic ash.

Orionid Meteors Over Turkey
23.10.2006

Meteors have been flowing out from the constellation Orion. This was expected, as mid-October is the time of year for the Orionids Meteor Shower. Pictured above, over a dozen meteors were caught in successively added exposures over three hours taken this past weekend from a town near Bursa, Turkey.

Mercurys Sodium Tail
3.05.2022

That's no comet. Below the Pleiades star cluster is actually a planet: Mercury. Long exposures of our Solar System's innermost planet may reveal something unexpected: a tail. Mercury's thin atmosphere contains small amounts of sodium that glow when excited by light from the Sun.

Two Views of Earth
23.07.2013

In a cross-Solar System interplanetary first, our Earth was photographed during the same day from both Mercury and Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft now the gas giant.

Look West for a NEAT Comet
7.05.2004

On May 5th, while scanning western skies after sunset, astronomer Jimmy Westlake was glad to spot a visitor from the outer solar system, Comet NEAT, with his own eyes. Taken with a normal lens...

Tails of Comet Garradd
20.10.2011

A good target for binoculars and small telescopes, Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) now shines in planet Earth's evening skies, a steady performer but just below naked-eye visibility. Telescopic images like this composite from...

A Zodiacal Sky over Horseshoe Bend
22.05.2017

What's causing the unusual ray of white light extending upward from the central horizon? Dust orbiting the Sun. At certain times of the year, a band of sun-reflecting dust from the inner Solar System rises prominently before sunrise and is called zodiacal light.