Full Moon Silhouettes
3.12.2017

Have you ever watched the Moon rise? The slow rise of a nearly full moon over a clear horizon can be an impressive sight. One impressive moonrise was imaged in early 2013 over Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand.

A Blue Banded Blood Moon
1.12.2021

What causes a blue band to cross the Moon during a lunar eclipse? The blue band is real but usually quite hard to see. The featured HDR image of last week's lunar eclipse, however -- taken from Yancheng, China -- has been digitally processed to equalize the Moon's brightness and exaggerate the colors.

APOD: 2023 October 8 Б Plane, Clouds, Moon, Spots, Sun
8.10.2023

What's that in front of the Sun? The closest object is an airplane, visible just below the Sun's center and caught purely by chance. Next out are numerous clouds in Earth's atmosphere, creating a series of darkened horizontal streaks.

Venus, Moon, and Neighbors
6.04.2000

Rising before the Sun on February 2nd, astrophotographer Joe Orman anticipated this apparition of the bright morning star Venus near a lovely crescent Moon above a neighbor's house in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

APOD: 2026 July 5 Б Saturns Iapetus: Painted Moon
5.07.2026

What has happened to Saturn's moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as snow. To help better understand this unusually tinted moon, in 2007 NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers.

Moon behind Lava Fountain
4.09.2018

What's happened to the Moon? Nothing, but something has happened to the image of the Moon. The heat from a volcanic lava fountain in the foreground has warmed and made turbulent the air nearby, causing passing light to refract differently than usual.

Apollo 13 Views of the Moon
3.03.2020

What if the only way to get back to Earth was to go around the far side of the Moon? Such was the dilemma of the Apollo 13 Crew in 1970 as they tried to return home in their unexpectedly damaged spacecraft.

Ice Moon Tethys from Saturn Orbiting Cassini
8.12.2009

What processes formed the unusual surface of Saturn's moon Tethys? To help find out, NASA sent the robotic Cassini spacecraft right past the enigmatic ice moon in 2005. Pictured above is one of the highest resolution images of an entire face of Tethys yet created.

Moon and Venus over Cannon Beach
17.07.2018

What's that spot next to the Moon? Venus. Two days ago, the crescent Moon slowly drifted past Venus, appearing within just two degrees at its closest. This conjunction, though, was just...

Impact Moon
26.03.1999

The Moon's surface is covered with craters, scars of frequent impacts during the early history of the solar system. Now, recent results from the Lunar Prospector spacecraft support the idea that the Moon itself formed from the debris of a giant impact of a mars-sized planetary body with the