Light and Glory over Crete
15.11.2020

The month was July, the place was the Greek island of Crete, and the sky was spectacular. Of course there were the usual stars like Polaris, Vega, and Antares -- and that common asterism everyone knows: the Big Dipper. But this sky was just getting started.

APOD: 2023 October 22 Б Ghost Aurora over Canada
21.10.2023

What does this aurora look like to you? While braving the cold to watch the skies above northern Canada early one morning in 2013, a most unusual aurora appeared. The aurora definitely appeared to be shaped like something, but what?

APOD: 2025 April 30 Б A Happy Sky over Bufa Hill in Mexico
29.04.2025

Sometimes, the sky itself seems to smile. A few days ago, visible over much of the world, an unusual superposition of our Moon with the planets Venus and Saturn created just such an iconic facial expression.

Globular Cluster M19
19.07.2000

M19 appears to be a typical globular cluster of stars - except for its shape. If one looks closely at the cluster, pictured above, it appears to be longer (top to bottom) than it is wide.

Three Views of Jupiter's Io
3.10.1996

The Galileo spacecraft orbiting Jupiter continues to return impressive results. The Galileo team has just released three more photographs of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io taken in June. These three photos are reflected at the bottom of the above picture, digitally enhanced to better show important features.

Shadow of a Martian Robot
3.02.2007

What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars. Opportunity and sister robot Spirit have been probing the red planet since early 2004, finding evidence of ancient water, and sending breathtaking images across the inner Solar System.

M31: The Andromeda Galaxy
10.05.2009

Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it.

Io in True Color
3.10.2010

The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. This picture, an attempt to show how Io would appear in the "true colors" perceptible to the average human eye, was taken in 1999 July by the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.

Higgs Boson Explained by Cartoon
1.05.2012

What is all this fuss about the Higgs boson? The physics community is abuzz that a fundamental particle expected by the largely successful Standard Model of particle physics may be soon be found by the huge Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Europe.

Noctilucent Clouds Tour France
8.07.2016

Bright noctilucent or night shining clouds are not familiar sights from northern France. But these electric-blue waves coursed through skies over the small town of Wancourt in Pas-de-Calais on July 6, just before the dawn.