APOD: 2024 September 1 Б The Moon Dressed Like Saturn
1.09.2024

Why does Saturn appear so big? It doesn't -- what is pictured are foreground clouds on Earth crossing in front of the Moon. The Moon shows a slight crescent phase with most of its surface visible by reflected Earthlight, known as Da Vinci glow.

A Solar Filament Lifts Off
25.07.2004

Hot gas frequently erupts from the Sun. One such eruption produced the glowing filament pictured above, which was captured in 2000 July by the Earth-orbiting TRACE satellite. The filament, although small compared...

Equinox and Eruptive Prominence
23.09.1999

Today, the Sun crosses the celestial equator and seasons change from Summer to Fall in the north and Winter to Spring in the southern hemisphere. Defined by the Sun's position in sky the event is known as an equinox - the length of daylight is equal to the length of night.

Ganymede s Shadow
25.03.2017

Approaching opposition early next month, Jupiter is offering some of its best telescopic views from planet Earth. On March 17, this impressively sharp image of the solar system's ruling gas giant was taken from a remote observatory in Chile.

Red Sprite Lightning
11.11.1995

Recently two new types of lightning have been verified: red sprites and blue jets. These atmospheric discharges occur very high in the Earth's atmosphere - much higher than the familiar form of lightning.

Uranus' Largest Moon: Titania
4.03.1996

Titania's tortured terrain is a mix of valleys and craters. NASA's interplanetary robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed this moon of Uranus in 1986 and took the above photograph. The photograph was then transmitted back to earth by radio.

A View from Venus: Rift Valley
24.06.1996

Color information from the Soviet Venera landers and radar data from the Magellan spacecraft were used to construct this striking perspective view of the Venusian landscape. (In this computer generated image, the vertical scale has been exagerated.) In the foreground is the edge of a rift valley created by faulting in the crust of Venus.

Return To Cydonia
7.04.1998

Yesterday the Mars Global Surveyor project released a new close-up image of a portion of the Cydonia region on Mars. This cropped and processed version shows an area about 2 miles wide (the full...

Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3
5.10.2003

Apollo 12 was the second mission to land humans on the Moon. The landing site was picked to be near the location of Surveyor 3, a robot spacecraft that had landed on the Moon three years earlier.

Cassini Approaches Saturn
10.12.2003

Cassini, a robot spacecraft launched in 1997 by NASA, is close enough now to resolve many rings and moons of its destination planet: Saturn. The spacecraft has now closed to within a single Earth-Sun separation from the ringed giant. Early last month, Cassini snapped the contrast-enhanced color composite pictured above.