STS 115: Stereo Portrait
30.09.2006

On September 12, astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper snapped photos of her colleague Joseph Tanner during the STS-115 mission. At the time, the spacesuited pair were working outside the shuttle orbiter Atlantis, some 300 kilometers above planet Earth.

Sunspot Group 1429 and the Distant Sun
19.03.2012

What's that on the Sun? Over the past two weeks, one of the most energetic sunspot regions of recent years crossed the face of the Sun. Active Region 1429, visible above...

MESSENGER s First Day
8.10.2011

One solar day on a planet is the length of time from noon to noon. A solar day lasts 24 hours on planet Earth. On Mercury a solar day is about 176 Earth days long.

Sputnik: Traveling Companion
7.10.2000

Sputnik means "traveling companion". Despite the innocuous sounding name, the launch of the Earth's first "artificial moon", Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 shocked the free world, setting in motion events which resulted in the creation of NASA and the race to the Moon.

North Pole Below
20.10.2000

Orbiting over the north pole of planet Earth on May 5, the MODIS instrument on-board the Terra spacecraft, recorded this view of the ice cap 700 kilometers below. A radial grid centered on the pole is shown on top of the approximately true color image where each pixel covers about one square kilometer.

Geminid Fireball over Mount Balang
16.12.2014

This was a sky to remember. While viewing the Geminids meteor shower a few days ago, a bright fireball was captured over Mt. Balang, China with particularly picturesque surroundings. In the foreground, a sea of light clouds slowly floated between dark mountain peaks.

Venus Falls Out of the Evening Sky
3.09.1999

Orbiting closer to the Sun than planet Earth, bright Venus always appears to be near the Sun's position in our sky and often shines near the horizon in twilight hours. In fact, after...

ISS and Discovery Transit the Sun
29.07.2005

That large sunspot near the right edge of the Sun is actually not a sunspot at all. It's the International Space Station (ISS) docked with the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-114.

Ultraviolet Venus
7.05.1997

The forecast for Venus is cloudy, cloudy, cloudy. Although similar to the Earth in size and mass, Venus' slightly closer orbit to the Sun create for it a much thicker atmosphere and a much hotter surface. The thick atmosphere was photographed above in ultraviolet light in 1979 by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter.

Stereo Eros
24.02.2000

Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 433 Eros, 260 million kilometers away! Orbiting the Sun once every 1.8 earth-years, asteroid Eros is a diminutive 40 x 14 x 14 kilometer world of undulating horizons, craters, boulders and valleys.