Twelve Lunar Eclipses
29.02.2008

Welcome to the extra day in the Gregorian Calendar's leap year 2008! To celebrate, consider this grid of lunar eclipse pictures - starting in leap year 1996 and ending with February's eclipse - with the date in numerical year/month/day format beneath each image.

Home from Above
15.11.2010

There's no place like home. Peering out of the windows of the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson takes in the planet on which we were all born, and to which she would soon return.

Corona from Svalbard
31.03.2015

During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere, or corona, is an inspirational sight. Streamers and shimmering features that engage the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, making them notoriously difficult to capture in a single photograph.

Sprites from Space
21.08.2015

An old Moon and the stars of Orion rose above the eastern horizon on August 10. The Moon's waning crescent was still bright enough to be overexposed in this snapshot taken from another large satellite of planet Earth, the International Space Station.

Meteors, Comet, and Big Dipper over La Palma
23.04.2019

Meteor showers are caused by streams of solid particles, dust size and larger, moving as a group through space. In most cases, the orbits of these meteor streams can be identified with dust expelled from a comet.

Quadrantid Meteors through Orion
20.01.2020

Why are these meteor trails nearly parallel? Because they were all shed by the same space rock and so can be traced back to the same direction on the sky: the radiant of the Quadrantid Meteor Shower.

A Distorted Sunrise Eclipse
6.06.2021

Yes, but have you ever seen a sunrise like this? Here, after initial cloudiness, the Sun appeared to rise in two pieces and during partial eclipse, causing the photographer to describe it as the most stunning sunrise of his life.

APOD: 2023 July 17 Б Shells and Arcs around Star CW Leonis
17.07.2023

What's happening around this star? No one is sure. CW Leonis is the closest carbon star, a star that appears orange because of atmospheric carbon dispersed from interior nuclear fusion. But CW Leonis also appears engulfed in a gaseous carbon-rich nebula.

APOD: 2024 April 2 Б Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona
2.04.2024

Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the light of the solar corona easily visible. Normally overwhelmed by the bright solar disk, the expansive corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, is an alluring sight.

Could Hydrogen Peroxide Life Survive on Mars
28.08.2007

Is there life on Mars? Although no unambiguous evidence for indigenous life on Mars has ever been found, a more speculative question -- could some life forms survive on Mars -- has taken on a new twist.