Crescent Neptune and Triton
24.07.2021

Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase. The elegant picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after closest approach in 1989.

Nightlights in Qeqertaq
16.11.2023

Light pollution is usually not a problem in Qeqertaq. In western Greenland the remote coastal village boasted a population of 114 in 2020. Lights still shine in its dark skies though. During planet Earth's recent intense geomagnetic storm, on November 6 these beautiful curtains of aurora borealis fell over the arctic realm.

Summer at the South Pole
21.12.1995

December 22 marks the Winter Solstice - the beginning of winter in the Earth's northern hemisphere, and the first day of summer in the south! This view of Earth's southern hemisphere near the beginning of its summer was created using images from the Galileo spacecraft taken during the December 1990 flyby.

Jupiter: At The Belt-Zone Boundary
9.03.1997

Jupiter's thick atmosphere is striped by wind-driven cloud bands that remain fixed in latitude - dark colored bands are known as belts while light colored bands are zones. At Jupiter's belt-zone boundaries the shearing wind velocities can reach nearly 300 miles per hour.

The Ecliptic Plane
27.09.1997

The Plane of the Ecliptic is illustrated in this Clementine star tracker camera image which reveals (from right to left) the Moon lit by Earthshine, the Sun's corona rising over the Moon's dark limb, and the planets Saturn, Mars, and Mercury.

Mars: Ridges Near the South Pole
19.03.1998

No, it's not breakfast ... but looking down from an orbiting spacecraft, the odd intersecting ridges covering this area of Mars do present a waffle-like appearance. The cause of the ridge pattern is unknown but it suggests that more complex layered deposits lie below.

The Lagoon Nebula in Gas, Dust, and Stars
16.07.2007

Stars are battling gas and dust in the Lagoon Nebula but the photographers are winning. Also known as M8, this photogenic nebula is visible even without binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos.

The North America Nebula
27.10.2008

The North America Nebula in the sky can do what most North Americans on Earth cannot -- form stars. Specifically, in analogy to the Earth-confined continent, the bright part that appears as Central America and Mexico is actually a hot bed of gas, dust, and newly formed stars known as the Cygnus Wall.

The Antennae Galaxies in Collision
16.03.2014

Two galaxies are squaring off in Corvus and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not. That's because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small amount of that space.

Three Galaxies and a Comet
13.01.2018

Diffuse starlight and dark nebulae along the southern Milky Way arc over the horizon and sprawl diagonally through this gorgeous nightscape. The breath-taking mosaic spans a wide 100 degrees, with the rugged terrain of the Patagonia, Argentina region in the foreground.