Sprite Lightning at 100000 Frames Per Second
3.01.2021

What causes sprite lightning? Mysterious bursts of light in the sky that momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish have been recorded for over 30 years, but apart from a general association with positive cloud-to-ground lightning, their root cause remains unknown. Some thunderstorms have them -- most don't.

APOD: 2024 October 28 Б STEVE: A Glowing River over France
27.10.2024

Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. Details of how STEVEs...

Saturnian Aurora
17.09.2000

Girdling the second largest planet in the Solar System, Saturn's Rings are one of the most spectacular sights for earthbound telescopes. This image from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope's STIS instrument, offers a striking view of another kind of ring around Saturn - pole encircling rings of ultraviolet aurora.

Odyssey at Mars
25.10.2001

After an interplanetary journey lasting 200 days, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has entered orbit around the Red Planet. This latest success is welcome as in the past, Mars has often seemed a difficult planet to visit.

Fireworks and Shooting Stars
9.08.2002

Experimenting with a new telescope and camera, photographer Jim Steele captured this surreal but festive image of fireworks in the night sky above Ashland, Oregon. The date was July 4th and the fiery streaks were part of the traditional annual celebration of independence day in the United States.

A Spiral Galaxy Gallery
9.04.1996

A progression of beautiful spiral galaxies is illustrated above with three photographs from NASA's Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT). Flying above the Earth's obscuring layer of atmosphere on the Space Shuttle Columbia during...

TRACE and the Active Sun
15.05.1998

This dramatic high resolution picture looking across the edge of the Sun was taken April 24th by a telescope on board the newly launched Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite. It shows graceful arcs of intensely hot gas suspended in powerful looping magnetic fields which soar above a solar active region.

Sunspots and Silhouettes
4.07.2012

What stands between you and the Sun? Apparently, as viewed from Paris last week, one visible thing after another. First, in the foreground, is the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built in the late 1800s and located on the highest hill in Paris, France.

Geminids of the South
16.12.2015

Earth's annual Geminid meteor shower did not disappoint, peaking before dawn on December 14 as our fair planet plowed through dust from active asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Captured in this southern hemisphere nightscape the meteors stream away from the shower's radiant in Gemini.

Three Worlds for TRAPPIST 1
6.05.2016

Three new found worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 40 light-years away. Their transits were first detected by the Belgian robotic TRAnsiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, TRAPPIST, at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The newly discovered exoplanets are all similar in size to Earth.