Mercury's Vivaldi Crater from...

2024-09-16

Why does this large crater on Mercury have two rings and a smooth floor? No one is sure. The unusual feature called Vivaldi Crater spans 215 kilometers and was imaged again in great detail by ESA's and JAXA's robotic BepiColombo ...

Find the Man in the Moon

2024-09-15 Dani Caxete

Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia -- imagining familiar icons where they don't actually exist. The textured surface of Earth's full Moon is home to numerous ...

The Moona Lisa

2024-09-14 Gianni Sarcone

Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth's sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at different times. Their varying hues are ultimately due to reflected ...

Aurora Australis and the...

2024-09-13

This snapshot from the International Space Station was taken on August 11 while orbiting about 430 kilometers above the Indian Ocean, Southern Hemisphere, planet Earth. The spectacular view looks south and east, down toward the planet's ...

Young Star Cluster NGC 1333

2024-09-12

This spectacular mosaic of images from the James Webb Space Telescope peers into the heart of young star cluster NGC 1333. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, the nearby star cluster lies at the edge of the ...

A Night Sky over the Tatra Mountains

2024-09-11

A natural border between Slovakia and Poland is the Tatra Mountains. A prominent destination for astrophotographers, the Tatras are the highest mountain range in the Carpathians. In the featured image taken in May, one can see the center of our ...

Horsehead and Orion Nebulas

2024-09-10 Antoine & Dalia Grelin

The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the above stunning mosaic. The ...

Mars: Moon, Craters, and Volcanos

2024-09-09

If you could fly over Mars, what might you see? The featured image shows exactly this in the form of a Mars Express vista captured over a particularly interesting region on Mars in July. The picture's most famous feature is Olympus Mons, the ...

M31: The Andromeda Galaxy

2024-09-08 R. Gendler & R. Croman

The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy. Even at some two and a half million light-years distant, this immense spiral galaxy -- spanning over 200,000 light years -- is visible, although as a ...

Small Moon Deimos

2024-09-07

Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, named for the figures in Greek mythology Fear and Panic. Detailed surface views of smaller moon Deimos are shown in both these panels. The images were taken in 2009, by the HiRISE camera on board the ...