The View from Everest
What would it be like to stand atop the tallest mountain on Earth? To see a full panoramic vista from there, scroll right. Visible are snow peaked mountains near and far, tremendous cliffs, distant plateaus, the tops of clouds, and a dark blue ...
Three Years of Saturn
Using an image recorded just last month as a base, this composite illustration tracks the motion of bright Saturn as it wanders through planet Earth's night sky. Starting at the upper right, Saturn's position is shown about every two weeks ...
Four Years of Saturn
Saturn and its magnificent ring system can offer even casual astronomers the most memorable of telescopic sights. Wandering between Leo and Cancer this month, a bright Saturn is well placed for viewing in evening skies. But from our earthbound ...
Asteroid and Galaxy
Apollo class asteroid 2006 VV2 flashed past planet Earth in late March, approaching to within 3.4 million kilometers or about 8.8 times the Earth-Moon distance. Due to the proximity of its orbit to Earth and its estimated diameter of over 1 ...
New Horizons at Io
Spewed from a volcano, a complex plume rises over 300 kilometers above the horizon of Jupiter's moon Io in this image from cameras onboard the New Horizons spacecraft. The volcano, Tvashtar, is marked by the bright glow (about 1 o'clock) at the ...
A Mysterious Hexagonal Cloud System...
Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is yet sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. If Saturn's South Pole wasn't ...
An Active Sunspot Viewed Sideways
Why are there dark spots on the sun? Although noted for thousands of years, sunspots have been known for decades to be regions of the Sun that are slightly depressed and cooled by the Sun's complex and changing magnetic field. High resolution ...
Americans Defeat Russians in First...
A historic first Space Quidditch match came to a spectacular conclusion last night as astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria caught the Golden Snitch to give the Americans a hard fought victory over the Russians. "The Russians used brilliant strategy, ...
Hale-Bopp: The Great Comet of 1997
Ten short years ago, Comet Hale-Bopp rounded the Sun and offered a dazzling spectacle in planet Earth's night. This stunning view, recorded shortly after the comet's perihelion passage on April 1, 1997, features the memorable tails of Hale-Bopp ...
Three Galaxies and a Comet
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 ...
