The Water Vapor Channel
What alien planet's bizarre landscape lurks below these fiery-looking clouds? It's only planet Earth, of course ... as seen on the Water Vapor Channel. Hourly, images like this one (an infrared image shown in false-color) are brought to you by ...
Odyssey Over Mars
Scroll right and journey for 300 kilometers over Terra Sirenum in the cratered highlands of southern Mars. The infrared view, 32 kilometers wide, was recently recorded by the THEMIS camera on board the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Beginning ...
S is for Sun
Taken yesterday from the SOHO spacecraft, this false-color image shows the active Sun near the March Equinox, the beginning of Autumn in the south and Spring in the northern hemisphere. Recorded in a band of extreme ultraviolet light emitted by ...
Aurora Over Antarctica
Looking out from the bottom of the world, strange and spectacular sights are sometimes observed. Such was the case during the long Antarctic night of 1998, as awesome aurora sub-storms were photographed above scientific outposts. Visible in the ...
Breaking Distant Light
In the distant universe, time appears to run slow. Since time-dilated light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (redshifted), astronomers are able to use cosmological time-slowing to help measure vast distances in the universe. ...
Comet Ikeya-Zhang's Busy Tail
One of the brightest comets of the past five years will likely reach its peak brightness this week. Comet Ikeya-Zhang, officially known as C/2002 C1, can now be seen without aide from a dark location above the western horizon shortly after ...
NGC 2244: A Star Cluster in the...
In the heart of the Rosette Nebula lies a bright open cluster of stars that lights up the nebula. The stars of NGC 2244 formed from the surrounding gas only four million years ago and emit light and wind that define the nebula's appearance ...
The Colorful Moon
Do you recognize the Earth's Moon when you see it? The crazy, patchwork appearance of the false-color image makes this almost full view of the Moon's familiar near side look very strange. The Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis) is the ...
Neutron Mars
Looking for water on Mars, researchers using detectors on board the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft have created this false-color global map of energetic neutrons from the otherwise Red Planet. What do neutrons have to do with water? As cosmic ...
LL Orionis: When Cosmic Winds Collide
This arcing, graceful structure is actually a bow shock about half a light-year across, created as the wind from young star LL Orionis collides with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, ...
