NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn's shadow. The cameras we...
The Brightness of the Sun
The bright Sun, a portion of the International Space Station and Earth's horizon are featured in this image photographed during the STS-...
Churning Out Stars
W3 is an enormous stellar nursery about 6,200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of the Milky Way galaxy’s main spiral arms, which hos...
Building a Lunar Base with 3D Printing
Building a base on the Moon could theoretically be made much simpler by using a 3D printer to construct it from local materials. The concept...
Mammatus Clouds over Saskatchewan
Normal cloud bottoms are flat. This is because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a specific temperatu...
Earth - The Water Planet
Viewed from space, the most striking feature of our planet is the water. In both liquid and frozen form, it covers 75% of the Earth’s surfac...
Star-Forming Region S106
The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched "wings" of t...
The M106 Galaxy
Working with astronomical image processors at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., renowned astrophotographer Robert Gen...
A cloud of ash above Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcano
Osorno, Los Lagos, Chile June 5, 2011 Image Credit & Copyright: Claudio Santana
Comet C/2011 L4 - PANSTARRS
Still looking for that comet? Comet PanSTARRS (C/2011 L4) naked-eye appearance in the northern hemisphere is described by successful comet s...
Hubble Panoramic View of Orion Nebula Reveals Thousands of Stars
This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image, taken by the Adva...
A cloud of ash above Puyehue Volcano
Osorno, Los Lagos, Chile June 5, 2011 Image Credit & Copyright: Claudio Santana
Quiet Interlude in Solar Max
Something unexpected is happening on the Sun. 2013 was supposed to be the year of "solar maximum," the peak of the 11-year sunspot...
Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life
An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists ide...
NASA’s SDO Observes Earth, Lunar Transits in Same Day
On March 2, 2013, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) entered its semiannual eclipse season, a period of three weeks when Earth blocks ...
Aurora over Kongsberg
Sakurajima Volcano with Lightning
Why does a volcanic eruption sometimes create lightning? On this picture, the Sakurajima volcano in southern Japan was caught erupting in ea...
Aurora over Langesund
Summer Lightning near Keota
The Pawnee National Grasslands in Colorado is an exceptional place both to observe nature and to stargaze. Observers have a nearly unobstruc...
Tornado & Lightning
Lightning can serve as a natural sensing tool that allows scientists to understand what else could be happening in a storm Image Credit: F....
The Milky Way Galaxy over Devils Tower
Was Devils Tower once an explosive volcano? Famous for its appearance in films such as Close Encounters, the origin of Devil's Tower in ...
Eclipse over the Temple of Poseidon
What's happened to the Sun? The Moon moved to partly block the Sun for a few minutes in January 2010 as a partial solar eclipse became m...
Earth's Shadow
The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra. Shaped like a cone extending into space, the umbra has a circular cross section ...
Shooting a Laser at the Galactic Centre
The sky above Paranal on 21 July 2007. Two 8.2-m telescopes of ESO's VLT are seen against the wonderful backdrop of the myriad of stars ...
Sunrise over Cape Sounion
The Sun is a moving target. Its annual motion through planet Earth's sky tracks north and south, from solstice to solstice, as the seaso...