Sixty years ago, on January 31, 1958, the First Explorer was successfully launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency on a Jupiter-C rocket. Inaugurating the era of space exploration for […]

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure […]

Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually […]

Staring toward the heavens, one of the many lagunas in the Atacama Desert salt flat calmly reflects a starry night sky near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, planet Earth. Cosmic […]

On sol 1943 of its journey of exploration across the surface of Mars, the Curiosity Rover recorded this selfie at the south rim of Vera Rubin Ridge. Of course a […]

By chance, a collision of two galaxies has created a surprisingly recognizable shape on a cosmic scale, The Cartwheel Galaxy. The Cartwheel is part of a group of galaxies about […]

What if you could look out from the center of our Galaxy — what might you see? Two scientifically-determined possibilities are shown in the featured video, an immersive 360-degree view […]

Yes, but can your blizzard do this? In Upper Michigan’s Storm of the Century in 1938, some snow drifts reached the level of utility poles. Nearly a meter of new […]

Also known as the Moon’s “ashen glow” or the “Old Moon in the New Moon’s arms”, earthshine is earthlight reflected from the Moon’s night side. This stunning image of earthshine […]

An alluring sight in southern skies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is seen in this deep and detailed telescopic mosaic. Recorded with broadband and narrowband filters, the scene spans some […]