Exotic but Close
An astronaut conducts experiments on the ocean floor during a recent excursion from Aquarius, a habitat on the ocean floor…
Cloudy California
The California Nebula is a cloud of interstellar gas set aglow by radiation from nearby hot stars. The cloud's outline…
Just Plain Rings
Saturn's beautiful rings encircle the planet in this image from the Cassini spacecraft, which is entering the final year of…
Arming the Milky Way
This artist's concept shows the major and minor spiral arms of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Our solar system…
A New World
Biosphere 2, a complex designed to simulate Earth’s multiple ecosystems, gleams in the Arizona sunset. A team of “biospherians” was…
Backlit Planet
This artist’s concept of the planet known as HAT-P-11b shows how astronomers can discover and study the atmosphere of a…
Cool Star, Warm Planets?
The faint star TRAPPIST-1 glows above the surface of one of its three known planets in this artist's concept. Another…
Little Telescope, Big Discoveries
This artist's concept shows how Kepler Space Telescope discovers planets in other star systems. The telescope looks for a planet…
Sparkling Cluster
The star cluster Messier 39 contains only about 30 stars, but they sparkle grandly in this view, which was compiled…
Blue Planet 2
Neptune, the most remote of the Sun's eight major planets, is a giant blue marble, as shown in this view…