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…
Galactic Sunflower
Delicate spiral arms encircle the bright nucleus of M63, the Sunflower galaxy, in this Hubble Space Telescope image. M63 is…
First Earthrise
Lunar Orbiter 1 snapped its first pictures of the Moon on August 18, 1966. And five days later, the first…
Celestial Bow
The brightest stars of Sagittarius form the outline of a teapot, with the handle to the left and the spout…
Rain of Fire
Many Perseid meteors blaze across the sky in this time-lapse image from 2009. The shower is expected to peak the…
First Look
The Galileo spacecraft snapped this image of Gaspra, a small asteroid, during its transit of the asteroid belt in 1991.…