Photo of the Day What are those red filaments in the sky? They are a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 35 years ago: red sprites. Research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about [...]
Photo of the Day How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth [...]
Photo of the Day Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds. On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental shape, lending the popular name North America Nebula to the emission region cataloged as NGC 7000. To the right, just off [...]
Photo of the Day Near the center of a nearby star-forming region lies a massive cluster containing some of the largest and hottest stars known. Collectively known as star cluster NGC 2070, these stars are part of the vast Tarantula Nebula and were captured in two kinds of infrared light by the new Webb [...]
Photo of the Day Yes, but how many dark clouds have a multicolored lining? Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud, a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. The featured image was taken last month in [...]
A sunrise view of NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I on the pad at Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 22, 2022. Launch of Artemis I is scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 29, 2022, at 8:33 a.m. EDT. The first in a series of [...]
A sunrise view of NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I on the pad at Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 22, 2022. Launch of Artemis I is scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 29, 2022, at 8:33 a.m. EDT. The first in a series of [...]
A golden sunrise surrounds NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I on the pad at Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 22, 2022. Launch of Artemis I is scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 29, 2022, at 8:33 a.m. EDT. The first in a series of [...]
A full Moon is in view from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 14, 2022. The Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher, are being prepared for a wet dress rehearsal to practice timelines and procedures for launch. The first in an increasingly [...]
Artemis I payloads are installed inside the Orion Spacecraft ahead of launch
