#ppod

#PPOD: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured these clouds just after sunset on March 19, 2021, the 3,063rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission. The image is made up of 21 individual images stitched together and color corrected so that the scene appears as it would to the human eye. The clouds are drifting over "Mont Mercou," a cliff face that Curiosity has been studying. The rover captured the image using its Mast Camera (Mastcam). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS #space #science

#PPOD: This image shows the stunning night sky above three of the Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Conditions at the site make it one of the best places on Earth for astronomical observations, with the band of the Milky Way, as well as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, visible to the unaided eye. Credit: ESO/N. Schafer #space #science

#PPOD: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph while orbiting over northern Africa. The image shows a dune field known as Erg Chebbi, located in southeastern Morocco, near the border with Algeria and northeast of the Little Atlas mountain range. This erg, a wide sandy area covered with dunes, lies in the northwestern region of the Sahara Desert. Credit: NASA #science #planetaryscience

#PPOD: China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft has arrived at Kamoʻoalewa, a tiny asteroid that travels alongside Earth as one of only a handful of known quasi-satellites. Some researchers suspect this unusual object may be a fragment blasted from the Moon long ago, and Tianwen-2 is now poised to help solve the mystery. Tianwen-2 will attempt to collect a sample from Kamoʻoalewa’s surface before spending months mapping and studying the asteroid from orbit. Credit: CNSA #space #science

#PPOD: The aurora australis arcs over Earth during an active solar event in this photograph taken on June 5, 2026, from the International Space Station as it orbited 271 miles above the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia. Auroras are colorful, dynamic, and often visually delicate displays of an intricate dance of particles and magnetism between the Sun and Earth, known as space weather. Credit: NASA/Jessica Meir #planetaryscience #space #science

#PPOD: This stunning false-color view of Saturn's moon Hyperion reveals crisp details across the strange, tumbling moon's surface. Color differences could indicate variations in the composition of surface materials. The view was obtained during Cassini's close flyby on Sept. 26, 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/CICLOPS #space #science #planetaryscience

#PPOD: NASA’s Perseverance rover appears as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, a day before the robotic explorer marked a distance milestone, having traveled a full marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers) on the Red Planet. This image was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The rover’s tracks can be seen tracing the surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona #space #science

#PPOD: This image was taken during Cassini's final close flyby of Enceladus in 2016. It captures Enceladus' heavily fractured southern hemisphere from a distance of about 83,000 kilometers. Running left to right near the terminator is Cashmere Sulcus, and extending north towards the limb is Labtayt Sulcus. Mosul Sulcus is near the left limb. The moon's south pole is in winter night. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / Justin Cowart #planetaryscience #space #science

#PPOD: Over the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, winds can whip around the globe relatively unimpeded by land. Intrepid sailors termed these southern latitudes the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties on account of the strong prevailing winds. When those winds encounter a barrier like an island, the disruption in airflow can be beautiful. One impediment, shown here, is remote Peter I Island. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison #science

#PPOD: The colors in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope tell a story about density in the Trifid Nebula, a star-forming region about 5000 light-years from Earth. The top left, where it is bright blue, has the least dust. Here, powerful ultraviolet light stripped electrons from nearby gas, creating a glow, with winds creating a bubble by clearing out surrounding dust. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI. Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) #space #science

#PPOD: A vast cavity on the Red Planet looks back at ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) with an icy stare. The crater is located in Utopia Planitia, the largest known impact basin in the Solar System, with a diameter of roughly 3,300 km, or twice the size of Earth’s Sahara Desert from north to south. Credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS #planetaryscience #space #science

#PPOD: This new JWST picture features a cosmic creepy-crawly called NGC 6537 — the Red Spider Nebula. Using its Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), JWST has revealed never-before-seen details in this picturesque planetary nebula with a rich backdrop of thousands of stars. Planetary nebulae like the Red Spider Nebula form when ordinary stars like the Sun reach the end of their lives. Credit: ESA, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology) #space #science