This picture of a crescent-shaped Earth and Moon -- the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft -- was recorded Sept. 18, 1977, by NASA Voyager 1 when it was 7.25 million miles 11.66 million kilometers from Earth.
This picture of a crescent-shaped Earth and Moon, the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft, was recorded Sept. 18, 1977, by NASA Voyager 1 when it was 7.25 million miles 11.66 million kilometers from Earth. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00013
art002e014225 (April 6, 2026) – Seen from afar, Earth appears as a small, delicate waning crescent suspended in the darkness of space, captured by the crew during the Artemis II mission. Only a thin sliver of the planet is illuminated, resembling the familiar crescent phases often seen when observing the Moon from Earth. Despite its distance, faint hints of Earth’s blue tones and cloud patterns are visible, offering a striking perspective of our home planet from deep space.
art002e014066 (April 6, 2026) – The Artemis II crew captures an image of a crescent Earth on their journey around the Moon.
art002e015231 (April 6, 2026) – The Artemis II crew captures a faint view of a crescent Earth above the horizon on the Moon’s far side.
art002e021110 (April 6, 2026) – As the Artemis II crew came close to passing behind the Moon and experiencing a planned loss of signal, they captured this image of a crescent Earth. Seen from afar, it almost looks like a circular arc – except when backlit, as in other images captured by the Artemis II crew. Earth is in a crescent phase, with sunlight coming from the right. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over muted blue in the Australia and Oceania region. Credit: NASA
STS061-56-027 (2-13 Dec 1993) --- This scene, captured with a 35mm camera from inside the Space Shuttle Endeavour, shows Jupiter rising above the airglow over Earth's horizon. The crescent Moon is at top frame.
art002e009286 (April 6, 2026) – As the Artemis II crew came close to passing behind the Moon and experiencing a planned loss of signal, they captured this image of a crescent Earth setting on the Moon’s limb. The edge of the visible surface of the Moon is called the “lunar limb.” Seen from afar, it almost looks like a circular arc – except when backlit, as in other images captured by the Artemis II crew. In this photo, the dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime, while Australia and Oceania are in the daylight. In the foreground, the Ohm crater is visible, with terraced edges and a flat floor interrupted by central peaks—formed when the surface rebounded upward during the impact that created the crater.
art001e002190 (Dec. 7, 2022) Orion continues its journey home to Earth, which appears here as a crescent, still 234,000 miles away. The Artemis I spacecraft is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Dec. 11.
art001e002192 (Dec. 7, 2022) Orion continues its journey home to Earth, which appears here as a crescent, still 234,000 miles away. The Artemis I spacecraft is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Dec. 11.
art001e002191 (Dec. 7, 2022) Orion continues its journey home to Earth, which appears here as a crescent, still 234,000 miles away. The Artemis I spacecraft is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Dec. 11.
iss073e0118626 (May 25, 2025) --- An external high definition camera adjusted for night sensitivity took this photograph of the waning crescent Moon above Earth's horizon as the International Space Station orbited into a sunrise 270 miles above the Atlantic Ocean.
Evoking the haunting beauty of Earth Moon, a crescent Enceladus appears in the skies around Saturn in this image captured by NASA Cassini spacecraft.
The dark crescents in this image are the backside of wind blowout features. Blowouts are common on Earth in beach regions and in the American MidWest
This image of the crescent moon was obtained by the Galileo Solid State imaging system on December 8 at 5 a.m. PST as NASA Galileo spacecraft neared the Earth. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00224
art002e00444 (April 3, 2026) - An illuminated sliver of Earth set against the blackness of space is seen through the window of the Orion spacecraft in this photograph from the Artemis II crew on the third day of their journey to the Moon.
art002e004437 (April 3, 2026) - A sliver of Earth is illuminated against the blackness of space in this photo taken by an Artemis II crew member through an Orion spacecraft window on the third day of the mission.
On Earth, these wind-derived features are called blowouts, where the force of the wind has carved out a crescent-shaped depression in soft, uncemented material like glacial loess. This image is from NASA Mars Odyssey.
This crescent view of Earth Moon in infrared, blue-green, and red wavelengths comes from a camera test by NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on its way to Mars.
NASA Cassini spacecraft captures Saturn moon Rhea at crescent phase, a view never visible from Earth. Near the terminator, a few of Rhea many craters show up in sharp relief.
AS14-64-9193 (5 Feb. 1971) --- A close-up view of the forward section of the Apollo 14 Lunar Module (LM) ascent stage, looking upward from the LM ladder. This photograph was taken by one of the Apollo 14 astronauts at the close of their first extravehicular activity (EVA). The LM's ingress/egress hatch is just out of view at the bottom, near center. At the top center is the rendezvous radar antenna. An RCS thruster is visible at the far right. One of the two VHF antennas is on the right. The LM's optical alignment telescope is located at the black circle which has a wide, white ring around it. The crescent Earth can be seen in the far distant background.
Earth observation taken during a night pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as: Earth Crescent. Sunrise.
art002e016354 (April 8, 2026) The Artemis II crew captures a thin lunar crescent as they travel back to Earth.
This crescent view of Earth Moon in infrared wavelengths comes from a camera test by NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on its way to Mars. This image was taken by taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera Sept. 8, 2005.
art002e020922 (April 6, 2026) – As the Artemis II crew came close to passing behind the Moon and experiencing a planned loss of signal, they captured this image of a crescent Earth. Seen from afar, it almost looks like a circular arc – except when backlit, as in other images captured by the Artemis II crew. Earth is in a crescent phase, with sunlight coming from the right. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. Credit: NASA
ISS013-E-67657 (18 Aug. 2006) --- A crescent moon is visible in this view of Earth's horizon and airglow, photographed by an Expedition 13 crewmember on the International Space Station.
ISS013-E-67655 (18 Aug. 2006) --- A crescent moon is visible in this view of Earth's horizon and airglow, photographed by an Expedition 13 crewmember on the International Space Station.
ISS013-E-68671 (18 Aug. 2006) --- A crescent moon is visible in this view of Earth's horizon and airglow, photographed by an Expedition 13 crewmember on the International Space Station.
ISS013-E-69633 (August 2006) --- A crescent moon is visible in this view above Earth's horizon and airglow, photographed by an Expedition 13 crewmember on the International Space Station.
art002e016277 (April 6, 2026) - NASA’s Orion spacecraft captures the Moon and the Earth in one frame during the Artemis II crew’s deep space journey at 6:39 p.m. ET on the sixth day of the mission. The right side of NASA’s Orion spacecraft is seen lit up by the Sun. A waxing crescent Moon is visible behind it. And then, a crescent Earth, tiny compared to the Moon, is about to set below the Moon’s horizon on the right. Credit: NASA
art002e009567 (April 6, 2026) - NASA’s Orion spacecraft captures the Moon and the Earth in one frame during the Artemis II crew’s deep space journey at 6:42 p.m. ET on the sixth day of the mission. The right side of NASA’s Orion spacecraft is seen lit up by the Sun. A waxing crescent Moon is visible behind it. And then, a crescent Earth, tiny compared to the Moon, is about to set below the Moon’s horizon on the right. Credit: NASA
art002e021169 (April 6, 2026) - This photo of a crescent Moon and crescent Earth was taken by an Artemis II astronaut during lunar flyby on flight day 6. This captures one of the final moments before their loss of signal with Earth as the Orion spacecraft flew around the far side of the Moon, reemerging and regaining contact approximately 40 minutes later.
art002e016281 (April 6, 2026) - NASA’s Orion spacecraft captures the Moon and the Earth in one frame during the Artemis II crew’s deep space journey on the sixth day of the mission. The right side of NASA’s Orion spacecraft is seen lit up by the Sun. A waxing crescent Moon is visible behind it. And then, a crescent Earth, tiny compared to the Moon, is about to set below the Moon’s horizon on the right. Credit: NASA
ISS036-E-006173 (4 June 2013) --- One of the Expoedition 36 crew members aboard the International Space Station captured an image of a crescent moon above Earth's atmosphere on June 4, 2013.
ISS036-E-006179 (4 June 2013) --- One of the Expoedition 36 crew members aboard the International Space Station captured an image of a crescent moon above Earth's atmosphere on June 4, 2013.
ISS024-E-013819 (5 Sept. 2010) --- A last quarter crescent moon above Earth?s horizon is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 24 crew member on the International Space Station.
ISS024-E-013421 (4 Sept. 2010) --- A setting last quarter crescent moon and the thin line of Earth’s atmosphere are photographed by an Expedition 24 crew member as the International Space Station passes over central Asia.
S131-E-011411 (18 April 2010) --- A crescent last quarter moon is featured in this image photographed by an STS-131 crew member on the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Discovery.
ISS040-E-005986 (30 May 2014) --- A crescent moon and Earth's horizon are featured in this nighttime image photographed by an Expedition 40 crew member on the International Space Station.
iss067e106982 (June 1, 2022) --- The waxing crescent Moon is pictured above Earth's atmosphere illuminated by an orbital sunset as the International Space Station flew 258 miles above the Atlantic Ocean.
art002e041711 (April 8, 2026) - NASA astronaut Christina Koch pictured inside the Orion spacecraft with the crescent Earth pictured through the window behind her. This picture was captured after the Artemis II crew completed their lunar flyby and were on their way back to Earth. Credit: NASA
art002e041703 (April 8, 2026) – CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen pictured inside the Orion spacecraft with the crescent Earth pictured through the window behind him. This picture was captured after the Artemis II crew completed their lunar flyby and were on their way back to Earth. Credit: NASA
art002e025219 (April 9, 2026) - NASA astronaut Victor Glover pictured inside the Orion spacecraft with the crescent Earth pictured through the window behind him. This picture was captured after the Artemis II crew completed their lunar flyby and were on their way back to Earth. Credit: NASA
art002e009280 (April 6, 2026) – Earthrise captured through the Orion spacecraft window at 7:22 p.m. ET during the Artemis II crew’s flyby of the Moon’s far side. Earth appears as a delicate crescent, with only its right edge illuminated. The planet’s soft blue hue and scattered white cloud systems stand out on the right against the blackness of space, while the left side fades into night. Taken with a 400 mm lens, the image, Earthrise, reveals a striking alignment of Earth and Moon. In the foreground on the right, a portion of the Moon in night is barely visible save for its edge, which stands out in stark contrast against the illuminated side of Earth on the left. Zooming in along the Moon’s edge reveals rugged terrain silhouetted against the bright crescent Earth. This photo was rotated 90 degrees clockwise from the original for standard viewing orientation.
The slim crescent of Ceres smiles back as the dwarf planet awaits the arrival of an emissary from Earth. This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on March 1, 2015, just a few days before the mission achieved orbit around the previously unexplored world. Following the image sequence in which this view was acquired, the Dawn spacecraft slipped over to the dark side -- that is, the far side of Ceres with respect to the sun. The spacecraft is slated to resume imaging of Ceres' surface in mid-April, when it once again views lit terrain on Ceres. The image was obtained at a distance of about 30,000 miles (about 48,000 kilometers) at a sun-Ceres-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 123 degrees. Image scale on Ceres is 1.9 miles (2.9 kilometers) per pixel. Ceres has an average diameter of about 590 miles (950 kilometers). http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19312
iss059e059210 (May 8, 2019) --- The waxing crescent moon is photographed just above Earth's limb and the bluish hue of the atmosphere at the beginning of an orbital sunrise. A portion of one of the International Space Station's solar arrays is seen in the left foreground as the orbital complex flew 258 miles above the Sea of Japan.
iss059e059211 (May 8, 2019) --- The waxing crescent moon is photographed just above Earth's limb and the bluish hue of the atmosphere at the beginning of an orbital sunrise. A portion of one of the International Space Station's solar arrays is seen in the left foreground as the orbital complex flew 258 miles above the Sea of Japan.
art002e041740 (April 8, 2026) - NASA astronaut and Artemis II Pilot Victor Glover smiles aboard the Orion spacecraft with a crescent Earth visible through the window behind him on the eighth day of the Artemis II mission. Credit: NASA.
art002e041724 (April 8, 2026) - NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman smiles aboard the Orion spacecraft with a crescent Earth visible through the window behind him on the eighth day of the Artemis II mission. Credit: NASA. Credit: NASA
A supermoon rises over the Mississippi River and the Crescent City Aug. 1. The early August full Moon is the second largest in Earth’s skies for 2023. Later in August, a full Moon will appear in the skies for a second time. New Orleans is home to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, where stages for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and structures for Orion spacecraft are produced for the Artemis missions.
iss071e067226_stk (5/8/2024) --- NASA astronaut Matt Dominick aboard space station captured this waxing lunar crescent illuminated by the Sun. The rest of the Moon dimly glows by earthshine when sunlight reflects off Earth onto the Moon. Scientists track the Earth’s brightness, or albedo, via this phenomenon. This photo also shows a cross-section of Earth’s atmospheric layers, including the orange troposphere nearest to the surface and the thicker, light-blue stratosphere above that.
art002e021283 (April 6, 2026) – The Earth appears to be peeking out over the horizon of the Moon,but pictured here is actually an Earthset. During an Earthset, the planet appears to sink below the lunar horizon. In this scene, a partially lit crescent Earth drops behind the Moon as seen by crew on the Orion spacecraft. The image also shows the vast canvas of the Moon’s surface with its overlapping craters and basins. Credit: NASA
This artist's concept allows us to imagine what it would be like to stand on the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f, located in the TRAPPIST-1 system in the constellation Aquarius. Because this planet is thought to be tidally locked to its star, meaning the same face of the planet is always pointed at the star, there would be a region called the terminator that perpetually divides day and night. If the night side is icy, the day side might give way to liquid water in the area where sufficient starlight hits the surface. One of the unusual features of TRAPPIST-1 planets is how close they are to each other -- so close that other planets could be visible in the sky from the surface of each one. In this view, the planets in the sky correspond to TRAPPIST1e (top left crescent), d (middle crescent) and c (bright dot to the lower right of the crescents). TRAPPIST-1e would appear about the same size as the moon and TRAPPIST1-c is on the far side of the star. The star itself, an ultra-cool dwarf, would appear about three times larger than our own sun does in Earth's skies. The TRAPPIST-1 system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope, as well as other ground-based observatories. The system was named for the TRAPPIST telescope. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21423
A Super Blue Moon rises above the Mississippi River and the Crescent City Connection Bridge in New Orleans, Aug. 30. The full moon is “super” because it’s slightly closer to Earth and “blue” because it’s the second full moon in a month. About 25% of all full moons are supermoons, but only 3% of full moons are blue moons. The next super blue moons will occur in a pair in January and March 2037. New Orleans is home to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, where stages for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and structures for Orion spacecraft are produced for the Artemis missions.
art002e009285 (April 6, 2026) – Our planet draws closer to passing behind the Moon in this image captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby, about six minutes before Earthset. Earth is in a crescent phase, with sunlight coming from the right. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over muted blue in the Australia and Oceania region. The lines of small indentations on the Moon’s rugged surface are secondary crater chains. These structures are formed by material ejected during a violent primary impact.
art002e014211 (April 6, 2026) - Seen side-by-side from deep space, the Moon and Earth share the frame—yet Earth appears as a small, delicate crescent against the blackness beyond. At this stage, Orion is approaching the Moon’s farside, placing the image earlier in the flyby, before closest approach during Artemis II. Though both worlds are visible, the scale and distance between them become immediately clear, offering a powerful perspective of how far the crew has traveled from home. Even in its reduced size, Earth’s soft glow stands out, a reminder of the only world we’ve ever known. Credit: NASA
Saturn appears to NASA Cassini cameras as a thin, sunlit crescent in this unearthly view. Citizens of Earth, being so much closer to the Sun than Saturn, never get to enjoy a view of Saturn like this without the aid of our robot envoys. Parts of the night side of Saturn show faint illumination due to light reflected off the rings back onto the planet, an effect dubbed "ringshine." This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 43 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 4, 2013. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 75 miles (120 kilometers) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18276
Tethys, dwarfed by the scale of Saturn and its rings, appears as an elegant crescent in this image taken by NASA's Cassini Spacecraft. Views like this are impossible from Earth, where we only see Saturn's moons as (more or less) fully illuminated disks. The region of Saturn seen at left is on the planet's night side. Reflected light from the rings dimly illuminates the planet's northern hemisphere. This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 24 degrees to the left. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 18, 2015. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 184,000 miles (296,000 kilometers) from Tethys. Image scale is 11 miles (18 kilometers) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18348
The slim crescent of Ceres smiles back as the dwarf planet awaits the arrival of an emissary from Earth. This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on March 1, 2015, just a few days before the mission achieved orbit around the previously unexplored world. Following the image sequence in which this view was acquired, the Dawn spacecraft slipped over to the dark side -- that is, the far side of Ceres with respect to the sun. The spacecraft is slated to resume imaging of Ceres' surface in mid-April, when it once again views lit terrain on Ceres. The image was obtained at a distance of about 30,000 miles (about 48,000 kilometers) at a sun-Ceres-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 123 degrees. Image scale on Ceres is 1.9 miles (2.9 kilometers) per pixel. Ceres has an average diameter of about 590 miles (950 kilometers). http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19311
ISS011-E-12415 (31 August 2005) --- Aurora Borealis and lights in Finland, Russia, Estonia and Latvia are featured in this digital still picture taken by the Expedition 11 crew aboard the international space station. If it were daylight parts of the Eastern Baltic Sea would be visible. The station was over a point on Earth located at 50.6 degrees north latitude and 15.1 degees east longitude at the time. The cluster of stars to the lower right of the thin crescent Moon is the Praesepe or Beehive Cluster in Cancer. Just to the right of that is the planet Saturn.
AS17-152-23279 (7-19 Dec. 1972) --- Eclipsed by the silhouetted horizon of the moon, the crescent Earth appears in the shape of a Viking's headwear in this unusual Apollo 17 photograph. The three astronauts--Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans and Harrison H. Schmitt--were just about to begin their journey homeward following the successful lunar landing phase of their mission.
ISS026-E-028375 (22 Feb. 2011) --- Having enjoyed a clear sky nocturnal photo opportunity over New Orleans earlier (Jan. 26) in their mission, Expedition 26 crew members aboard the International Space Station had another window on Feb. 22 to capture images of the Crescent City or Big Easy from 220 miles above Earth. The Mississippi River is visible winding its way through the city. A 200-mm lens was used to take the picture.
This Chandra image, the first x-ray image ever made of Venus, shows a half crescent due to the relative orientation of the Sun, Earth, and Venus. The x-rays are produced by fluorescent radiation from oxygen and other atoms in the atmosphere between 120 and 140 kilometers above the surface of the planet. In contrast, the optical light from Venus is caused by the reflection from clouds 50 to 70 kilometers above the surface.
ISS026-E-029249 (24 Feb. 2011) --- Backdropped by the blackness of space and Earth’s horizon, the European Space Agency's "Johannes Kepler" Automated Transfer Vehicle-2 (ATV-2) docks to the aft end of the International Space Station's Zvezda Service Module. Docking of the two spacecraft occurred at 10:59 a.m. (EST) on Feb. 24, 2011. A crescent moon is visible at center right.
ISS006-E-48523 (28 April 2003) --- A crescent moon (right) and the planet Venus were photographed by an Expedition six crewmember onboard the International Space Station (ISS). As a result of overexposure, the dark part of the moon’s terrain is visible, which is faintly lit by Earthshine (sunlight reflected from our planet onto the moon). Earth’s horizon is visible in the lower left portion of this image.
ISS026-E-029442 (24 Feb. 2011) --- Backdropped by Earth’s horizon and the blackness of space, the European Space Agency's "Johannes Kepler" Automated Transfer Vehicle-2 (ATV-2) approaches the International Space Station. Docking of the two spacecraft occurred at 10:59 a.m. (EST) on Feb. 24, 2011. A crescent moon is visible at upper right.
art002e019570 (April 7, 2026) – On flight day seven, following their lunar flyby, the Artemis II crew captured this view of a delicate crescent Moon on their journey back to Earth. Along the terminator—the boundary between lunar day and night—low-angle sunlight casts long shadows that accentuate craters, ridges, and subtle variations in terrain. The softly illuminated surface highlights the Moon’s rugged landscape, while much of it remains in shadow. Credit: NASA
This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed Pale Blue Dot, is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by NASA’s Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00452
This map shows the two locations of a research campaign by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover mission to investigate active sand dunes inside Gale Crater on Mars. The Bagnold Dunes form a dark band on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, inside the crater. In late 2015 and early 2016, Curiosity examined crescent-shaped dunes, called barchans, which are convex on the downwind (leeward) side. This was the first close-up study of active sand dunes anywhere other than Earth. In February 2017, the rover reached a location where the dunes are linear in shape, and the mission began Phase 2 of its dunes campaign. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21269
S117-E-06901 (11 June 2007) --- Astronauts Jim Reilly (out of frame) and John "Danny" Olivas (partially obscured, center), both STS-117 mission specialists, participate in the mission's first planned session of extravehicular activity (EVA), as construction resumes on the International Space Station. Among other tasks, Reilly and Olivas connected power, data and cooling cables between S1 and S3; released the launch restraints from and deployed the four solar array blanket boxes on S4 and released the cinches and winches holding the photovoltaic radiator on S4. Earth's horizon and a crescent moon are visible at right.
AS17-134-20466 (7-19 Dec. 1972) --- A close-up view of the U.S. flag deployed on the moon at the Taurus-Littrow landing site by the crewmen of the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission. The crescent Earth can be seen in the far distant background above the flag. The lunar feature in the near background is South Massif. While astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt descended in the Lunar Module "Challenger" to explore the lunar surface, astronaut Ronald E. Evans remained with the Apollo 17 Command and Service Modules in lunar orbit.
AS17-152-23272 (7-19 Dec. 1972) --- The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this photograph taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in lunar orbit during National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) final lunar landing mission in the Apollo program. While astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, commander, and Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot, descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Challenger" to explore the Taurus-Littrow region of the moon, astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "America" in lunar orbit.
AS17-152-23274 (7-19 Dec. 1972) --- The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this spectacular photograph taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in lunar orbit during National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) final lunar landing mission in the Apollo program. While astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, commander, and Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot, descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Challenger" to explore the Taurus-Littrow region of the moon, astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "America" in lunar orbit.
ISS031-S-001 (September 2011) --- Thin crescents along the horizons of Earth and its moon depict International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 31. The shape of the patch represents a view of our galaxy. The black background symbolizes the research into dark matter, one of the scientific objectives of Expedition 31. At the heart of the patch are Earth, its moon, Mars, and asteroids, the focus of current and future exploration. The ISS is shown in an orbit around Earth, with a collection of stars for the Expedition 30 and 31 crews. The small stars symbolize the visiting vehicles that will dock with the complex during this expedition. The NASA insignia design for shuttle and space station flights is reserved for use by the astronauts and for other official use as the NASA Administrator may authorize. Public availability has been approved only in the forms of illustrations by the various news media. When and if there is any change in this policy, which is not anticipated, the change will be publicly announced. Photo credit: NASA and Its International Partners
If you could ride along with NASA's Juno spacecraft as it approaches Jupiter during one of its regular close passes by the giant planet, you would be treated to a striking vista similar to this one. Unlike the Moon or Venus, this view of Jupiter in a crescent phase is impossible to see from Earth, even using a telescope. Since Jupiter's orbit is outside Earth's, an observer on Earth can only see the side of Jupiter that is illuminated by the Sun, so the planet always appears full. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this mosaic using raw data from the JunoCam instrument. It comprises seven images taken during Juno's 39th close pass by Jupiter on Jan. 12, 2022. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25013
The nearby intense star-forming region known as the Great Nebula in the Orion constellation reveals a bow shock around a very young star as seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Named for the crescent-shaped wave made by a ship as it moves through the water, a bow shock can be created in space where two streams of gas collide. LL Ori emits a vigorous solar wind, a stream of charged particles moving rapidly outward from the star. Our own sun has a less energetic version of this wind. The material in the fast wind from LL Ori collides with slow moving gas evaporating away form the center of the Orion Nebula, which is located in the lower right of this image, producing the crescent shaped bow shock seen in the image. Astronomers have identified numerous shock fronts in this complex star-forming region and are using this data to understand the many complex phenomena associated with the birth of stars. A close visitor in our Milky Way Galaxy, the nebula is only 1,500 light years away from Earth. The filters used in this color composite represent oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen emissions.
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) shows a dune field in Chasma Boreale, which is a large trough that cuts into the North Polar ice cap. Some of the dunes in this image are quite long and sinuous with a slight bulge at one end like a "head," giving it the appearance of a snake. However, most of the dunes visible here are of the type referred to as "barchan," which are characterized by their crescent shape. For these types of dunes, the "mouth" of the crescent points in the downwind direction, indicating that the winds are traveling east-west. The diverse dune morphologies here suggest that the wind-direction changes over a very small area. Because Mars has a similar axial tilt to Earth, it also experiences seasons. When we took this image, Mars was in late spring. At this time of year, the dunes in this image are almost completely covered by frost. But this will soon change! Small portions of the underlying dark basaltic sands of these dunes are becoming increasingly visible with the active removal of their seasonal coating of ice. A look at a series of images demonstrates the the transition from early to late spring, marked by defrosting and the gradual growth of dark spots. By summer, the dunes will be defrosted, and will appear completely black. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22053
These images show the sudden appearance of a bright aurora on Mars during a solar storm in September 2017. The purple-white color scheme shows the intensity of ultraviolet light seen on Mars' night side before (left) and during (right) the event. A simulated image of Mars for the same time and orientation has been added, with the dayside crescent visible on the right. The auroral emission appears brightest at the edges of the planet where the line of sight passes along the length of the glowing atmosphere layer. The data are from observations by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument (IUVS) on NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or MAVEN. Note that, unlike auroras on Earth, the Martian aurora is not concentrated at the planet's polar regions. This is because Mars has no strong magnetic field like Earth's to concentrate the aurora near the poles. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21855
This image of the crescent moon was obtained by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging System, taken at 5 am PST as the spacecraft neared Earth. The image was taken through a green filter and shows the western part of the lunar near side. The smallest features visible are 8 km (5 mi) in size. Major features visible include the dark plains of Mare Imbrium in the upper part of the image, the bright crater Copernicus (100 km, 60 miles in diameter) in the centeral part, and the heavily cratered lunar highlands in the bottom of the image. The landing sides of the Apollo 12,14 and 15 missions lie within the central part of the image. Samples returned from these sites will be used to calibrate this and accompanying images taken in different colors, which will extend the knowledge of the spectral and compositional properties of the near side of the moon, seen from Earth, to the lunar far side.
art002e000192 (April 3, 2026) - This nighttime picture of Earth was taken on April 2, 2026, by an Artemis II crew member aiming a camera through a window of the Orion spacecraft. The image was captured after Orion completed its translunar injection burn, the critical maneuver that sent the spacecraft on its path toward the Moon and back. The visible hemisphere appears awash in sunlight, but it is actually lit by moonlight — sunlight reflected from the lunar surface. Along the upper left (south) and lower right (north) edges of Earth’s disk, green auroras glow against the dark sky, showing charged particles from the Sun interacting with gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Africa is visible on the left, while a translucent cone of light capped by a bright Venus extends into space from Earth’s lower right edge. This zodiacal light is caused by sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust. A thin white crescent along the lower right edge of Earth marks the planet’s daytime atmosphere illuminated by the Sun, which lies on the opposite side of Earth from Orion’s perspective. City lights are also visible, especially along coastlines. Credits: NASA
Range : 168,694 km (105,000 mi.) Voyager 2 discovered detached limb hazes in the atmosphere of Triton in Pictures that arrived at Earth between 3:30 am and 5:30 am. The principal layer seen here begins about three km (2 miles) above the surface, and is about 3 km thick. Fainter upward extension of the haze has been seen to an altitude of at least 14 km (9 mi.). The haze must be comoposed of tiny particles in order to be supported in Trition's thin atmosphere. Composition of the haze is currently unknown, but may be either condensed atmospheric gases or complex orgainc molecules produced by irradiation of the methane in Triton's atmosphere. The vaguely linear mottling on the surface may be shadows of other haze striations. Other features of the haze layer should be appaarent in images of Triton taken at higher phase angles (including crescent phase). The image shows features as small as 2 km (1.2 mi) wide.
SL4-138-3820 (31 Dec. 1973) --- An north-looking oblique view of chains of star sand dunes in eastern Algeria as seen from the Skylab space station in Earth orbit. This picture was taken by one of the Skylab 4 crewmen with a hand-held 70mm Hasselblad camera. The low sun angle of about 25 degrees above horizontal enhances the detail in this picture. The coordinates of the center of the photograph are approximately 29.5 degrees north latitude and 5.0 degrees east longitude in the Grand Erg Oriental. The field of view at the base of the photograph is approximately 200 kilometers (125 miles). The individual dunes are roughly star-shaped rather than simple crescents which are common in dune fields. In this region the stars are aligned along ridges. The causes of these and a wide variety of other dune forms are little understood. Descriptions and photographs from Skylab 4 will be used by the U.S. Geological Survey in their world-wide study of dunes. Photo credit: NASA
This frame from an animation shows the sudden appearance of a bright aurora on Mars during a solar storm. The purple-white color scheme shows the intensity of ultraviolet light seen on Mars' night side over the course of the event. The data are from observations on Sept. 12 and 13, 2017, by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument (IUVS) on NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or MAVEN. The aurora is occurring because energetic particles from the solar storm are bombarding gases in the planet's atmosphere, causing them to glow. A simulated image of the Mars surface for the same time and orientation is also shown, with the dayside crescent visible on the right. The auroral emission appears brightest at the edges of the planet where the line of sight passes along the length of the glowing atmosphere layer. Note that, unlike auroras on Earth, the Martian aurora is not concentrated at the planet's polar regions. This is because Mars has no strong magnetic field like Earth's to concentrate the aurora near the poles. An animation is available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21854
Jupiter's aurora on the night side of the planet is seen here at five different wavelengths. Jupiter's bright crescent, which is about half illuminated, is out of view to the right. North is at the top. The images are centered at 57 degrees north and 184 degrees West and were taken on April 2, 1997 at a range of 1.7 million kilometers (1.05 million miles) by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) camera system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Although Jupiter's aurora had been imaged from Earth in the ultraviolet and infrared, these are the first images at visible wavelengths, where most of the emission takes place. CLR stands for clear (no filter) and shows the integrated brightness at all wavelengths. The other panels show the violet, green, red, and 889 nanometer-wavelength filtered images. The brightness of the aurora is roughly independent of wavelength, at least at the spectral resolution obtainable with these filters. As on Earth, the aurora is caused by electrically charged particles striking the upper atmosphere, causing the molecules of the atmosphere to glow. The brightness in the different filters contains information about the energy of the impinging particles and the composition of the upper atmosphere. If atomic hydrogen were the only emitter, the light would be much stronger in the red filter, which is not consistent with the observed distribution. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00605
This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows two scales of ripples, plus other textures, in an area where the mission examined a linear-shaped dune in the Bagnold dune field on lower Mount Sharp. The scene is an excerpt from a 360-degree panorama acquired on March 24 and March 25, 2017, (PST) during the 1,647th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars, at a location called "Ogunquit Beach." Crests of the longer ripples visible in the dark sand of the dune are several feet (a few meters) apart. This medium-scale feature in active sand dunes on Mars was one of Curiosity's findings at the crescent-shaped dunes that the rover examined in late 2015 and early 2016. Ripples that scale are not seen on Earth's sand dunes. Overlaid on those ripples are much smaller ripples, with crests about ten times closer together. Textures of the local bedrock in the foreground -- part of the Murray formation that originated as lakebed sediments -- and of gravel-covered ground (at right) are also visible. The image has been white-balanced so that the colors of the colors of the rock and sand materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11242
art002e009284 (April 6, 2026) – Earth appears tiny as the Moon looms large in this photo taken by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026. Taken 36 minutes before Earthset, our home planet is visible in the blackness of space off the limb of the illuminated Moon. Earth is in a crescent phase, with sunlight coming from the right. Orientale mare basin, with its dark floor of cooled lava and outer rings of mountains, covers nearly the lower third of the imaged lunar surface. Different colors in the mare hint at its mineral composition. The lines of small indentations above Orientale are secondary crater chains, formed by material ejected during a violent primary impact. Both of the new craters that the Artemis II crew has suggested names for – Integrity and Carroll – are in full view. The edge of the visible surface of the Moon is called the “lunar limb.” Seen from afar, it almost looks like a circular arc – except when backlit, as in other images captured by the Artemis II crew.
A single crescent moon is a familiar sight in Earth's sky, but with Saturn's many moons, you can see three or even more. The three moons shown here -- Titan (3,200 miles or 5,150 kilometers across), Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), and Rhea (949 miles or 1,527 kilometers across) -- show marked contrasts. Titan, the largest moon in this image, appears fuzzy because we only see its cloud layers. And because Titan's atmosphere refracts light around the moon, its crescent "wraps" just a little further around the moon than it would on an airless body. Rhea (upper left) appears rough because its icy surface is heavily cratered. And a close inspection of Mimas (center bottom), though difficult to see at this scale, shows surface irregularities due to its own violent history. This view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Titan. North on Titan is to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 25, 2015. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) from Titan. Image scale at Titan is 16 miles (26 kilometers) per pixel. Mimas was 1.9 million miles (3.0 million kilometers) away with an image scale of 11 miles (18 kilometers) per pixel. Rhea was 1.6 million miles (2.6 million kilometers) away with an image scale of 9.8 miles (15.7 kilometer) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/pia18322
The cameras of Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, pointed back toward the sun and took a series of pictures of the sun and the planets, making the first ever portrait of our solar system as seen from the outside. In the course of taking this mosaic consisting of a total of 60 frames, Voyager 1 made several images of the inner solar system from a distance of approximately 4 billion miles and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. Thirty-nine wide angle frames link together six of the planets of our solar system in this mosaic. Outermost Neptune is 30 times further from the sun than Earth. Our sun is seen as the bright object in the center of the circle of frames. The wide-angle image of the sun was taken with the camera's darkest filter (a methane absorption band) and the shortest possible exposure (5 thousandths of a second) to avoid saturating the camera's vidicon tube with scattered sunlight. The sun is not large as seen from Voyager, only about one-fortieth of the diameter as seen from Earth, but is still almost 8 million times brighter than the brightest star in Earth's sky, Sirius. The result of this great brightness is an image with multiple reflections from the optics in the camera. Wide-angle images surrounding the sun also show many artifacts attributable to scattered light in the optics. These were taken through the clear filter with one second exposures. The insets show the planets magnified many times. Narrow-angle images of Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were acquired as the spacecraft built the wide-angle mosaic. Jupiter is larger than a narrow-angle pixel and is clearly resolved, as is Saturn with its rings. Uranus and Neptune appear larger than they really are because of image smear due to spacecraft motion during the long (15 second) exposures. From Voyager's great distance Earth and Venus are mere points of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00451
Waxing crescent. Visible toward the southwest in early evening. This marks the first time that accurate shadows at this level of detail are possible in such a computer simulation. The shadows are based on the global elevation map being developed from measurements by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). LOLA has already taken more than 10 times as many elevation measurements as all previous missions combined. The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month. When a month is compressed into 12 seconds, as it is in this animation, our changing view of the Moon makes it look like it's wobbling. This wobble is called libration. The word comes from the Latin for "balance scale" (as does the name of the zodiac constellation Libra) and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides. The sub-Earth point gives the amount of libration in longitude and latitude. The sub-Earth point is also the apparent center of the Moon's disk and the location on the Moon where the Earth is directly overhead. The Moon is subject to other motions as well. It appears to roll back and forth around the sub-Earth point. The roll angle is given by the position angle of the axis, which is the angle of the Moon's north pole relative to celestial north. The Moon also approaches and recedes from us, appearing to grow and shrink. The two extremes, called perigee (near) and apogee (far), differ by more than 10%. The most noticed monthly variation in the Moon's appearance is the cycle of phases, caused by the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon orbits the Earth. The cycle begins with the waxing (growing) crescent Moon visible in the west just after sunset. By first quarter, the Moon is high in the sky at sunset and sets around midnight. The full Moon rises at sunset and is high in the sky at midnight. The third quarter Moon is often surprisingly conspicuous in the daylit western sky long after sunrise. Celestial north is up in these images, corresponding to the view from the northern hemisphere. The descriptions of the print resolution stills also assume a northern hemisphere orientation. To adjust for southern hemisphere views, rotate the images 180 degrees, and substitute "north" for "south" in the descriptions. Credit: <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://web.stagram.com/n/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>
Waning crescent. Low to the east before sunrise. This marks the first time that accurate shadows at this level of detail are possible in such a computer simulation. The shadows are based on the global elevation map being developed from measurements by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). LOLA has already taken more than 10 times as many elevation measurements as all previous missions combined. The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month. When a month is compressed into 12 seconds, as it is in this animation, our changing view of the Moon makes it look like it's wobbling. This wobble is called libration. The word comes from the Latin for "balance scale" (as does the name of the zodiac constellation Libra) and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides. The sub-Earth point gives the amount of libration in longitude and latitude. The sub-Earth point is also the apparent center of the Moon's disk and the location on the Moon where the Earth is directly overhead. The Moon is subject to other motions as well. It appears to roll back and forth around the sub-Earth point. The roll angle is given by the position angle of the axis, which is the angle of the Moon's north pole relative to celestial north. The Moon also approaches and recedes from us, appearing to grow and shrink. The two extremes, called perigee (near) and apogee (far), differ by more than 10%. The most noticed monthly variation in the Moon's appearance is the cycle of phases, caused by the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon orbits the Earth. The cycle begins with the waxing (growing) crescent Moon visible in the west just after sunset. By first quarter, the Moon is high in the sky at sunset and sets around midnight. The full Moon rises at sunset and is high in the sky at midnight. The third quarter Moon is often surprisingly conspicuous in the daylit western sky long after sunrise. Celestial north is up in these images, corresponding to the view from the northern hemisphere. The descriptions of the print resolution stills also assume a northern hemisphere orientation. To adjust for southern hemisphere views, rotate the images 180 degrees, and substitute "north" for "south" in the descriptions. Credit: <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://web.stagram.com/n/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>
New Moon. By the modern definition, New Moon occurs when the Moon and Sun are at the same geocentric ecliptic longitude. The part of the Moon facing us is completely in shadow then. Pictured here is the traditional New Moon, the earliest visible waxing crescent, which signals the start of a new month in many lunar and lunisolar calendars. This marks the first time that accurate shadows at this level of detail are possible in such a computer simulation. The shadows are based on the global elevation map being developed from measurements by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). LOLA has already taken more than 10 times as many elevation measurements as all previous missions combined. The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month. When a month is compressed into 12 seconds, as it is in this animation, our changing view of the Moon makes it look like it's wobbling. This wobble is called libration. The word comes from the Latin for "balance scale" (as does the name of the zodiac constellation Libra) and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides. The sub-Earth point gives the amount of libration in longitude and latitude. The sub-Earth point is also the apparent center of the Moon's disk and the location on the Moon where the Earth is directly overhead. The Moon is subject to other motions as well. It appears to roll back and forth around the sub-Earth point. The roll angle is given by the position angle of the axis, which is the angle of the Moon's north pole relative to celestial north. The Moon also approaches and recedes from us, appearing to grow and shrink. The two extremes, called perigee (near) and apogee (far), differ by more than 10%. The most noticed monthly variation in the Moon's appearance is the cycle of phases, caused by the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon orbits the Earth. The cycle begins with the waxing (growing) crescent Moon visible in the west just after sunset. By first quarter, the Moon is high in the sky at sunset and sets around midnight. The full Moon rises at sunset and is high in the sky at midnight. The third quarter Moon is often surprisingly conspicuous in the daylit western sky long after sunrise. Celestial north is up in these images, corresponding to the view from the northern hemisphere. The descriptions of the print resolution stills also assume a northern hemisphere orientation. To adjust for southern hemisphere views, rotate the images 180 degrees, and substitute "north" for "south" in the descriptions. Credit: <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://web.stagram.com/n/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>
Two different versions of an image of Pluto's haze layers, taken by New Horizons as it looked back at Pluto's dark side nearly 16 hours after close approach, from a distance of 480,000 miles (770,000 kilometers), at a phase angle of 166 degrees. Pluto's north is at the top, and the sun illuminates Pluto from the upper right. These images are much higher quality than the digitally compressed images of Pluto's haze downlinked and released shortly after the July 14 encounter, and allow many new details to be seen. The left version has had only minor processing, while the right version has been specially processed to reveal a large number of discrete haze layers in the atmosphere. In the left version, faint surface details on the narrow sunlit crescent are seen through the haze in the upper right of Pluto's disk, and subtle parallel streaks in the haze may be crepuscular rays- shadows cast on the haze by topography such as mountain ranges on Pluto, similar to the rays sometimes seen in the sky after the sun sets behind mountains on Earth. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19880
ISS025-S-001 (June 2010) --- The mission patch design for the 25th Expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) pays tribute to the rich history of innovation and bold engineering in the quest for knowledge, exploration and discovery in space. The patch highlights the symbolic passing of the torch to the ISS, as the vehicle that will carry us into the future of space exploration. The Space Shuttle Program emblem is the foundation of the patch and forms the Greek letter Omega?, paying tribute to the culmination of the Space Shuttle Program. The mission designation 25? and the Earth crescent, the orbiter is shown returning to Earth on its final journey, during the Expedition 25 mission. Above Earth and the breaking dawn, the ISS takes center-stage, completed and fully equipped to carry us beyond this new dawn to new voyages and discoveries. The orbit connecting the ISS and the Earth is drawn in the colors of the United States and Russian flags; paying tribute to the blended heritage of the crew. The two largest stars in the field represent the arrival and departure of the crews in separate Russian Soyuz vehicles. The six stars in the field represent the six crew members. The International Space Station abbreviation MKC? ? in English and Russian, respectively- flank the mission number designation, and the names of the crew members in their native languages border the ISS symbol. The NASA insignia design for shuttle and space station flights is reserved for use by the astronauts and for other official use as the NASA Administrator may authorize. Public availability has been approved only in the form of illustrations by the various news media. When and if there is any change in this policy, which is not anticipated, it will be publicly announced.
These six narrow-angle color images were made from the first ever portrait of the solar system taken by NASA’s Voyager 1, which was more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system which shows six of the planets. Mercury is too close to the sun to be seen. Mars was not detectable by the Voyager cameras due to scattered sunlight in the optics, and Pluto was not included in the mosaic because of its small size and distance from the sun. These blown-up images, left to right and top to bottom are Venus, Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. The background features in the images are artifacts resulting from the magnification. The images were taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color images. Jupiter and Saturn were resolved by the camera but Uranus and Neptune appear larger than they really are because of image smear due to spacecraft motion during the long (15 second) exposure times. Earth appears to be in a band of light because it coincidentally lies right in the center of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixels in size. Venus was 0.11 pixel in diameter. The planetary images were taken with the narrow-angle camera (1500 mm focal length). http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00453
This color image of the sun, Earth and Venus was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft Feb. 14, 1990, when it was approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the ecliptic and at a slant-range distance of approximately 4 billion miles. It is the first -- and may be the only -- time that we will ever see our solar system from such a vantage point. The image is a portion of a wide-angle image containing the sun and the region of space where the Earth and Venus were at the time with two narrow-angle pictures centered on each planet. The wide-angle was taken with the camera's darkest filter (a methane absorption band), and the shortest possible exposure (5 thousandths of a second) to avoid saturating the camera's vidicon tube with scattered sunlight. The sun is not large in the sky as seen from Voyager's perspective at the edge of the solar system but is still eight million times brighter than the brightest star in Earth's sky, Sirius. The image of the sun you see is far larger than the actual dimension of the solar disk. The result of the brightness is a bright burned out image with multiple reflections from the optics in the camera. The "rays" around the sun are a diffraction pattern of the calibration lamp which is mounted in front of the wide angle lens. The two narrow-angle frames containing the images of the Earth and Venus have been digitally mosaiced into the wide-angle image at the appropriate scale. These images were taken through three color filters and recombined to produce a color image. The violet, green and blue filters were used; exposure times were, for the Earth image, 0.72, 0.48 and 0.72 seconds, and for the Venus frame, 0.36, 0.24 and 0.36, respectively. Although the planetary pictures were taken with the narrow-angle camera (1500 mm focal length) and were not pointed directly at the sun, they show the effects of the glare from the nearby sun, in the form of long linear streaks resulting from the scattering of sunlight off parts of the camera and its sun shade. From Voyager's great distance both Earth and Venus are mere points of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. Detailed analysis also suggests that Voyager detected the moon as well, but it is too faint to be seen without special processing. Venus was only 0.11 pixel in diameter. The faint colored structure in both planetary frames results from sunlight scattered in the optics. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00450
In this infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon (at a total power of 1.4 kilowatts) to the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) flight laser transceiver aboard NASA's Psyche spacecraft. The photo was taken on June 2, 2025, when Psyche was about 143 million miles (230 million kilometers) from Earth. The faint purple crescent just left of center and near the laser beam is a lens flare caused by a bright light (out of frame) reflecting inside the camera lens. As the experiment's ground laser transmitter, OCTL transmits at an infrared wavelength of 1,064 nanometers from its 3.3-foot-aperture (1-meter) telescope. The telescope can also receive faint infrared photons (at a wavelength of 1,550 nanometers) from the 4-watt flight laser transceiver on Psyche. Neither infrared wavelength is easily absorbed or scattered by Earth's atmosphere, making both ideal for deep space optical communications. To receive the most distant signals from Psyche, the project enlisted the powerful 200-inch-aperture (5-meter) Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, as its primary downlink station, which provided adequate light-collecting area to capture the faintest photons. Those photons were then directed to a cryogenically cooled superconducting high-efficiency detector array at the observatory where the information encoded in the photons could be processed. Managed by JPL, DSOC was designed to demonstrate that data encoded in laser photons could be reliably transmitted, received, and then decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth out to Mars distances. Nearly two years after launching aboard the agency's Psyche mission in 2023, the demonstration completed its 65th and final "pass" on Sept. 2, 2025, sending a laser signal to Psyche and receiving the return signal from 218 million miles (350 million kilometers) away. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26661
NASA acquired July 15, 2012 On July 15, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of the aurora australis, or “southern lights,” over Antartica’s Queen Maud Land and the Princess Ragnhild Coast. The image was captured by the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. In the case of the image above, the sensor detected the visible auroral light emissions as energetic particles rained down from Earth’s magnetosphere and into the gases of the upper atmosphere. The slightly jagged appearance of the auroral lines is a function of the rapid dance of the energetic particles at the same time that the satellite is moving and the VIIRS sensor is scanning. The yellow box in the top image depicts the area shown in the lower close-up image. Light from the aurora was bright enough to illuminate the ice edge between the ice shelf and the Southern Ocean. At the time, Antarctica was locked in midwinter darkness and the Moon was a waning crescent that provided little light. NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS Day-Night Band data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense. Caption by Mike Carlowicz. Instrument: Suomi NPP - VIIRS Credit: <b><a href="http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/" rel="nofollow"> NASA Earth Observatory</a></b> <b>Click here to view all of the <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights/" rel="nofollow"> Earth at Night 2012 images </a></b> <b>Click here to <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=79750" rel="nofollow"> read more </a> about this image </b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>
This is the highest-resolution color departure shot of Pluto's receding crescent from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) away from Pluto. Shown in approximate true color, the picture was constructed from a mosaic of six black-and-white images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), with color added from a lower resolution Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) color image, all acquired between 15:20 and 15:45 UT -- about 3.5 hours after closest approach to Pluto -- on July 14, 2015. The resolution of the LORRI images is about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel; the sun illuminates the scene from the other side of Pluto and somewhat toward the top of this image. The image is dominated by spectacular layers of blue haze in Pluto's atmosphere. Scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto's atmosphere, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene. These hydrocarbons accumulate into small haze particles, a fraction of a micrometer in size, which preferentially scatter blue sunlight -- the same process that can make haze appear bluish on Earth. As they settle down through the atmosphere, the haze particles form numerous intricate, horizontal layers, some extending for hundreds of miles around large portions of the limb of Pluto. The haze layers extend to altitudes of over 120 miles (200 kilometers). Pluto's circumference is 4,667 miles (7,466 kilometers). Adding to the beauty of this picture are mountains and other topographic features on Pluto's surface that are silhouetted against the haze near the top of the image. Sunlight casts dramatic and beautiful finger-like shadows from many of these features onto the haze (especially on the left, near the 11 o'clock position), forming crepuscular rays like those often seen in Earth's atmosphere near sunrise or sunset. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21590
New Moon. By the modern definition, New Moon occurs when the Moon and Sun are at the same geocentric ecliptic longitude. The part of the Moon facing us is completely in shadow then. Pictured here is the traditional New Moon, the earliest visible waxing crescent, which signals the start of a new month in many lunar and lunisolar calendars. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been in orbit around the Moon since the summer of 2009. Its laser altimeter (LOLA) and camera (LROC) are recording the rugged, airless lunar terrain in exceptional detail, making it possible to visualize the Moon with unprecedented fidelity. This is especially evident in the long shadows cast near the terminator, or day-night line. The pummeled, craggy landscape thrown into high relief at the terminator would be impossible to recreate in the computer without global terrain maps like those from LRO. To download, learn more about this visualization, or to see what the Moon will look like at any hour in 2015, visit <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?4236" rel="nofollow">svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?4236</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>