megapixels

Latest in megapixels

Two ultrasounds of fetal and maternal placental tissues

Placentas are full of secrets. These researchers want to unlock them.

small delicate, partially translucent mushrooms growing on a log

This South Pacific island could help us understand how fungi evolve

By Lauren J. Young

a yellow wheeled robot approaches a colony of penguins in the snow

The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot

By Lauren J. Young

a kilonova, a cosmic event between two neutron stars showing the collision in the middle and purple blue emissions coming off of it

This kilonova could have created the first-ever extragalactic ‘sonic boom’

By Maggie Galloway

half of a circle with concentric rings of brown, gold, and amber radiating outwards

These sophisticated bacteria communities assemble in tie-dye formation

By Maggie Galloway

Venus as a white dome in the background, a camera in the left foreground, in black and white.

A probe destined for Mercury ended up rubbernecking Venus

By Lauren Leffer

Mars' surface, in high-resolution and color, as captured by the Hazcams on NASA's Perseverance rover.

See Mars through Perseverance’s eyes

This enormous spike of lightning was spotted from the International Space Station.

International Space Station

Rare ‘blue jet’ lightning spotted and photographed from space

By Erin Fennessy

A lunar rainbow or moonbow stretching over the mountains at night in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

In perfect conditions, rainbows can come alive at night

By Purbita Saha

A close-up view of Tithonium Chasma, which is feature of Valles Marineris, the solar system's largest canyon.

Peer inside the solar system’s largest canyon

By Jessica Boddy

This image of Caldwell 45, captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, provides a larger view, showing more of the galaxy. The bluish color swirling around the galaxy’s center indicates the presence of young, hot stars in Caldwell 45’s spiral arms.

Space Telescope

Celestial objects you can spot from your backyard

By Jessica Boddy

A reconstruction of the sunspot captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on January 28th, 2020. The original image was taken in the wavelength of 530 nanometers - in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum–. Researchers modified it to show up red and orange to the naked eye

Images like this one could help reveal the Sun’s inner workings

By María Paula Rubiano A.

A bigfin squid floating in the water

The strange and ethereal bigfin squid just showed up off the coast of Australia

By Rachael Zisk

Davis Meltzer’s A Space Station

11 of NASA’s most out-of-this-world illustrations

By Sara Kiley Watson

Dhritiman Mukherjee captured this gharial daddy giving over 100 of his offspring a ride on his back.

This crocodile daddy giving 100 babies a ride puts your carpool to shame

By María Paula Rubiano A.

This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. A unique and exciting detail of Hubble’s snapshot appears at mid-northern latitudes as a bright, white, stretched-out storm traveling around the planet at 350 mph. Hubble shows that the Great Red Spot, rolling counterclockwise in the planet’s southern hemisphere, is plowing into the clouds ahead of it, forming a cascade of white and beige ribbons. Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, thought to hold potential ingredients for life, is visible to the left of the gas giant.

Crisp Hubble snapshot shows powerful new Jupiter storms

By María Paula Rubiano A.

The photo was taken by NASA’s camera EPIC, which takes pictures of the planet every two hour from NOAA’s satellite DSCOVR. You can spot the plume of wildfire smoke off the west coast of the United States.

West Coast wildfire smoke is visible from outer space

By María Paula Rubiano A.

Beetle with camera on back.

Scientists strapped tiny cameras to beetles to get a bug’s-eye view of the world

By Sara Kiley Watson

The ultra-black Pacific black dragon (Idiacanthus antrostomus), the second-blackest fish studied by the research team.

These ultra-black fish camouflage with the darkness of the deep sea

This image shows the disc around the young AB Aurigae star, where ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has spotted signs of planet birth.

This ominous image shows the birth of a planet

By Candice Wang