Black and white photograph of a spherical telescope dome (bottom left corner) in the Atacama Desert. The hills of the Atacama stretch out to the horizon. In the nearly cloudless sky above, the distant Moon hangs overhead.

#PPOD: While these two sunlit spheres share similarities in their shape and in being illuminated by the same star, they are vastly different. The one farthest away from the camera, hiding behind the clouds, is our own Moon, the Earth's only natural satellite. 🧪 🔭

Photograph of NASA’s Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft atop a mobile launcher at Launch Complex 39B.

#PPOD: NASA’s Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft are seen atop a mobile launcher at Launch Complex 39B, Friday, March 27, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 🧪 👩‍🔬

Photograph taken from the cupola of the ISS, looking out at the space station, Canadarm, and some solar panels. Behind them is the cloud-covered surface of Earth against the black of space.

#PPOD: This photo was published on social media by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot:

"Day 041, orbit 0639 – Technology and nature, two of my passions, in one shot. Our beautiful planet Earth, the Canadarm2, and the sunglint on the ISS solar panels."

Credit: NASA/ESA – S. Adenot 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

#PPOD: Saturn’s icy rings glow in this infrared view from NASA’s JWST, released on March 25, 2026. The rings are extremely bright because they are made of highly reflective water ice. Saturn’s poles appear distinctly grey-green, indicating light emitting at wavelengths around 4.3 microns. 🧪 🔭

Satellite photo taken through the cloud cover over the Pacific Northwest, showing Seattle, Washington, and its surroundings. Seattle is in the center of the image with Bainbridge Island to its left. The water is deep blue. The land is lush and a vibrant green.

#PPOD: Seattle, Washington, is one of the cloudiest cities in the United States. But that infamous cloud cover is no match for the U.S.-Indian Earth satellite NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), which is designed to peer straight through clouds. 🧪

X-ray computed tomography scans of two rock fragments from asteroid Bennu, one above the other. The scanned portion are seen on the left two-thirds of each image in a fluorescent green with regular images on the right third. The top fragment shows swirling bumps. The lower fragment reveals flat planes and cracks.

#PPOD: These X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans, released on March 17, 2026, give us a glimpse inside asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples. One has an extensive, interconnected framework of curved cracks... 🧪 🔭

Hubble image of a fragmenting comet, labeled November 8, 2025. The comet's tail runs from the upper left corner to the comet at the center. Four distinct fragments can be seen -- one large one in the middle, one slightly smaller one above, and two smaller ones below.

Hubble image of a fragmenting comet, labeled November 9, 2025. The comet's tail runs from the upper left corner to the comet at the center. Four distinct fragments can be seen -- one large one in the middle, one slightly smaller one above, and two smaller ones below.

Hubble image of a fragmenting comet, labeled November 10, 2025. The comet's tail runs from the upper left corner to the comet at the center. Four distinct fragments can be seen -- one large one in the middle, one slightly smaller one above, and one smaller one below.

#PPOD: This series of images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of the fragmenting comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) was taken over the course of three consecutive days: Nov. 8, 9, and 10, 2025. This is the first time Hubble has witnessed a comet so early in the process of breaking up. 🧪 🔭

Photo of the Martian surface taken from space by ESA's Mars Express. Several large craters can be seen to the left and right, but the central feature is a ridge of rock down the middle. Flowing from that ridge, gravity waves can be seen in the clouds, forming parallel lines that fade off into a more uniform cloud cover. Smaller versions can been seen next to several of the smaller craters on the left as well.

#PPOD: Lee waves are atmospheric gravity waves that form when stable air flows over significant topographic obstacles like mountains, volcanoes, or large crater rims. As the wind is forced upward by the terrain, it undergoes adiabatic cooling, causing water vapor or carbon dioxide... 🧪 🔭

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, takes up the center of this image, shrouded in a yellowish haze. The plane of the rings can be seen behind the moon at its equator. Just below the rings, behind Titan and to the right, is a smaller moon called Dione, which is grey. Sunlight is coming from the left side. Saturn's yellow surface takes up the background, with ring shadows at the bottom.

#PPOD: Saturn's fourth-largest moon, Dione, can be seen through the haze of the planet's largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two, taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 22, 2011, with the planet and its rings in the background. The north polar hood is visible on Titan here... 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: When they form, impact craters dig up material from below the surface and throw it outwards into what geologists call an ejecta blanket. The fastest ejected material travels the furthest, so material from different depths can end up at different distances from the crater. 🧪 🔭

Early-morning sunlight illuminates the western wall (left side) of an unnamed lunar crater, casting deep shadows on the ground and within the crater.

#PPOD: Early-morning sunlight illuminates the western wall of this unnamed crater, casting deep shadows on the ground and within the crater. The image was taken on August 30, 2023, by LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera). LROC is a system of three cameras... 🧪 🔭

Satellite image of a small piece of Northern Ireland, centered on a hill called Slieve Gullion, which is labeled in the picture. The hill is brown while the surrounding fields are green. The town of Newry is up and to the right of the hill. Carlingford Lough runs up to the town from the bottom right.

#PPOD: Covered in heath, the solitary rocky hill known as Slieve Gullion rises above the farmland of Northern Ireland in this true-color Landsat image from May 24, 2001. According to Irish mythology, hunter and warrior Finn McCool bathed in the lake on Slieve Gullion and emerged decades older. 🧪

Infrared photo of Saturn, its rings, and three large moons, taken by NASA's JWST. On the left are the moons (top to bottom) Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys, all labeled. Additionally, various pieces of the rings are labeled (closest to Saturn outward): C ring, B ring, Cassini Division, A ring, Encke gap, and F ring. Text: Saturn, JWST NIRCam F323N, June 25, 2023.

#PPOD: On June 25, 2023, NASA’s JWST turned to the famed ringed world Saturn for its first observations of the planet. Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. 🧪 🔭

Wünsche allen auf der #PinkPonyOfDeath in Mainz allen erdenklichen Spaß! Ich hab gestern kurzfristig aussteigen müssen, weil ich mir irgend eine Erklärung eingefangen habe und Hals habe. Der Rachen schmerzt, aber die #PPOD zu verpassen, schmerzt mehr. Wir sehen uns zur #LoFiCon! 🤞

Close-up image of the floor of a crater on Mars, which reveals branched grey-blue rocks, smaller craters, and cracked, red sand.

#PPOD: In this image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the dark branched features in the floor of Antoniadi Crater look like giant ferns, or fern casts. 🧪 🔭

Astrophoto of the stars and gas surrounding the black hole at the center of the Milky Way (unseen). The gas clouds are shown in red and wrap about two thirds of the way around the center of the image, from upper left to the middle of the right side.

#PPOD: This stunning snapshot, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), reveals the stars and gas surrounding an invisible giant — a supermassive black hole, located some 27,000 light-years away, at the heart of our Milky Way. 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: The Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube traveled alongside NASA’s DART to capture the spacecraft’s collision with Dimorphos. In this LICIACube image, taken moments after impact in 2022, rocky debris can be seen fanning out from the smaller asteroid below its larger binary partner, Didymos. 🧪 🔭

Photograph of the moon during the 2026 total lunar eclipse, where the red appears red. Stars are also visible in the background.

#PPOD: The Moon appears red during a total lunar eclipse over New Orleans, home of NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, on March 3, 2026. This “blood moon” occurs during a total lunar eclipse, as Earth lines up between the Moon and the Sun. 🧪 🔭

Credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker

Pixelated image with four darker pixels circled in green, representing asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by JWST in infrared.

#PPOD: JWST successfully observed the extremely faint near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 (circled in green) on 18 February 2026 with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).

By analyzing the asteroid’s position relative to background stars whose locations are very well known, astronomers were... 🧪 🔭

Five panel close-up stitched view of a rock formation on the surface of Mars, as seen by the Curiosity rover. The formation is a light, sand color and is covered in pea-sized nodules.

#PPOD: From orbit, parts of Mars look like sprawling spiderwebs etched across the hillsides. These patterns may record a time when groundwater flowed through large fractures in the rock, leaving minerals behind. 🧪 🔭

A white, glowing egg-shaped object lies in the centre of the black-and-white image, on a dark, starry background. Glowing streaks spread upwards from the object. In the top left, a yellow arrow marked ‘Sun’ points straight down, and a blue arrow marked ‘Velocity’ points towards the 7 o’clock direction. In the bottom left, an inset shows the same object on a lighter grey starry background, filled with ragged-edged, concentric egg shapes gradiented black-to-white.

#PPOD: This striking image from the science camera on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS spewing dust and gas. The tiny nucleus of the comet (not visible) is surrounded by a bright halo of gas known as the coma. 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: NASA’s JWST provided the first vertical view of Uranus’s ionosphere in this image released on Feb. 19, 2026, revealing auroras shaped by its tilted magnetic field.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, P. Tiranti, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: Two heads are better than one in the latest images from NASA’s JWST, which reveal new details in a mysterious, little-studied nebula surrounding a dying star.

Nebula PMR 1 is a cloud of gas and dust that bears an uncanny resemblance to a brain in a transparent skull... 🧪 🔭

Satellite photo of the Namib Desert. The top two-thirds are covered in red, undulated sand dunes, leading down to a dry river bed, seen in bands of blue and white. Along the river bed, black dots of vegetation curl around the pointed tips of dunes.

#PPOD: Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite captured this image over the sand seas of the Namib Desert on 7 January 2012. The blue-and-white area is the dry riverbed of the Tsauchab. Black dots of vegetation are concentrated close to the river’s main route, while salt deposits appear bright white. 🧪

#PPOD: With Mars on the opposite side of the Sun at dawn, only six planets were visible in this year's planetary parade, unlike last year, when all seven were in view. The timing of this shot was critical for the fainter planets, and @joshduryphotomedia.bsky.social cross-referenced... 🧪 🔭

Infrared photograph of an annular eclipse of the Sun with the shadow of the Moon almost entirely covering the star and leaving a yellow ring of the corona around the edges. Text: PROBA2/SWAP 17.4nm, 2026-02-17 11:31:53.

#PPOD: The Moon passed directly between the Sun and Earth on 17 February 2026, creating an annular solar eclipse. Because the Moon was at a more distant point along its elliptical orbit around Earth, it didn't entirely cover the Sun and left a ‘ring of fire’. 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: This beautiful image shows a swirling region of bright clouds in the wake of a cyclonic storm in Jupiter's atmosphere. On the left, you can see the turbulent, blue-tinted pole, while on the right, the polar clouds give way to the pinker belts and zones of Jupiter’s mid-latitudes. 🧪 🔭

Four panels of a cometary coma taken in infrared. Upper left: Red represents dust surrounding the coma in an elliptical shape. Upper right: Blue represents water in a sphere around the coma and scattered across the image. Bottom left: Green represents organics - carbon containing molecules - also in a sphere around the coma and more densely scattered in the image. Bottom right: Gold represents carbon dioxide in a sphere around the coma that takes up nearly the entire image.

#PPOD: These observations by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) show the infrared light emitted by the dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide contained within comet 3I/ATLAS’s coma. 🧪 🔭

Orbiter image taken of the surface of Mars, showing several large Barchan dunes (nearly pointed arches) with the narrow ends to the right. The ground around the dunes is cracked and dry and seen in shades of tan and pale blue.

#PPOD: In this image, many sand dunes are visible. They have an elongated crescent form and are called "barchan dunes." They are formed by the continuous action of the wind, blowing in the same direction, giving this particular shape. 🧪 🔭

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The image shows a portion of the fretted and cratered northwest margin of Tempe Terra, Mars. The scarp of the highland/lowland boundary is illuminated by the light of dawn and runs from near the lower left up in an arc to the upper right. Traces of fog appear in the lower portion. The area covered by the image is about 55 kilometers across.

#PPOD: This image of Mars was captured by the Dawn spacecraft near its closest approach during its February 17, 2009, gravity assist flyby. The photo wasn't taken for scientific purposes, as Mars is already being studied well by orbiters in place. 🧪 🔭