Explore the Earth at night from space

Explore a gallery of space-based images and animations of Earth

This collection compiles shots of well-known locations, such as US national parks, and natural features, including aurora borealis and fall foliage, to provide a high-level view of Earth's surface.

Explore the night's sky from anywhere

Stellarium Web is a planetarium running in your web browser. It shows a realistic star map, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Using its interface, you can click on object's visible at your location on the Earth...

Explore Earth's atmosphere and what its layers contain in this interactive adventure

In this interactive, users can move from Earth's surface up through its atmosphere, exploring the natural phenomena found in each layer, including atmospheric rivers, auroras, and meteor showers. Artificial structures such as weather balloons and the International Space Station can also be found on the adventure.

A real-time 3D-explorer of the solar system

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System allows you to track all kinds of objects in space in real time, from observatories like the James Webb Telescope to all manner of comets and asteroids. Zoom in and out, read up on space missions, and see the solar system from a totally new angle with this incredible interactive site. Jump in here.

Explore the lunar surface, orbit, and rocks with NASA's moon interactives

This webpage offers tools to explore the moon digitally, including MoonTrek, a 3D lunar surface explorer, and the Daily Moon Guide, an interactive map for tracking the moon each day of the year.

Watch a 4K time-lapse of auroras seen from the International Space Station

The video was created from 711 photos taken by European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli on Sept. 15, 2017, as part of the Vitality, Innovation, Technology, and Ability mission.

Create digital maps of Earth with custom sketches and labels

In this interactive, users can apply layers to various base maps to display natural and human features, including geological activity, biomes, ocean currents, population densities, and light pollution. Custom legends, markers, and drawings can be used to highlight prominent features.

See South Korea's nighttime light usage, far surpassing North Korea's

You can tell a lot about a place by looking at satellite imagery of the earth at night. Economists use such images to study poverty and inequality, especially about secretive countries where it can be difficult to get information any other way. An image from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows the difference in electrification between North and South Korea (and the lights illuminating the DMZ are visible from space).

Grasp the earth's orbit around the sun with this interactive

See why seasons exist with this interactive simulator. Toggle between different views of the earth in relation to the sun and watch as the earth's axis causes the sun to shine at different angles throughout the year, causing the weather to fluctuate and more. This simulator clarifies a process many take for granted.

Watch a livestream of Earth from the International Space Station

The feed is made possible by the SpaceTV-1 camera system, which is live over 20 hours a day. Video replays are shown during routine loss of signal communications with the inter-satellite link relaying the video data.

Watch a time-lapse from space of photosynthesis across Earth

Using NASA satellite imagery, carbon absorption can be tracked and serves as a proxy for photosynthetic activity on land and in the oceans. Over the course of a year, seasonal changes can be observed as plants become dormant in the fall and active again in the spring.

Take a virtual journey through the world's deserts with Google Earth and BBC

Explore some of the world’s deserts in this “Natural Treasures” collaboration between Google Earth and BBC Earth. Visit the Namib Desert in Namibia where the simplest strategy to escape the heat is to emerge only in the cool of the night....

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

See a lunar eclipse share the night sky with the Milky Way

Photos taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in March 2025 captured a blood moon and the Milky Way galaxy within the same field of view. The moon appears red from the bluer parts of its reflected sunlight being scattered by Earth's atmosphere.

Visualize your city’s annual daylight map

Type in your town or region and see sunrise and sunset for each day of the year. A separate view shows the number of hours of day versus night for each day. Search a city far north like Oslo, Norway, and compare its graphs to one near the equator (like Singapore).

Explore every meteor shower from space

Every year, Earth travels through a series of meteor showers—the Perseids in August, the Lyrids in April—and a fraction of them light up the sky as they hit the atmosphere. Explore each group of meteors with this fascinating, year-round interactive.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

The overview effect is a cognitive shift experienced when viewing Earth from space

Astronauts regularly report profound realizations after seeing Earth from space for the first time, sometimes prompting significant philosophical changes, including a greater awareness of the interconnectedness and fragility of life.

View the transparency of Earth's atmosphere and how it blocks most forms of light

The gases that make up Earth's atmosphere block most harmful forms of electromagnetic radiation from reaching the planet's surface, except for some ultraviolet light. Their transparency to radio waves means this form of light can reach Earth's surface, which is why most radio telescopes are ground-based rather than space-based.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Experimenting with space-time

Einstein's theory of general relativity—that mass literally bends space and time—can be difficult for the human brain to imagine. This interactive resource lets you create celestial objects, imagine their effect on space-time, and see how they interact with each other (best viewed on desktop).

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

See Mount Vesuvius from space

Mount Vesuvius is one of the few active volcanos on Europe's mainland. See it from space in this photo from NASA's Earth Observatory. This natural-color image was taken on January 2, 2022, during a break in cloud coverage.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

What did Earth look like when dinosaurs roamed?

The face of the Earth isn’t remotely the same as when the dinosaurs ruled the roost. The passing of millions of years, plate tectonics, and a spotty track record with asteroid collisions have changed the planet’s surface. Use this interactive globe to see what the Earth looked like millions of years ago.

Visualizing the history of Saturn and its rings

Every 13 to 16 years, Saturn's rings become far less visible because its plane becomes exactly even with Earth's. This visual-rich essay explores the history of humanity's perception of Saturn, from Galileo's first sighting (and dubbing the rings "ears") to the idea that the rings won't last more than a few hundred millions years more. Explore this fascinating planet here.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Visualize the size of countries on the sun and other planets

Pluto is roughly the size of Australia. What about Namibia and Nepal? How small would North America appear on the sun? Compare the relative size of continents and countries with this easy-to-use interactive.

An exoplanet detection method involves measuring a host star's auroras

Astronomers have reported indirectly identifying a planet by observing its debris interacting with the magnetic field of the star it orbits. The interaction is a larger-scale version of the auroras observed on Jupiter, which are produced when material released by its moon, Io, interacts with the gas giant's magnetic field.

Watch David Attenborough’s documentary on bioluminescent creatures

Sea creatures can make their bodies glow to camouflage themselves by mimicking the appearance of the night sky as seen from underwater. Species without this ability can form a symbiotic relationship with bioluminescent bacteria or eat other organisms with relevant biochemicals.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.