Blue Planet

Heat generated in the Sun's core is released in towers of hot electrified gas, called plasma, that break the surface. Looping magnetic fields break the surface too. When they snap, they can release powerful high-speed waves of gas... a billion tons of plasma racing out into space.

Natural and human-caused change captured in these extraordinary image sequences covering years and decades of time.

The world is changing before our eyes. See Earth in transition, as viewed from space, with images courtesy of the Landsat mission and NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. Feel free to cry over what's lost as well as what's gained. These images provide a powerful snapshot of a planet that's rapidly being shaped by both natural and human events.

Earth's continents continue to evolve, sowly but surely. See how plate tectonics over the next 200 million years will completely remake the surface of our planet.

We've all seen pictures of Earth from space, but have we really taken the time to appreciate what our planet looks like against the starscapes of the Milky Way galaxy?

NASA's Operation IceBridge has launched its Antarctic 2012 campaign, flying high-priority missions measuring polar ice from a base of operations at the tip of Patagonia on the Strait of Magellan. They have even made a return visit to the Pine Island Glacier, the site of last year's discovery of a massive rift in the ice.

From ESO comes this a postcard from the edge of space: the hills of the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the night sky is like nowhere on the planet.

A big surprise from the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. It detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Amazing star trail timelapse sequences.

The glorious ebb and flow of Earth's environmental systems captured in a series of ground breaking computer simulations and satellite data visualizations.

NASA observations show the dynamism of Greenland's ice sheet in the changing elevation of its surface. This recent analysis is based on satellite and radar observations.

As night falls, astronomers at Chile's La Silla observatory are just starting their observations. Suddenly, a strange red flash of light appears on the horizon. An alert photographer is there to take a closer look! From ESO Cast.