#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. This image, captured by the L-band SAR instrument on the NISAR mission on Nov. 10, 2025, shows Seattle at the center, with Bainbridge Island to the left. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
#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, whereas the other has sparse, straight, flat fractures. Credit: NASA/Scott Eckley
#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. Credit: NASA, ESA, Dennis Bodewits (AU); Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
#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 CO2 to condense into visible, ripple-like clouds on the downwind (lee) side. They often appear as "cloud trains" or straight, parallel lines perpendicular to the wind direction. Credit: ESA's Mars Express/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
#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, appearing as a detached layer at the top of the moon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
#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.
This HiRISE image shows a pedestal crater in Arcadia Planitia, Mars, with material of varying brightness and color at different distances from the crater.
#PPOD: This image from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission shows us the maritime traffic passing through the Øresund Strait in 2025. The 118-km-long Øresund Strait (also known as the Sound) separates Denmark to the west from Sweden to the east and links the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, which makes it one of the busiest waterways in the world.
In this image, ships appear as bright, sparkly dots in the dark waters of the strait.
#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 and one of the seven instruments aboard NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission, which launched in June 2009 and continues in orbit around the Moon. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Intuitive Machines
#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. However, we don’t need a dip in the lake to move through time. A glance at the landscape reveals millions of years of history.
#PPOD: On June 25, 2023, NASA’s JWST turned to the famed ringed world Saturn for its first near-infrared 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. However, the icy rings remain relatively bright, resulting in Saturn's unusual appearance in the JWST image.
SETI Institute