Copyright: Aygen Erkaslan Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka are the bright bluish stars from east to west (upper right to lower left) along the diagonal in this cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie from 700 to 2,000 […]
Copyright: Xinran Li & Houbo Zhao Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon. Normally too faint to see, dark dust is best known for blocking visible light from stars and galaxies behind it. In this 11.4-hour exposure, however, the dust is […]
What has happened to Comet Lemmon’s tail? The answer is blowing in the wind — the wind from the Sun in this case. This continuous outflow of charged particles from the Sun has been quite variable of late, as the Sun emits bursts of energy, CMEs, that push out and deflect charged particles emitted by […]
If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn’s “appendages” disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn’s unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on rings will appear to disappear. This is because Saturn’s rings are confined to […]
Copyright: Piotr Czerski This magnificent extragalactic skyscape looks toward the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. It also accomplishes a Messier catalog trifecta by including Andromeda, cataloged as Messier 31 (M31), along with Messier 32 (M32), and Messier 110 (M110) in the same telescopic field of view. In this frame, […]
Copyright: Samil Cabrera Northern lights have come to Florida skies. In fact, the brilliant streak of a Northern Taurid meteor flashes through the starry night sky above the beach in this sea and skyscape, captured from Shired Island, Florida on November 11. Meteors from the annual Northern Taurid meteor shower are expected this time of […]
Copyright: Brian Meyers Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova […]
Copyright: Brian Meyers Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova […]
Copyright: Victor Sabet & Julien De Winter Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. Besides Comet SWAN25B and Comet ATLAS, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with binoculars and on long camera exposures. Comet Lemmon was discovered early this year and is still headed into the inner […]
Copyright: Luc Perrot (TWAN) It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not. Comets C/2025 K1 ATLAS (left) and C/2025 R2 SWAN (right) appeared near each other by chance last week in the featured image taken from France’s Reunion Island in the southern Indian Ocean. Fainter Comet ATLAS is approaching our Sun […]
What is creating these unusual spots? Light-colored spots on Martian rocks, each surrounded by a dark border, were discovered last year by NASA’s Perseverance Rover currently exploring Mars. Dubbed leopard spots because of their seemingly similarity to markings on famous Earth-bound predators, these curious patterns are being studied with the possibility they were created by […]
Copyright: Pascal Fouquet On the morning of September 24 a rocket crosses the bright solar disk in this long range telescopic snapshot captured from Orlando, Florida. That’s about 50 miles north of its Kennedy Space Center launch site. This rocket carried three new space weather missions to space. Signals have now been successfully acquired from […]
Copyright: Adam Block A new visitor to the inner Solar System, comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) sports a long ion tail extending diagonally across this almost 7 degree wide telescopic field of view recorded on September 21. A fainter fellow comet also making its inner Solar System debut, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), can be spotted above and […]
Copyright: Jin Wang This year Saturn was at opposition on September 21, opposite the Sun in planet Earth’s sky. At its closest to Earth, Saturn was also at its brightest of the year, rising as the Sun set and shining above the horizon all night long among the fainter stars of the constellation Pisces. In […]
It was the strongest gravitational wave signal yet measured — what did it show? GW250114 was detected by both arms of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington and Louisiana USA earlier this year. Analysis showed that the event was created when two black holes, each of mass around 33 times the mass of […]
