Expedition 67 flight engineers Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins are all smiles in this Sept. 12, 2022, image from the International Space Station cupola. via NASA https://ift.tt/VTSwrEp

A mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth’s sky. In the image, composed with 30 hours of narrowband image data, it spans nearly three full moons toward the royal constellation Cepheus. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula’s bipolar shape is distinguished […]

The Sun released an X1 solar flare, captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on Oct. 2, 2022. via NASA https://ift.tt/acgmrsR

What dark structures arise within the Pelican Nebula? On the whole, the nebula appears like a bird (a pelican) and is seen toward the constellation of a different bird: Cygnus, a Swan. But inside, the Pelican Nebula is a place lit up by new stars and befouled by dark dust. Smoke-sized dust grains start as […]

An analemma is that figure-8 curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun at the same time each day for one year. But the trick to imaging an analemma of the Moon is to wait bit longer. On average the Moon returns to the same position in the sky about 50 minutes […]

Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun resulted in several rewarding nights of auroras back in 2014 December, near the peak of the last 11-year solar cycle. The featured image captured dramatic auroras stretching across a sky near the town of Yellowknife in northern Canada. The auroras were so bright that […]

Heading for its closest approach to the Sun or perihelion on December 20, comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) remains a sight for telescopic observers as it sweeps through planet Earth’s southern hemisphere skies. First time visitor from the remote Oort cloud this comet PanSTARRS sports a greenish coma and whitish dust tail about half a degree […]

In this 20-second exposure from Oct. 5, 2022, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). via NASA https://ift.tt/oKLgTvm

At opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth’s sky, late last month Jupiter is also approaching perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in its elliptical orbit, early next year. That makes Jupiter exceptionally close to our fair planet, currently resulting in excellent views of the Solar System’s ruling gas giant. On September 27, this sharp […]

Astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor installs samples for the Microgravity Investigation of Cement Solidification (MICS) experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in this image from Nov. 27, 2018. via NASA https://ift.tt/y3lAnce