Project scientist Mark Clampin is reflected in the flight mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope during testing at the Marshall Space Flight Center. via NASA https://ift.tt/3ohzvsF

Have you ever seen a gigantic jet? They are extremely rare but tremendously powerful. Gigantic jets are a type of lightning discharge documented only this century that occur between some thunderstorms and the Earth’s ionosphere high above them. Pictured above is the middle and top of one such jet caught last week by a lightning […]

The engine on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket fires to launch the Landsat 9 satellite on a mission to observe Earth on Monday, Sept. 27, 2021. via NASA https://ift.tt/3EXQ5Uk

Have you ever experienced a meteor shower? To help capture the wonder, a video was taken during the peak of the recent Perseid meteor shower above the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, India, high up in the Himalayan mountains. Night descends as the video begins, with the central plane of our Milky Way Galaxy approaching […]

On Monday, Sept. 27, 2021, at 2:12 ET a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with the Landsat 9 satellite is slated to lift off on a mission to observe Earth. via NASA https://ift.tt/3EOwaXQ

Here is one of the most famous pictures from the Moon — but digitally reversed. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969 and soon thereafter many pictures were taken, including an iconic picture of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong. The original image captured not only the magnificent desolation of an unfamiliar world, but […]

How did a round star create this square nebula? No one is quite sure. The round star, known as MWC 922 and possibly part of a multiple star system, appears at the center of the Red Square Nebula. The featured image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar in California, and the […]

To the eye, this cosmic composition nicely balances the Bubble Nebula at the right with open star cluster M52. The pair would be lopsided on other scales, though. Embedded in a complex of interstellar dust and gas and blown by the winds from a single, massive O-type star, the Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC […]

On the night 175 years ago on Sept. 23-24, 1846, astronomers discovered Neptune, the eighth planet orbiting our Sun. via NASA https://ift.tt/2ZuQYDF

This year an outburst of Perseid meteors surprised skywatchers. The reliable meteor shower’s peak was predicted for the night of August 12/13. But persistent visual observers in North America were deluged with a startling Perseid shower outburst a day later, with reports of multiple meteors per minute and sometimes per second in the early hours […]