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 […]

The atmospheric glow blankets the Earth’s horizon beneath the stars as the International Space Station orbited 261 miles above the Pacific. via NASA https://ift.tt/2XL46Dy

Famed in festival, story, and song the best known full moon is the Harvest Moon. For northern hemisphere dwellers that’s a traditional name of the full moon nearest the September equinox. Seen from Saunderstown, Rhode Island, planet Earth, this Harvest Moon left a broad streak of warm hues as it rose through a twilight sky […]

Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojan asteroids. via NASA https://ift.tt/3hY2k9t

When does the line between night and day become vertical? Today. Today is an equinox on planet Earth, a time of year when day and night are most nearly equal. At an equinox, the Earth’s terminator — the dividing line between day and night — becomes vertical and connects the north and south poles. The […]

Space Station Commander Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency conducts research using DNA sequencing. via NASA https://ift.tt/3lQMTkS

Is this giant orange ball about to roll down that tree-lined hill? No, because the giant orange ball is actually the Sun. Our Solar System’s central star was captured rising beyond a hill on Earth twelve days ago complete with a delightfully detailed foreground. The Sun’s disk showed five sunspots, quite a lot considering that […]

Acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite more than 20 years ago on Sept. 3, 2000, this image is of Greenland’s western coast. via NASA https://ift.tt/39kwvD9

Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and […]