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Explanation: What do auroras look like from above? Behold! From the ground, auroras dance high above clouds, frequently causing spectacular displays. From space, they look a bit different. As the International Space Station (ISS) circles the Earth every 90 minutes, it sometimes sees auroras below that are active on the night side. A one-hour time-lapse video showing auroras from above was captured about two weeks ago from the orbiting ISS. The ISS -- and all objects in low Earth orbit -- will pass well above green auroras but just a bit above red glowing auroras. The auroras' electron and proton...

A detailed view of Halley's Comet in the Bayeux Tapestry. Image credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain) ============================================================================ The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous textile works in the world, and for the first time in more than 900 years it has returned to England to be exhibited at the British Museum. The work of art depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings of 1066 and the Norman conquest of England. It also depicts an important astronomical event, the return of Halley’s comet. Although not in the right place. First of all, despite...

Satellites don't always stay in orbit. As they get closer to Earth, atmospheric drag can pull them lower and lower until they burn up, with solar activity speeding up the process. NASA's Swift Space Observatory is facing that fate -- its orbit is decaying, and if left alone, it will be destroyed in a matter of months. But in a first-of-its-kind mission, Katalyst Space, a startup, is teaming up with NASA to try and rescue Swift using the company's newly developed robotic spacecraft, LINK. "This is a historic mission, you know, some would call it the first of its kind,...

NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. NASA hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions. A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once it takes off from an atoll in the Pacific’s Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday. Scanning...

"A robotic spacecraft built in nine months by Arizona-based startup Katalyst Space Technologies is set to launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on a first-of-its-kind mission to grab NASA's sinking Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and push it back to a safe orbit — the first time any commercial vehicle has attempted to capture an operational government satellite that was never designed to be serviced. "

Explanation: What's happening to galaxy NGC 474? The multiple layers of emission appear strangely complex given the relatively featureless appearance of the elliptical galaxy in less deep images. The cause of the shells is a topic of research, but they are possibly tidal tails related to debris left over from absorbing numerous small galaxies in the past billion years. Alternatively, the shells may be like ripples in a pond, where the ongoing collision with the spiral galaxy just to the right of NGC 474 is causing density waves to ripple through the galactic giant. Regardless of the actual cause, the...

Explanation: Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Direct your gaze through this gap with binoculars or a small telescope and you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24's luminous stars stretch across this gorgeous interstellar scene. Spanning over...

Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, and it's not hard to see why. Image credit: Resul Muslu/Shutterstock.com ============================================================================ Did a cataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago spark the rise of civilization? That's the explosive claim behind a study of carvings at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, which researchers say encode not just a catastrophic comet strike, but the world's oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved pillar at the site, the study authors propose...

ALL VIDEOS AT LINK............ Screenshot from Pentagon UFO Files The Pentagon released a fourth batch of files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) on Friday, with 40 new declassified files. President Trump previously directed the Department of War and other agencies to begin the process of identifying and declassifying government files related to UAP and extraterrestrial life in the interest of total transparency. The latest batch of files details the bizarre sightings, with unclassified reports from the military and various agencies, including one where a US military aviator describes seeing an object “unlike anything I had seen” in 28 years of...

Explanation: The Mare Orientale, Latin for Eastern Sea, is one of the most striking large scale lunar features. The youngest of the large lunar impact basins it's very difficult to see from an earthbound perspective. Still, captured on July 7 during a period of favorable tilt, or libration of the lunar nearside, the Eastern Sea can be found at the upper right in this sharp telescopic view. In the image, the large lunar mare is extremely foreshortened and stretches along the Moon's western edge. Formed by the impact of an asteroid over 3 billion years ago and nearly 1000 kilometers...

NASA's chief administrator confirmed that the space agency has taken images of objects which can only be described as UFOs. Jared Isaacman, who took the helm in December, said real imagery captured from space could not be explained away as a comet or other natural phenomenon. While he stopped short of calling it proof of alien life, he was confident that the ultimate conclusion would be that the universe is full of extraterrestrial life, which humans have not yet discovered. The NASA administrator told podcast host Jack Gordon: 'We have captured imagery, and this is what President Trump is very...

Explanation: This Cosmic Bat wishes you a happy Summerween! This mid-year celebration of Halloween transcends hemispheres, even though summer in the Northern hemisphere is winter in the South. Contrary to its eery aura, the Cosmic Bat Nebula (LDN 43), not to be confused with the Bat Nebula (NGC 6995), is a vibrant birthplace for stars. A bit of young starlight peeks through the dense clouds of gas and dust that make up the Cosmic Bat’s 12 lightyear wingspan. The ultraviolet light from the young stars energizes the nebula’s hydrogen gas, causing it to glow an ominous red. The jet of...

The near-Earth Object 2009 FD, as seen by the ESO's Very Large Telescope (Image Credit: ESO) Every year, more than 5,000 tons of material with cosmic origins lands on Earth’s surface, with as much as 15,000 tons of this “space dust” making its way into the atmosphere but vaporizing during reentry. The resulting rain of micrometeorites that reaches our planet consists mostly of tiny objects anywhere from 30 to 200 micrometers in size, based on past studies. But what are the origins of these large volumes of material that accumulate over time as they shower the Earth throughout the year?...

Explanation: Sometimes we can all use a little help from a friend. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory needs a boost to stay in orbit after almost 22 years of service. This video shows an artist's visualization of the Swift Boost Mission: The Katalyst's LINK spacecraft was launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3 and it is now en route to rendezvous with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit over the course of the next several months. This type of maneuver has never been attempted before. If successful, it will be the technology demonstration of...

If they were visible to the naked eye, these structures would be huge in the sky. Image Credit: UCLan/Stellarium ========================================================================= The cosmological principle states that, on the largest scales, the universe is uniform and isotropic. In other words, it should look broadly the same no matter where you are or which direction you look. You would not expect to find a single enormous structure in one particular region of the sky. Finding two in relatively close proximity is even more surprising. Five years ago, researchers discovered the Giant Arc, a vast crescent of galaxies stretching 3.3 billion light years across...

The Chinese Tianwen-2 mission has captured the first imagery of a space object that some astronomers are calling Earth’s “quasi-moon.” The object was captured in images released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), after its Tianwen-2 spacecraft reached the tiny asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. Initially discovered in 2016, the asteroid became the target of a sample return mission launched by China on 28 May 2025. Officially the CNSA’s second mission under its Planetary Exploration of China Program, Tianwen-2 aims to return close to 100 grams of samples from the surface of the small object. Earth’s Mysterious Quasi-Moons Quasi-moons are the...

Image Credit & Copyright: Rod Prazeres Explanation: Where can you find dragons fighting in the night sky? In the southern constellation of the Altar: Ara. The dragons are, of course, actually made of suggestively shaped gas and dust. The celestial home of the mythological battling beasts is cataloged as NGC 6188 and located about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud. Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed there only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation....

Explanation: What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is on the left and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy so that from inside, it appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The less commonly seen band, on the right, is zodiacal light -- sunlight reflected from dust orbiting the Sun in our Solar System. Zodiacal light is brightest near the Sun and so is best seen just before sunrise or just after sunset. On some...

Explanation: What has happened to Saturn's moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as snow. To help better understand this unusually tinted moon, in 2007 NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers. Pictured here, from about 75,000 kilometers out, is the hemisphere of Iapetus that is always trailing. A large impact crater seen in the south spans 500 kilometers and appears superposed on an older crater of similar size. The dark material is seen increasingly coating the easternmost part of Iapetus, darkening craters...

Explanation: On July 4th, 1997, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft bounced like a giant beach ball at least 15 times before it came to rest on the surface of Mars at 10:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time. After its then novel airbag-assisted landing sequence was completed, Pathfinder transmitted this color mosaic to mission operators on Earth. In the scene from another world, the Mars Sojourner robot rover is visible in the foreground, crouched on top of the unfolded Pathfinder. About the size of a large house cat, the six-wheeled,...