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Explanation: Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze across the western Ocean of Storms on the surface of the Moon. The 3D anaglyph shows Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in November of 1969. Surveyor 3 had landed at the site on the inside slope of a small crater about 2 1/2 years earlier in April of 1967. Visible on the horizon beyond the far crater wall, Apollo 12's Lunar Module Intrepid touched down less than 200 meters (650 feet) away, easy moonwalking distance from the robotic Surveyor spacecraft. This stereo image was carefully created from...

SpaceX booster explodes (Screenshot via @CSI_Starbase on X) ===================================================================== SpaceX’s Starship booster exploded during a test flight at Starbase, Texas, after the company aborted an attempt to catch it during a test flight. The massive Starship rocket launched successfully, but the booster failed to return to the tower and instead went into the ocean. The explosion was reportedly intentional. Via @CSI_Starbase on X: VIDEO AT LINK.................. Per Space.com: Flight 15 lifted off from SpaceX‘s Starbase facility here in South Texas at 5:47 p.m. ET (2247 GMT; 4:47 p.m. local Texas time). The towering Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage...

Explanation: The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found at the center of this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young stars in the disk of our...

A crucial test this week could bring SpaceX one step closer to revolutionizing spaceflight — or cast new uncertainty on the company’s boldest ambitions. SpaceX will for the first time attempt to bring every part of its massive Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, back to dry land — intact — during a mission set to launch on Friday between 5:45 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. ET. The aim is to develop a fully reusable launch system, a goal the company has deemed the “holy grail” of rocketry because it would eliminate the need to throw away multimillion-dollar rocket parts...

Explanation: Not all those who wander are lost. A night sky example is that planets wander, and in fact the very word "planet" comes from "wandering star" in Greek. As planets shift relative to fixed stars, they may appear from our perspective to get closer to other astronomical objects. Such meetings are called conjunctions. They don't happen by chance, but follow the precise laws of celestial mechanics. This peaceful image, captured in Poland, shows the crescent Moon above the Tatra Mountains, and bright Venus close by, a little lower in the horizon. The bright star to the left of Venus...

🚨 WOW! A mysterious object the size of a SCHOOL BUS may be hurtling toward Earth, and scientists aren't sure it's even an asteroid. It's reportedly been moving abnormally for the past few years and is EVEN ACCELERATING. One Harvard professor says it could be a MAN-MADE SPACECRAFT launched by the Soviet Union in 1988. A lost Soviet probe coming home almost 40 years later. You can't make this up. The good news is NASA is finally run by someone serious. Jared Isaacman is set to weigh in.— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) November 12, 2026SOURCE: https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2120876132836766189

A mysterious object once believed to be a simple space rock passing Earth is accelerating, and scientists cannot explain why. A new study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology has determined that 1998 KY26, a suspected near-Earth asteroid, is speeding up in a way that the gravity of the sun and planets cannot account for. Simply put, the alleged space rock has something else powering it as it moves around our solar system. Near-Earth objects are rocky space bodies that orbit the sun and sometimes come relatively close to Earth. This object is roughly 36 feet in length,...

Explanation: Don’t judge a galaxy by its size. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 100,000 light years across. This huge expanse of space contains hundreds of billions of stars! The smallest galaxies, called dwarf galaxies, are about 1/10th the size of the Milky Way and only contain a few billion stars. They are also the most common type of galaxy in the whole universe. Today’s image shows one such dwarf galaxy, NGC 4449, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 4449 and similar dwarf galaxies are missing more oxygen than models predict. This suggests their stellar winds and...

Explanation: Sometimes Saturn disappears. It doesn't really go away, of course -- it just disappears from our view when Earth's Moon moves in front. Such a Saturnian eclipse, more formally called an occultation, was visible in early 2025 along a small swath of Earth -- from Greenland through central Europe and into northern Africa. The featured image is a digital fusion of three images, the first of just Saturn before it disappeared, and then two more of the Moon with different exposure lengths. The images were taken from Sardinia, Italy, after sunset. The bright dot near Saturn is not a...

Explanation: Does the blue nebula look like the head of a witch? The nebula is known popularly as the Witch Head Nebula because, it is said, the nebula's shape resembles a Halloween-style caricature of a witch's head. Exactly how, though, can be a topic of imaginative speculation. What is clear is that IC 2118 is about 50 light-years across and made of gas and dust that points to -- because it has been partly eroded by -- the nearby star Rigel. One of the brighter stars in the constellation Orion, Rigel lies just below the center of the featured image....

Explanation: The sky glows with soft pinkish colors of fading twilight in this serendipitous mountaintop vista. Taken in subfreezing temperatures, the thoughtfully composed photo shows snowy, rugged peaks seen from a mountain pass on 2017 November 14. Below lies the village of La Villa, Alta Badia in Italy's Dolomite Alps. Above the nestled village lights, the constellation Ursa Major hangs over the northern horizon. But most stunning is the intense fireball meteor. It was captured during the camera's exposure by chance as it flashed east to west across the northern horizon, under Ursa Major's familiar Big Dipper asterism. Sightings of...

Explanation: De Gerlache-Kocher massif looms on the visible horizon in this close-up of the edge of the Moon. The mountainous formation rises about 4 kilometers above its surroundings and is located very close to the lunar south pole. Boasting permanently shadowed crater floors that likely contain deposits of water ice and peaks that receive almost continuous sunlight for solar power generation, the south polar region is considered a prime location for the first human settlement on the Moon. In fact, De Gerlache-Kocher massif itself has been considered as a potential landing site for future crewed Artemis missions to the Moon....

Explanation: It is time to say goodbye to NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. After nearly 22 years of service, the satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere on November 4 at 7:39 EST over the North Sumatra region of Indonesia. The featured image is a mosaic created in 2018 using some of the first million images captured by the satellite's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope. Swift had a combination of instruments, including an X-ray telescope and a gamma-ray telescope, that worked together to enable humanity to study, in unprecedented detail, the fastest and most energetic explosions in the universe. The most recent solar maximum accelerated the...

Radio images suggest a link between Betelgeuse’s changing outline and its companion’s expected orbit, offering clues to how a smaller star may influence a giant’s later life. Betelgeuse, the bright red supergiant marking Orion’s shoulder, may have another star stirring its atmosphere from within. Its recently identified companion, Siwarha, is thought to orbit at a distance of only about twice the giant’s radius. New radio observations suggest that this close neighbor is leaving a visible mark on the shape of Betelgeuse’s outer gas, even though the companion itself is too faint to appear in those observations. Researchers proposed Siwarha’s existence...

Explanation: One of our Solar System's most tantalizing worlds, Enceladus is backlit by the Sun in this Cassini spacecraft image from November 1, 2009. The dramatic illumination reveals the plumes that continuously spew into space from the south pole of Saturn's 500 kilometer diameter moon. Discovered by Cassini in 2005, the icy plumes are likely connected to an ocean beneath the ice shell of Enceladus. They supply material directly to Saturn's outer, tenuous E ring and make the surface of Enceladus as reflective as snow. Across the scene, Saturn's icy rings scatter sunlight toward Cassini's cameras. Beyond the rings (lower...

Explanation: “I see” IC 342, the Hidden Galaxy! Today’s image peers through the plane of the Milky Way, through all its gas, dust and stars, to unveil this spiral galaxy. IC 342 (or Caldwell 5) is one of the brightest members of the IC 342/Maffei group of galaxies. Located about 10 million light years away, this group is quite close to the Local Group that includes our Milky Way. Inaccurate accounting of the crowded and dusty Milky Way foreground has led to misunderstandings in IC 342’s history, including the theory that the galaxy was ejected from the Local Group. IC...

Explanation: Did this meteor come from that comet? Probably not. Although many meteors do originate from comets, there are thousands of comets that have visited the inner Solar System recently, and matching meteors to them can be tricky. And to be clear, the pictured comet is far behind the streaking meteor. Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) was captured from Hautacam, France in April when the giant space iceberg sported impressive ion (blue) and dust tails. Sand-sized rocky debris that enters Earth’s atmosphere typically appears as meteors, while the colorful foreground streak here may indicate a complicated composition. This month three notable...

Explanation: What’s causing this unusually long cloud on Mars? Known as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC) and first recorded by NASA’s Viking Orbiter 2 in 1977, the strange cloud has been imaged in greater detail more recently by ESA’s robotic Mars Express spacecraft. The featured image is from 2018. The cloud forms only during spring and summer seasons and then only during morning hours. Made of water-ice, the most familiar process that causes cloud crystals to form around bits of dust would fail due to the thinness and lack of dust high in the Martian atmosphere. Leading speculation holds...

Explanation: What color is the Moon? It depends on the night -- and the time. Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon on Earth, documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy. A red- or yellow-colored moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust. A blue-colored moon is...

NASA’s Swift Observatory is expected to plunge back to Earth next week after a failed rescue effort left the aging telescope drifting progressively lower. The U.S. Space Force predicts the telescope will come crashing down on or around Friday. Most of the 1 ½-ton telescope should incinerate upon descent, though dense tungsten components and mirror elements could survive reentry, according to NASA's Brad Cenko, the mission’s chief scientist. Any surviving wreckage will likely plunge into the ocean, but portions of Africa, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America remain inside the reentry zone. The Space Force continues to...