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Explanation: A study in contrasts, this colorful cosmic skyscape features stars, dust, and glowing gas in the vicinity of NGC 6914. The interstellar complex of nebulae lies some 6,000 light-years away, toward the high-flying northern constellation Cygnus and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Obscuring interstellar dust clouds appear in silhouette while reddish hydrogen emission nebulae, along with the dusty blue reflection nebulae, fill the cosmic canvas. Ultraviolet radiation from the massive, hot, young stars of the extensive Cygnus OB2 association ionize the region's atomic hydrogen gas, producing the characteristic red glow as protons and electrons recombine. Embedded Cygnus...

Explanation: A new visitor from the outer Solar System, comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) also known as SWAN25B was only discovered late last week, on September 11. That's just a day before the comet reached perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun. First spotted by Vladimir Bezugly in images from the SWAN instrument on the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft, the comet was surprisingly bright but understandably difficult to see against the Sun's glare. Still close to the Sun on the sky, the greenish coma and tail of C/2025 R2 (SWAN) are captured in this telescopic snapshot from September 17. Spica, alpha star...

VIDEO AT LINK................ It’s been 30 years since the discovery of the first planet around another star like our Sun. With every new discovery, scientists move closer to answering whether there are other planets like Earth that could host life as we know it. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The milestone highlights the accelerating rate of discoveries, just over three decades since the first exoplanets were found. The official number of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — tracked by NASA has reached 6,000. Confirmed planets are added to the count on a rolling basis by scientists from around the world, so...

Explanation: Can you spot famous celestial objects in this image? 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier cataloged only two of them: the bright Lagoon Nebula (M8) at the bottom, and the colorful Trifid Nebula (M20) at the upper right. The one on the left that resembles a cat's paw is NGC 6559, and it is much fainter than the other two. Even harder to spot are the thin blue filaments on the left, from supernova remnant (SNR G007.5-01.7). Their glow comes from small amounts of glowing oxygen atoms that are so faint that it took over 17 hours of exposure with just...

It looked like the Sun was heading toward a historic lull in activity. That trend flipped in 2008, according to new research. The Sun has become increasingly active since 2008, a new NASA study shows. Solar activity is known to fluctuate in cycles of 11 years, but there are longer-term variations that can last decades. Case in point: Since the 1980s, the amount of solar activity had been steadily decreasing all the way up to 2008, when solar activity was the weakest on record. At that point, scientists expected the Sun to be entering a period of historically low activity....

A rare cosmic configuration: An Einstein Cross with five points of light, instead of the usual four, has been discovered by scientists. (Credit: Nicolás Lira Turpaud (ALMA Observatory) & adapted from Cox et al. 2025) Brightest Glimpse Yet Of Dark Matter Comes From Rare Cosmic Lens In A Nutshell * Astronomers discovered HerS-3 forming a rare Einstein Cross with five images instead of four. * Computer models required a hidden dark matter halo of 1.6–10 trillion solar masses to explain the pattern. * The galaxy is magnified 17–19 times, revealing rapid star formation and high-speed gas outflows. * This is...

1:45 Look at 3I Atlas at 12 O'Clock and Swan at 6 O'Clock (think strategic)🚨

Explanation: A newly discovered comet is already visible with binoculars. The comet, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and nicknamed SWAN25B, is brightening significantly as it emerges from the Sun's direction and might soon become visible on your smartphone -- if not your eyes. Although the brightnesses of comets are notoriously hard to predict, many comets appear brighter as they approach the Earth, with SWAN25B reaching only a quarter of the Earth-Sun distance near October 19. Nighttime skygazers will also be watching for a SWAN25B-spawned meteor shower around October 5 when our Earth passes through the plane of the comet's orbit. The unexpectedly...

Imagine looking up during a total lunar eclipse, expecting the moon to turn deep red—and then you notice a faint green glow from a mysterious visitor not from our solar system. That’s exactly what happened with 3I/ATLAS, and its unexpected color shift is opening a window into new comet chemistry and the nature of interstellar visitors. What is 3I/ATLAS and What Has Been Seen So Far 3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object (ISO) ever observed, and it’s behaving in ways that are surprising astronomers. Discovered on July 1, 2025, by the survey system ATLAS in Chile, 3I/ATLAS has been...

Meet Neutron, Rocket Lab's new reusable medium-lift rocket that will deliver a cost-effective, reliable, and responsive launch service for missions to the International Space Station and low Earth orbit, as well as to explore beyond Earth and on to the Moon and Mars. Rocket Lab | This is Neutron | 8:46 Rocket Lab | 195K subscribers | 162,160 views | September 3, 2025 wiki-wacky: [snip] Neutron is a partially reusable medium-lift two-stage launch vehicle under development by Rocket Lab... designed to be capable of delivering a payload of 13,000 kg (28,700 lb) to low Earth orbit in a partially reusable...

NASA has responded to claims – popularized by Harvard professor Avi Loeb – that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is a spacecraft sent to the Solar System by an advanced alien civilization. On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object, which was confirmed to be an interstellar comet with its own dusty coma, is far larger than the previous two, with an estimated nucleus (the rocky part of the comet, excluding its coma) of around 5.6 kilometers (3.5 miles). Early work...

Artist’s impression of a black hole star (not to scale). Mysterious tiny pinpoints of light discovered at the dawn of the universe may be giant spheres of hot gas that are so dense they look like the atmospheres of typical nuclear fusion-powered stars; however, instead of fusion, they are powered by supermassive black holes in their center that rapidly pull in matter, converting it into energy and giving off light. (Credit: T. Müller/A. de Graaff/Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) ============================================================================ Object nicknamed ‘The Cliff’ leads astronomers to rewrite cosmic rules In A Nutshell * “The Cliff,” a compact red object...

Explanation: Can our Sun become dangerous? Yes, sometimes. Every few years our Sun ejects a scary-large bubble of hot gas into the Solar System. Every hundred years or so, when the timing, location, and magnetic field connections are just right, such a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) will hit the Earth. When this happens, the Earth not only experiences dramatic auroras, but its magnetic field gets quickly pushed back and compressed, which causes electric grids to surge. Some of these surges could be dangerous, affecting satellites and knocking out power grids -- which can take months to fix. Just such a...

Explanation: How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth -- one Earth rotation -- takes just a few seconds. Jupiter rotates the fastest, while Venus spins not only the slowest (can you see it?), but backwards. The inner rocky planets across the top underwent dramatic spin-altering collisions during the early days of the Solar System. Why planets spin...

Explanation: The steerable 60 foot diameter dish antenna of the One-Mile Telescope at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cambridge, UK, is pointing skyward in this evocative night-skyscape. To capture the dramatic scene, consecutive 30 second exposures were recorded over a period of 90 minutes. Combined, the exposures reveal a background of gracefully arcing star trails that reflect planet Earth's daily rotation on its axis. The North Celestial Pole, the extension of Earth's axis of rotation into space, points near Polaris, the North Star. That's the bright star that creates the short trail near the center of the concentric arcs. But the...

Explanation: September's total lunar eclipse is tracked across night skies from both the northern and southern hemispheres of planet Earth in these two dramatic timelapse series. In the northern hemisphere sequence (top panel) the Moon’s trail arcs from the upper left to the lower right. It passes below bright planet Saturn, seen under mostly clear skies from the international campus of Zhejiang University in China at about 30 degrees north latitude. In contrast, the southern hemisphere view from Lake Griffin, Canberra, Australia at 35 degrees south latitude, records the Moon’s trail from the upper right to the lower left. Multiple...

Explanation: The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra. Shaped like a cone extending into space, it has a circular cross section most easily seen during a lunar eclipse. And on the night of September 7/8 the Full Moon passed near the center of Earth's umbral cone, entertaining eclipse watchers around much of our fair planet, including parts of Antarctica, Australia, Asia, Europe, and Africa. Recorded from Zhangjiakou City, China, this timelapse composite image uses successive pictures from the total lunar eclipse, progressing left to right, to reveal the curved cross-section of the umbral shadow sliding across...

Explanation: It is one of the largest nebulas on the sky -- why isn't it better known? Roughly the same angular size as the Andromeda Galaxy, the Great Lacerta Nebula can be found toward the constellation of the Lizard (Lacerta). The emission nebula is difficult to see with wide-field binoculars because it is so faint, but also usually difficult to see with a large telescope because it is so great in angle -- spanning about three degrees. The depth, breadth, waves, and beauty of the nebula -- cataloged as Sharpless 126 (Sh2-126) -- can best be seen and appreciated with...

NASA may be preparing to deliver some monumental news about Mars after surprisingly calling for a rare news conference on Wednesday. Officials with the space agency said they plan to discuss a 'new finding' by the Perseverance rover, which has been on the Red Planet since 2021. The discovery involves a rock called 'Sapphire Canyon,' collected by the rover in July 2024 from an ancient river system in a Martian area called Neretva Vallis. Scientists are excited because this rock might contain 'biosignatures,' which are chemical clues that could hint at ancient microbial life on Mars. >>> While NASA has...

Explanation: What's that rising up from the Earth? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early in July, astronaut Nicole Ayers saw an unusual type of lightning rising up from the Earth: a gigantic jet. The powerful jet appears near the center of the featured image in red, white, and blue. Giant jet lightning has only been known about for the past 25 years. The atmospheric jets are associated with thunderstorms and extend upwards towards Earth's ionosphere. The lower part of the frame shows the Earth at night, with Earth's thin atmosphere tinted green from airglow. City lights...