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Explanation: In infrared, Jupiter lights up the night. Recently, astronomers at the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii, USA, created some of the best infrared photos of Jupiter ever taken from Earth’s surface, pictured. Gemini was able to produce such a clear image using a technique called lucky imaging, by taking many images and combining only the clearest ones that, by chance, were taken when Earth's atmosphere was the most calm. Jupiter’s jack-o’-lantern-like appearance is caused by the planet’s different layers of clouds. Infrared light can pass through clouds better than visible light, allowing us to see deeper, hotter layers of...

Explanation: One of the last entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog, big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. In contrast, this multiwavelength view of the large island universe is a composite of images recorded by space-based telescopes in the 21st century. Color coded from X-rays to infrared wavelengths (high to low energies), the image data was...

Indeed, even vocal supporters of America’s effort are now expressing doubts that Nasa will be able to beat the Chinese space agency in the race to send humans back to the lunar surface. China has been making great strides in its lunar effort and is targeting a Moon landing by 2030. America’s programme, on the other hand, is beset with problems, including the lack of a working lunar landing system and lunar surface spacesuits that are behind schedule.

Explanation: A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured these star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the Pillars of Creation. This James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam image expands Hubble's exploration of that region in greater detail and depth inside the iconic stellar nursery. Particularly stunning in Webb's near infrared view is the telltale reddish emission from knots of material undergoing gravitational collapse to form stars within the natal clouds. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant. The larger bright emission nebula is itself an easy target for...

Explanation: Seen edge-on, spiral galaxy NGC 4302 (left) lies about 55 million light-years away in the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. A member of the large Virgo Galaxy Cluster, it spans some 87,000 light-years, a little smaller than our own Milky Way. Like the Milky Way, NGC 4302's prominent dust lanes cut along the center of the galactic plane, obscuring and reddening the starlight from our perspective. Smaller companion galaxy NGC 4298 is also a dusty spiral. But tilted more nearly face-on to our view, NGC 4298 can show off dust lanes along spiral arms traced by the bluish light of...

Explanation: Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy it's one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way. Centered in this sharp reprocessed Hubble image, M15 lies some 35,000 light-years away toward the constellation Pegasus. Its diameter is about 200 light-years, but more than half its stars are packed into the central 10 light-years or so, making one of the densest concentrations of stars known. Hubble-based measurements of the increasing velocities of M15's central stars are...

Explanation: What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown at the bottom, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, just below, and took a turn. Sometimes dubbed the Hummingbird Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. Behind filaments of dark interstellar dust, bright blue stars form the nose of...

Explanation: Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed, including its nearly perfectly round ring of stars and gas, remains unknown. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and the gravitational effect of a central bar that has since vanished....

Explanation: The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy. Even at some two and a half million light-years distant, this immense spiral galaxy -- spanning over 200,000 light years -- is visible, although as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, a bright yellow nucleus, dark winding dust lanes, and expansive spiral arms dotted with blue star clusters and red nebulae, are recorded in this stunning telescopic image which combines data from orbiting Hubble with ground-based images from Subaru and Mayall. In only about 5 billion years, the Andromeda...

Explanation: Spanning the sky behind the majestic Clouds of Magellan is an unusual stream of gas: the Magellanic Stream. The origin of this gas might hold a clue to origin and fate of our Milky Way's most famous satellite galaxies: the LMC and the SMC. Two leading genesis hypotheses have surfaced: that the stream was created by gas stripped off these galaxies as they passed through the halo of our Milky Way, or that the stream was created by the differential gravitational tug of the Milky Way. Measurements of slight angular motions by the Hipparcos satellite have indicated that the...

Explanation: Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy. NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Like other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky...

Explanation: The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the red emission nebula in the center of the above photograph. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright red emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will alter its appearance. The emission nebula's red color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form...

Explanation: Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic of M101 is touted as the largest, most detailed spiral galaxy view...

[snip] In fact, I saw someone who actually worked on the Sierra Space Dreamchaser comment about this. I wanted to interview him, but right now he's working for SpaceX, which means he can't do interviews. But he wrote, "I spent years tiling this ship, drilling composites and making every detail perfect. Management was a disaster and even tried to convince us they were on par with SpaceX. Now that I work on Starship, comments like that sound even more childish than before. RIP Chaser never to be." [/snip] NASA May Have Put the Nail in the Coffin for Sierra Space...

Explanation: Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014. The dimmest galaxies are more than 10 billion times fainter than stars visible to the unaided eye and represent the Universe in the extreme past, a few 100 million years after the Big Bang. The image itself was made with the significant addition of ultraviolet data to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an update of Hubble's famous most distant gaze toward the southern constellation of Fornax. It now covers the entire range of wavelengths available to Hubble's cameras, from ultraviolet through visible to near-infrared. Ultraviolet data...

A lunar impact could generate debris that damages key satellites, the ISS…and potentially any lunar installations that had been constructed as part of the new space race. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is a near-Earth object approximately 53–67 meters wide that was discovered in December 2024. While initial models suggested a small chance of Earth impact, refined tracking now indicates that there is no risk to Earth, but about a 4% probability that it will strike the Moon on December 22, 2032. Earlier this year, asteroid 2024 YR4 drew global attention when its estimated chance of striking Earth in 2032 reached 3%....

Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant. This sharp telescopic view is centered on a western segment of the Veil Nebula cataloged as NGC 6960 but less formally known as the Witch's Broom Nebula. Blasted out in the cataclysmic explosion, an interstellar shock wave plows through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material....

Explanation: Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. Besides Comet SWAN25B and Comet ATLAS, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with binoculars and on long camera exposures. Comet Lemmon was discovered early this year and is still headed into the inner Solar System. The comet will round the Sun on November 8, but first it will pass its nearest to the Earth -- at about half the Earth-Sun distance -- on October 21. Although the brightnesses of comets are notoriously hard to predict, optimistic estimates have Comet Lemmon then becoming visible to...

Explanation: It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not. Comets C/2025 K1 ATLAS (left) and C/2025 R2 SWAN (right) appeared near each other by chance last week in the featured image taken from France's Reunion Island in the southern Indian Ocean. Fainter Comet ATLAS is approaching our Sun and will reach its closest approach in early October when it is also expected to be its brightest -- although still only likely visible with long exposures on a camera. The brighter comet, nicknamed SWAN25B, is now headed away from our Sun, although its closest approach to Earth...

“We’re just going to pursue excellence … that’s how you win a space race and that’s just how you move our countries forward. More importantly, that’s how you create an environment where you might encourage others to collaborate,” Glover, 49, the mission pilot, said.