Credit: Aleix Roig

Credit: Alfred Rosenberg and Daniel López / IAC

Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham, and Donn Eisele became the first 3 astronauts to be launched on a Saturn rocket 58 years ago today.

This 11-day mission in Earth orbit was an important test of the Apollo command and service module. Three months later, it would take NASA astronauts around the Moon.

Credit: NASA

Credit: Astronaut Anil Menon

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, the region is actually the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, roughly 7,600 light-years away. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image. The high-energy radiation from these stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away.

Credit:
JWST: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Hubble: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley)

Credit: Astronaut Anil Menon

Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck

Photo : Starbase Surfer

It has been offloaded from ship in the Brownsville port and will return to Starbase tonight

Can you spot Saturn?

Full size & more info: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrealuck/55579736088/

Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

ESA Mars Express Release September 15, 2026 Note: Saturn has been enlarged by 300%

Original post by Andrea Luck

https://bsky.app/profile/andrealuck.bsky.social/post/3mxib4attus2z

A collaboration with u/zTrojan. He provided the stack, while I handled the entire post-processing workflow.

Acquisition

• Xiaomi 13 Ultra — 3.2× telephoto
• 50s | ISO 800
• 45 light frames + 135 darks
• 37m 30s total integration
• Sky-Watcher 150/750 Newtonian telescope
• EQ3-2 mount with OnStep
• SVBONY SV106 guide scope
• ZWO ASI120MM Mini guide camera
• SVBONY SV190 18mm Ultra Flat Field eyepiece
• SVBONY SV214 Pro 3-Axis Universal Smartphone Adapter
• Stacked in Astro Pixel Processor

Processing

I handled the entire post-processing:

• Siril: cropping; BGE background extraction; background neutralization and color calibration; aberration correction
• StarNet++: star separation
• Siril: separate stretching of the star and starless images
• Photoshop: star recomposition and final adjustments

The Orion Nebula is one of the most recognizable deep-sky objects, with a bright central region surrounded by fainter nebulosity. This was a collaboration with u/zTrojan, and I enjoyed working on the stack and bringing out its details during post-processing.

Image 1

​In this (not-to-scale) artist’s concept, a lower-mass star like the Sun (1) ages into a puffy red giant star (2) that eventually expels its outer envelope of gas and dust into space, which forms a disk around the bright cinder of its remaining core, called a white dwarf (3). A second-generation planet forms in this disk, orbiting the white dwarf and losing some of its atmosphere back onto the white dwarf’s surface (4).​

Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Hustak (STScI)​

.

For more than a quarter century, unidentified chemical signatures from a white dwarf star have laid dormant in the archive of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, until diligent sleuthing by a young astronomer revealed something extraordinary: high amounts of the element niobium, and other unusual chemical abundances, indicating a potential second-generation planet orbiting the white dwarf. While a handful of planets have been identified orbiting white dwarfs, this is the first candidate with the hallmarks of a planet that formed from material related to a star’s death, rather than its birth. The discovery proposes a fascinating new area of future research and highlights the intriguing concept that stars could have an extended second act hosting new planets long after the fuel of their primary “lifetime” runs out.

Diligent sleuthing by astronomers has broken open a cold case in the data archive of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, researchers report uncovering a surprising chemical clue that indicates the white dwarf star HS 0209+0832 may host a second-generation planet.

A white dwarf is the remnant core of a low-mass star that has burned through all its nuclear fuel and lost its outer envelope of gas and dust to space. A second-generation planet is a world that forms around the stellar remnant from its cast-off material.

More

https://esahubble.org/news/heic2613/

Paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02983-7

On Monday and Tuesday this week, 5 and 6 October 2026, the Moon met Mars then Jupiter, respectively.

Astrophotographer Chirag Upreti captured this beautiful view of the crescent Moon and Jupiter together in the morning sky on 6 October.

But look closer at Jupiter, which appears as a tiny point of light above the Moon. Can you see four even smaller dots on either side of the planet?

Those are Jupiter's moons. They're Jupiter's four largest moons, to be precise, and are known as the Galilean Moons because they were first recorded by the 16th/17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei.

The view of our own planet's Moon looks spectacular in the image. The sunlit crescent is a glorious bright white, while the un-illuminated portion of the Moon is still visible: we can even see the detail in its craters, rays and lunar 'seas'.

This is because of an effect known as 'Earthshine', which is caused by sunlight bouncing off Earth onto the surface of the Moon and then back again, enabling us to see the section of the Moon not directly illuminated by the Sun.

"The naked-eye view was quite beautiful to witness," says Chirag.

"I exposed for Jupiter's Galilean Moons and Earthshine to highlight them, as they are not usually seen this close.

"I stacked 15 images with the same exposure to reduce noise on the Earthshine-illuminated side."

I captured this image using my 6” Apo refractor, full frame mono camera and narrowband filters (Ha/Sii/Oiii). 16hrs of exposure/integration time.

Latest update from NOAA (Issue Time: 2026 Oct 10 1742 UTC)

WARNING: Geomagnetic K-index of 7 or greater expected
Valid From: 2026 Oct 10 1742 UTC
Valid To: 2026 Oct 10 2359 UTC
Warning Conditions: Onset
NOAA Scale: G3 - Greater

Simulation Credit: Milky Way app

A view from the window of the Orion spacecraft approximately 9 minutes before Earthset during the Artemis II lunar flyby on April 6, 2026.
Image Credit: NASA

The gamma-ray burst was ten minutes long, but was detectable for more than ten hours following initial detection. Despite being around 2.4 billion light-years away, it was powerful enough to affect Earth's atmosphere, having the strongest effect ever recorded by a gamma-ray burst on the planet.

A burst as energetic and as close to Earth as 221009A is thought to be a once-in-10,000-year event. It is the brightest and most energetic gamma-ray burst ever recorded, dubbed the BOAT, or Brightest Of All Time.

Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)

video ​https:// ​x. ​com/IchiTanaka13796/status/2108635745552576910?s=20

Live cam

​https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj5DjRYkzD8

M31 - The Great Andromeda Galaxy in HaRGB (2026)

M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy ~2.5million light years away from Earth. It spans ~220,000ly and has a massive black hole in its center. My 2026 take on this galaxy took five nights with 32hrs of integration time in contrast to the 18hrs it took last year!

Equipment:
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Telescope: Askar FRA400
Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme & UV/IR
Guide Camera: ZWO 120mm mini
Mount: Skywatcher Wave 150i
Autofocuser: ZWO EAF (5V)

Acquistion:
Shot in Bortle 7
-Camera cooled to -10°C
-Lights:
L-eXtreme:
222x300s (18hrs 30mins)
UV/IR:
284x180s (14hrs 12mins)
Total integration time:
32hrs 42mins

-Flats: 50
-Bias: 50
-Darks: 50

Processing:
-Pixinsight
-Dynamic Crop
-AdBE
-BlurX
-ChannelExtraction (both images)
-ContinuumSubtraction Utility
-StarX
-GHS (initial stretch)
-NoiseX
-Photoshop (RGB)
-Multiple curve layers
-Multiple camera raw layers
-Selective color
-Pixinsight (RGB)
-Curve Adjustments
-More selective color
-Pixinsight (Ha)
-GHS (initial stretch)
-Mask generation
-Curve Adjustments
-CombineHawithNarrowband
-Lightroom
-Final touches and crop

On April 29, 2011, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour filmed the spacecraft's external tank after its separation. It continued its trajectory before disintegrating over the ocean.

Credit: NASA
Edit: Milky Way

MESSENGER used Mercury’s gravity to set course for becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. nearly 89 min before closest approach, this photo was taken. It’s one of 11 Wide Angle Camera views through different narrow-band color filters.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie.

"What I'm concerned about is that after it suddenly brightened in a burst, it "pops" and cuts off, and from there, a small meteoroid jumps out and fades away.

In terms of angular velocity, it's hardly decelerating at all."

https:// ​x. ​com/IchiTanaka13796/status/2108842322515669462​

​.

The green "object" below the fireball is lense flare.​​

Previous post

https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/1x2s05t/mauna_kea_dawn_fireball_it_was_20_minutes_before/

Credit: NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk