Comprising photos taken from the ISS on December 30, 2019 during a nighttime pass over Africa, this quick timelapse shows lightning, airglow, many stars, and even a few satellites in motion—at least six, by my count! This is proof that even while in orbit, other orbiting objects like satellites are difficult to see but certainly not impossible. In fact they are mostly visible when they are reflecting sunlight just like from the ground. That means during the day the brightness of the Earth will keep them pretty well hidden but from the night side of the planet they can shine like stars. These ..read more

Today anyone with a point-and-shoot camera or even a newer cell phone can snap a decent picture of the Moon but of course there was a time when that certainly wasn’t the case. Go back to the late 1830s, when photography was in its infancy and methods for capturing light and shadows on physical media were the cutting edge of innovation and the Moon was an enchanting but elusive target for even the most skilled practitioners. But in March of 1840 John William Draper changed that with his lunar portrait—the first success in astrophotography. “This is the first time that anything like a  ..read more

Radar observations of asteroid 99942 Apophis made with the DSN Goldstone and NSF Green Bank Telescope facilities on March 8, 9, and 10, 2021 at a distance of about 10.6 million miles…about 44 times the distance to the Moon. Credits:  NASA/JPL-Caltech and NSF/AUI/GBO. If you’ve ever had concerns or even a passing curiosity about an asteroid named Apophis slamming into Earth in the near future, causing widespread death and destruction and/or even bringing about the demise of civilization as we know it, you can safely jettison all of them into a safe solar parking orbit. Not only will the 11 ..read more

The limb of Venus imaged on 10 August 2021 by the joint Japanese-European BepiColombo spacecraft from a distance of 1,573 km (977 miles). Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO If you’re a fan of spacecraft selfies captured with planets in the background (yes, it’s a thing) then you can add this to your portfolio of favorites: it’s the bright limb of Venus captured by ESA/JAXA’s BepiColombo spacecraft during a gravity-assist flyby on August 10, 2021 from a distance of 1,573 kilometers/977 miles. This view was captured just after the spacecraft’s closest approach to the planet which ..read more

Perseverance in the distance in an image from the Ingenuity drone helicopter on Aug. 4, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech During yet another successful flight over the surface of Mars in Jezero Crater on 4 August 2021, JPL’s Ingenuity helicopter captured its robotic partner Perseverance on camera off in the distance. The image above, shared by NASA on 11 August 2021, shows a view from Ingenuity taken from about 12 meters up with its shadow visible at center at the bottom, its landing feet poking in a bit on either side, and near the top (I included the arrow for assistance) a handful of pixels th ..read more

A view of Ganymede assembled from images captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in June 1996. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Jason Major News from NASA on July 26, 2021 For the first time, astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. This water vapor forms when ice from the moon’s surface sublimates — that is, turns from solid to gas. Astronomers re-examined Hubble observations from the last two decades to find this evidence of water vapor, using new and archival datasets from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope ..read more

Martian water ice clouds drift over the dome-covered seismometer, known as SEIS, belonging to NASA’s InSight lander. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.  News from NASA’s InSight Mission on July 22, 2021 (source) Before NASA’s InSight spacecraft touched down on Mars in 2018, the rovers and orbiters studying the Red Planet concentrated on its surface. The stationary lander’s seismometer has changed that, revealing details about the planet’s deep interior for the first time. Three papers based on the seismometer’s data were published today in Science, providing details on the depth and composition o ..read more

This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows the PDS 70 system located nearly 400 light-years away and still in the process of being formed. The system features a star at its center and at least two planets orbiting it, PDS 70b (not visible in the image) and PDS 70c, surrounded by a circumplanetary disc (the dot to the right of the star). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al. There are well over 4,000 currently-known exoplanets orbiting stars in our galaxy — 4,438 to be exact! (as of July 22, 2021) — but still to date no confirmed* direct observat ..read more

The image data are starting to come in from NASA’s Juno spacecraft and if this is any indication, they’re going to be gorgeous! On Monday, June 7, 2021 the Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft passed within just over 1000 kilometers of Ganymede. This is the closest any spacecraft has come to the Solar System’s largest moon since May of 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft was still cruising around the Jovian system. See the full Junocam mosaic below: Ganymede imaged by Juno on June 7, 2021 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS) Juno captured this image with its Junocam through a green spectral filter and what w ..read more

On February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars, becoming the fifth robotic rover to do so and the third operational exploration robot currently on the planet’s surface. Today during a press conference NASA released stunning high-definition video from Perseverance’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence to the anticipation and excitement of scientists and space enthusiasts alike. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below…guaranteed it’s something you’ve never seen before! The footage, captured by multiple cameras attached to the Mars 2020 rover as well as ..read more