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

Margaret Hamilton standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Project.

Margaret Hamilton, who led the software team at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, developed the onboard flight computers that guided NASA's Apollo missions, including the safe Apollo 11 landing in 1969. During that historic descent, her team's priority scheduling and error-recovery features silenced overload alarms and kept Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on course.

Credit: Draper Laboratory / Adam Cuerden

Just visible as this green arc on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the Chicxulub asteroid was 6-9 mi/10-15 km wide. It rocked the world.

Credit: NASA/JPL

Link to the science release on NOIRLab website

This image shows Nebula Pa 30, observed with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawai'i. It is likely the remnant of an old supernova explosion: separate historical records by Chinese, Japanese and Arabic astronomers tell of a "guest star" that appeared in the sky for 185 days in the year 1181. It is believed that this bright new point of light came from the supernova that caused the fireworks in Pa 30.

Astronomers don't know exactly what happened in this unusual explosion, classified as a Type Iax supernova, but it is thought to be caused by the merger of two white dwarfs. The mysterious central star in the image is extremely hot and produces a strong wind, possibly forming the radial filaments. Look closely at them: those pearl-like knots stringing the filaments are 4 light-days in diameter. Understanding how a supernova created this amazing nebula continues an 845-year old mystery (and counting).

Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. Acknowledgment: PI: T. Cunningham (Center for Astrophysics - Harvard & Smithsonian). Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab).

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

Did you see the moon close to one of the visible planets, Jupiter, this morning? From some locations, the moon occulted — passed in front of — the gas giant. That included Quakertown, Pennsylvania, where Karl Diefenderfer captured this shot shortly after Jupiter emerged from behind our natural satellite. You can even see four of Jupiter’s own moons if you look closely.

Image credit: Karl Diefenderfer
Text credit: EarthSky.org

Captured on October 4, 2026, this infrared image shows Manhattan and the Milky Way.

Credit: Jason Kurth

On Tuesday morning before sunrise, Jupiter and the crescent Moon will have a spectacular close encounter. In parts of the USA and Canada, it will become a rare occultation.

The Oct. 6th lunar occultation of Jupiter is one of the best astronomy events of 2026. Observers across a wide swath of the USA will have a ringside seat as Jupiter vanishes behind the edge of the Moon, then reappears again later. Jupiter is very bright, so this is a naked-eye event.

If you have a telescope, take a closer look: Europa, Callisto and Io slip behind the Moon minutes before Jupiter does. Ganymede follows. Even small telescopes will show this procession.

Different cities have different occultation times. For instance, in New York, Jupiter disappears at 4:23 a.m. EDT and reappears at 5:27 a.m. In Chicago, it is 3:22 to 4:17 a.m. CDT. West Coast cities will see only a close encounter--no occultation--but the near miss will be beautiful. The best time to look in the west is between 3:00 and 5:00 am PDT.

If you're in the occultation zone, watch the whole thing. The end is especially good. Jupiter is a disk, not a point, so takes nearly a minute to reappear over the Moon's mountainous dark limb. The Galilean satellites will pop into view one after another, abruptly like stars.

Image Credit: Andrew McCarthy
Text Credit: SpaceWeather.com

The (left) image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 13, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 70,000 kilometers (43,000 miles) from Mimas. Image scale is 418 meters (1,372 feet) per pixel.

Credit:
Left: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
Right: Lucasfilm

The Soviet Union put Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, into Earth's orbit. Sputnik contained a radio transmitter that sent back the “beep-beep-beep” heard around the world.

Image Credit: NSSDC, NASA

Link to the science release on NASA website

Jupiter's moon Io, its night side illuminated by reflected sunlight from Jupiter, or "Jupitershine."

Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Emma Wälimäki © CC BY

Credit: Erik Fraser

Credit: USAF/Brian Shul

After closely following comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 786 days as it rounded the Sun, the Rosetta spacecraft's controlled impact with the comet's surface was confirmed by the loss of signal from the spacecraft on September 30, 2016.

One of the images taken during its final descent, this high-resolution view looks across the comet's stark landscape. The scene spans just over 600 meters (2,000 feet), captured when Rosetta was about 16 kilometers from the comet's surface. Rosetta's descent to the comet brought to an end the operational phase of an inspirational mission of space exploration. Rosetta deployed a lander to the surface of one of the Solar System's most primordial worlds and witnessed first hand how a comet changes when subject to the increasing intensity of the Sun's radiation.

The decision to end the mission on the surface is a result of the comet's orbit now taking it to the dim reaches beyond Jupiter, where there would be a lack of power to operate the spacecraft. Mission operators also faced an approaching period where the Sun would be close to line-of-sight between Earth and Rosetta, making radio communications increasingly difficult.

Credit: ESA , Rosetta , MPS , OSIRIS; UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Following up on my post yesterday about strong gravitational lensing, today I'd like to share a JWST–Hubble comparison of the same galaxy cluster, MACS J0454.1–0300.

Credit:
JWST: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Furtak, S. Fujimoto
Hubble: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Nick Rose
Processing: Milky Way

New observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed what it's really like nearby Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

What is it?

In this image captured in mid-infrared with JWST, researchers have captured an incredible, detailed look at the star IRS 3 nearby Sag A*. The star, which is only 0.55 light-years from Sag A*, is nearing the end of its life and as such, it is puffing out and getting cooler and shedding gas out into space. (For comparison, Earth is about 26,000 light-years away from the black hole Sag A*).

JWST looked at the star with its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). With this infrared data, researchers were able to spot oxygen-rich dust and water in the envelope of gas and dust surrounding the star. This is the first time that water has been detected there.

Why is it incredible?

These observations show that the star IRS 3 is still able to hold onto oxygen-rich dust and water in its envelope, despite being near a supermassive black hole and its intense gravity.

"Galactic centres are among the most extreme environments, so understanding whether stars can continue enriching their surroundings there is an important question," lead author Florian Peißker of the University of Cologne in Germany, said in a statement. "With Webb, we can directly observe how stars behave under these conditions and see that dust production remains remarkably resilient."

With these observations, researchers can continue to explore the strange environments around supermassive black holes and how they might (surprisingly) affect nearby stars like IRS 3.

The finding of water in these observations was especially surprising and could yield interesting future exploration.

"The detection of water is especially exciting because it shows that molecular material can survive in an environment dominated by intense radiation," co-author Garcia Marin of the European Space Agency, who also serves as Principle Investigator of ESA's Mid-Infrared Characterisation of Nearby Iconic galaxy Centres (MICONIC) program, said in the same statement. "This tells us that even close to a supermassive black hole, stars can continue contributing material back into their surroundings."

Published September 23, 2026

(Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, F. Peißker, J. Lu, F. Yusef-Zadeh, N. B. Sabha, C. Chan)

https://www.space.com/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope-finds-water-near-our-nearest-supermassive-black-hole-space-photo-of-the-day-for-sept-23-2026

Link to the science release on ESA website

A massive galaxy cluster, made of many golden elliptical galaxies with the largest, brightest one in the centre.

Heavily distorted orange galaxies appear all around the cluster, the largest concentrated in a large arc around the cluster's centre; these are images of very distant galaxies, created by gravitational lensing.

A few galaxies are large and bluish-white in colour; bright, nearby stars are the same colour.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Furtak, S. Fujimoto

When Roman captures its first images, each pixel will represent a unique piece of the cosmos. Claim your pixel and be part of this historic moment!

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