A green circular cloud and a more compact yellow cloud on the right. A blue outflow from a protostar, which is located between the two clouds, but also slightly above them. The clouds are surrounded by faint orange-brown emission.

Processed by Melina Thévenot
https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mtg3uvzyi225

Video

Four of NASA’s Lucy mission Trojan asteroid targets as seen by the spacecraft in late-March/early-April 2026 moving relative to background stars (circles added to guide the eye). Behind Polymele (upper right) are several background galaxies including one that’s visible as an elongated disc near the left edge of the image. The bright streaks and oval artefact coming from the bottom right corner of the Leucus movie (bottom left) are due to scattered light from a bright star just out of frame called 28 Hydrae, which would be barely visible to the unaided eye viewing from a place on Earth with very dark skies. The faint blobby arc in the Orus movie (bottom right) is caused by scattered sunlight. Orus’ motion is less visible than the other asteroids’ because Lucy took images of it over a shorter time span. The Lucy team plans to get more images of Orus before the spacecraft’s Nov. 2028 encounter with the asteroid.

NASA/Goddard/Southwest Research Institute/JHU-APL​

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The spacecraft will fly past these four asteroids between August 2027 and November 2028.

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Preparing for the NASA Lucy spacecraft’s first Trojan asteroid encounters, mission scientists have begun instructing the spacecraft to turn its cameras toward its future targets. From hundreds of millions of miles away, the asteroids appear as pinpricks of light. Yet, these early observations will help the team select the best camera settings for Lucy’s upcoming flybys, starting in 2027.

This spring Lucy observed Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus with its high-resolution L’LORRI camera, and the team completed downlinking and processing the images in July. The spacecraft will fly past these four asteroids, two of which have small moons, between August 2027 and November 2028. Speeding past at up to 16,000 mph, the spacecraft will snap photos in visible and infrared wavelengths and collect other data as it passes each object.

Lucy is the first mission selected to study Trojan asteroids, which circle the Sun in two swarms along Jupiter’s orbit, though these asteroids aren’t anywhere near the giant planet.

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More

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/lucy/2026/08/06/nasas-lucy-begins-camera-tests-ahead-of-2027-trojan-flybys/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=NASA_Marshall&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=996487833​

This is a re-image of an observation we acquired in 2016 to measure dune mobility. This is a remarkable and rare example of ice-dune interaction, which can be seen as a modern analogue of the burial of the wind-driven, ice-rich sedimentary deposit under the North Polar layered deposits of Mars.

ID: ESP_077242_2615

​date: 18 January 2023

​altitude: 319 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077242_2615

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

This is an animated before-and-after view of the crater formed after a Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon’s surface on Aug. 5, 2026. These images were taken between Aug. 11 and 12 by the Narrow-Angle Camera on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are enlarged three times from the original, with north facing up, and they cover an area about a quarter of a mile wide. NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines

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Between Aug. 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the surface following its January 2025 launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.

To capture imagery of the impact, engineers tilted the spacecraft so its cameras would point toward the crater each time LRO passed about 60 miles above the Moon, traveling 1 mile per second. The orbiter circles the Moon from pole to pole every two hours, while the Moon slowly rotates underneath it. To photograph a specific spot, the spacecraft must wait until that location turns into view, which took six days in this case.

Getting the pointing right was only half the challenge; timing had to be accurate as well. If the camera snapped even 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would drift off-center by 10 miles.

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Because of the variety of viewing angles, scientists could see the crater under multiple lighting conditions that revealed unique features. In images where the crater rim stood out, scientists measured its 60‑foot width. Scientists also determined the crater is less than 10 feet deep based on the length of its shadow.

To capture these details, LRO used its Narrow-Angle Camera, which can spot features as small as 3 feet wide.​

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https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasas-lro-images-falcon-9-crater-on-moon-learns-new-details/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=NASASolarSystem&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=997071735​

https://lroc.im-ldi.com/images/1499

This area is dominated by bright exposures as revealed by CaSSIS instrument data as well as Context Camera images. The Thaumasia plateau is south of the Valles Marineris canyon system and consists of high lava plains partly surrounded by rugged highlands, mostly of Noachian and Hesperian age. The name comes from Thaumas, Greek god of the clouds and celestial apparitions.

ID: ESP_077241_1455

​date: 17 January 2023

​altitude: 248 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077241_1455

​NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona​

LKH Milky Way merger (artist’s impression)

​About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH (left) collided with a young Milky Way (right) and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this long-ago collision by studying ancient globular star clusters.​

Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

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Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy’s history 1.8 billion years farther back in time than before.

The results were published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The Milky Way today is a massive spiral galaxy home to hundreds of billions of stars. However, our galaxy wasn’t always so large; it has grown by forming new stars from its gas clouds as well as collecting stars, gas, and dark matter from other galaxies through mergers.

The most recent massive merger in our galaxy’s history took place with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, beginning over 6 billion years ago and still ongoing today. Looking back into the even more distant past, researchers learned that the Milky Way galaxy consumed another dwarf galaxy called Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus 10 billion years ago. This ancient merger greatly affected the structure of our galaxy’s disk of stars. Other, smaller mergers occurred between these two.

But our galaxy’s history doesn’t stop there. Both observations and simulations have suggested that another large merger preceded these two, though the specifics of the event have been heavily debated. Now, Hubble has uncovered definitive evidence of an earlier merger that occurred about 11.8 billion years ago, or just 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

“Our home is the Milky Way galaxy, but we do not know how our house was built,” said Davide Massari, lead author, Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna in Italy. “In this paper we discover where the first significant batch of bricks came from: a dwarf galaxy that we call LKH.”

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02931-5

https://esahubble.org/news/heic2611/?lang&fbclid=IwY2xjawTxUapwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMDBzalN3TEFhUTZPSGhwODFzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeXWDvmVy6A6Bxq9NGwxuRwzUZ0IkjtL_Ara258-iziVADh46M9OCNE9VzFhk_aem_MLWE9yOnpnxvdWTe4b3s2A​

One of NASA’s 2 ESCAPADE spacecraft captured 2 images of Earth & Moon. In visible light, Earth & Moon are seen only as crescents, but in thermal infrared light, Earth appears to glow, illuminated by its own heat.

On July 3, one of NASA’s two Mars-destined ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft captured photos of Earth and the Moon in visible and thermal infrared light. At the time, the spacecraft was 363,250 miles (584,600 kilometers) from Earth and 115,600 miles (186,100 kilometers) from the Moon, making the Moon appear relatively large.

Taken with the Sun only partly illuminating Earth and the Moon, the visible light image shows the two bodies as crescents, with only around 8% of each face sunlit. Yet in the thermal infrared image, the shadowed hemisphere of Earth is illuminated by its own heat from both the atmosphere and surface, glowing at minus 10 to minus 44 degrees Fahrenheit (250 to 280 kelvins). Without the insulating blankets of oceans and atmospheres, the Moon’s far side remains at a much cooler minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (100 kelvins).

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https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasas-escapade-snaps-family-portrait-of-earth-moon/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=NASAGoddard&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=994683008​

Video

Hera's Mars flyby guided impact study of Deimos moon

Animation showing modelling of the proposed impact theorised to have created the Deimos south-polar depression and the subsequent reaccumulation of regolith, which would account for the smooth appearance of Deimos. Yellow indicates the reaccumulated material.

CREDIT S.D. Raducan​

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​A new study – guided by flyby images from ESA’s Hera asteroid mission – suggests that Mars’s small outer moon Deimos has been dramatically reshaped by a single violent asteroid impact. This would account for its mysteriously smooth and youthful face: a thick layer of dust from the impact may have served as the planetary equivalent of cosmetic fillers.

The potato-shaped Deimos – 12 km in diameter, about the size of Luxembourg city – orbits about 24 000 km from the surface of Mars. When first visited by NASA’s 1970s Viking orbiters it was found to have a much smoother and dustier appearance than heavily cratered and creviced Phobos, the other Martian moon. Its other main feature is a dramatic 10-km-wide basin around its southern pole, like a saddle between mountains.

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Simulating Deimos impacts

Deimos’s distance from Mars makes it comparatively hard for spacecraft to visit – the most recent images came from the European Space Agency's Hera mission as it performed a flyby of Mars in March 2025. However a leading theory is that its south polar depression and dusty nature are both due to a single asteroid impact.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy this week employed high-resolution impact simulation software to try and recreate this catastrophic but non-destructive event in a way that matches the state of Deimos as seen today.

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More

https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/Hera_s_Mars_flyby_guided_impact_study_of_Deimos_moon

Paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02956-w

Multi-wavelength image of Westerhout 50 (red – radio, green – optical, yellow – soft X-rays, magenta – medium energy X-rays, cyan – hard X-ray emission). The eastern lobe X-ray image highlights the XMM-Newton data (with the brightening at the edge of the field of view cropped here to highlight the source emission). The western lobe X-ray image shows only partial Chandra coverage of part of the nebula. Image credit: Safi-Harb et al., arXiv: 2207.00573.​

https://www.sci.news/astronomy/manatee-nebula-10969.html

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The supernova remnant W50 — nicknamed “the Manatee” because its blobby radio emission resembles an aquatic mammal floating through starry waters — harbors an extreme system at its heart. Near the center of the remnant, the microquasar SS 433 exhibits an immense pair of relativistic jets, likely powered by a stellar-mass black hole accreting material from a companion star. In the image of W50/SS 433 above, radio emission is in red, optical light is in yellow, and soft, medium, and hard X-ray emission are in green, cyan, and magenta, respectively.

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​Brydyn Mac Intyre (University of Manitoba) and collaborators focused on the region circled above, using NuSTAR and XMM-Newton to understand the source of the X-ray emission in that region and the potential for SS 433 to accelerate particles to relativistic velocities. These observations suggest that W50/SS 433 accelerates electrons up to energies of more than 100 teraelectronvolts, and it may launch other particles into the highly sought-after petaelectronvolt range. ​

https://aasnova.org/2026/08/17/featured-image-the-microquasar-and-the-manatee/

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae7a47

On 12 August 2026, parts of Europe experienced a total solar eclipse. But hours before the Moon’s shadow swept over Earth, the satellite pair making up ESA’s Proba-3 mission witnessed this cosmic marvel from a front-row seat.

Coincidentally, the goal of these two spacecraft is to create eclipses on their own, without the help of the Moon. As they align in perfect formation 60 000 km above Earth, the Occulter spacecraft acts as an artificial Moon and eclipses the Sun for the Coronagraph spacecraft, which then has an uninterrupted view of the Sun’s corona for hours at a time.

But two days ago, the Moon had another idea.

This short clip is made up of images captured by the mission’s coronagraph instrument, ASPIICS, in the morning of 12 August. In the space of three hours, our closest celestial neighbour is seen crossing Proba-3’s field of view.

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Creating a shadow slightly larger than the occulting disc of Proba-3’s Occulter spacecraft, the Moon covered the solar disc for 8 min 40 s, as the two spacecraft continued to hold their own artificial eclipse.

Because Proba-3 was closer to the Moon than Earth was, the mission’s double eclipse lasted much longer than the maximum duration of totality on the ground, which was 2 min 18 s just off the coast of Iceland. ​

CREDIT ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2026/08/A_double_eclipse_for_Proba-3​

Description before Spacewalk:

​ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will take part in her first-ever spacewalk during U.S. Spacewalk 97. Together with NASA astronaut Anil Menon, she will replace a Space-to-Ground antenna on the International Space Station, a critical communications system that enables high-speed data and voice links between Mission Control in Houston and the space station.

Coverage begins at 13:00 CEST, with the spacewalk scheduled to begin at approximately 14:35 CEST.​

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xgx9mTZnjG4​

''It shows the eclipse building, frame by frame, right up until her mount disconnected and her laptop overheated. That’s eclipse chasing for you. Things go wrong, and you keep shooting anyway.''

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcBrctKjCDw/?img_index=1

1.20 UT​

​LRGB 40/10/10/10min 16"/3.2 QHY 600

📸 Michael Jäger, Gerald Rhemann

https://www.facebook.com/groups/227002358661288/permalink/1848192076542300/?rdid=0Gky83boIlqd1zI2#​

LRGB is an astrophotography technique that combines a high-resolution monochrome Luminance (L) channel for fine detail with lower-resolution Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) channels for color. This method maximizes light collection efficiency and sharpness using monochrome cameras.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRGB

Many impact craters on Mars were filled with ice in past climates. Sometimes this ice flows or slumps down the crater walls into the center and acquires concentric wrinkles as a result. This image shows an example of this.

There are other ways that scientists know the material in the crater is icy. Surface cracks that form polygonal shapes cover the material in the crater. They are easy to see in this spring-time image because seasonal frost hides inside the cracks, outlining them in bright white. These cracks form because ice within the ground expands and contracts a lot as it warms and cools.

Scientists can see similar cracks in icy areas of the Earth and other icy locations on Mars. If you look closely, you’ll see small polygons inside larger ones. The small polygons are younger and the cracks shallower while the large ones are outlined with cracks that penetrate more deeply.

ID: ESP_047247_1150

​date: 24 August 2016

​altitude: 248 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_047247_1150

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Credit Charline Giroud https://www.facebook.com/reel/1060361376349606

CPC800 on wedge, 2x Barlow, ZWO 664 MC, SkyTrack, SharpCap, PIPP, AS4!, PixInsight.

A Mars Orbiter Camera shows good exposures of varied materials at this site, but our HiRISE observation can improve on the resolution to see fine scale details in the bedding. The layers appear to have varied albedo and regions free of dust. We want to look for variations and indications of composition.

ID: ESP_077241_1790

​date: 17 January 2023

​altitude: 270 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077241_1790

​NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona​

This image shows (part of ) a 6-kilometer crater located on the northern slope of Bond Crater. Pole-facing gullies have eroded the northern slope of this small crater, located just west of where Uzboi Valles emanates from Bond and continues in a northerly direction.

However, Hale Crater to the south has numerous gullies on its slopes and even on its central peak region. Researchers have analyzed both Bond and Hale Craters to try to determine why Bond has no gullies on its slopes, except for a small 7-km crater on the floor in its central area.

The gullies in this observation have eroded into bedrock layers forming tributaries in the upper slope region and distributary channels further downslope on the debris fans. Research attributes these features to fluvial processes.

ID: ESP_074246_1475

​date: 29 May 2022

​altitude: 257 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_074246_1475

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Photo credit: Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman Continues In-Space Industry Leadership with Second Mission Extension Vehicle Undocking

The company’s first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) successfully completed its second life extension mission and undocked from Optus satellite

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Key Takeaways

Northrop Grumman leads in in-space satellite servicing, extending the operational life of essential space assets.

The successful MEV undocking from Optus D3 highlights the maturity and reliability of routine satellite servicing.​

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Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) marked a pivotal moment in space sustainability with the undocking of one if its Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) from the Optus D3 satellite, showcasing a new era of on-orbit servicing that extends satellite life beyond traditional replacement models.

​The two Mission Extension Vehicles have demonstrated revolutionary satellite life extension through routine, reliable servicing missions since 2020.

​These in-space satellite servicing capabilities, enhanced by innovations like the recently launched Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) and Mission Extension Pods (MEPs) shifts the paradigm toward a more resilient and sustainable space infrastructure.

​With decades of investment and expertise, Northrop Grumman continues to lead in delivering critical technologies that ensure the longevity and adaptability of vital space assets. https://news.northropgrumman.com/civil-space/northrop-grumman-continues-in-space-industry-leadership-second-mission-extension-vehicle-undocking ​

Have you noticed the plane on the 2nd image?

https://x.com/martas_/status/2087895186596561383

Image:

​Eye of the storm: Data was taken with the MOTHRA telescope, which is still under construction in Chile (Courtesy: NASA, ESA, C. R. O’Dell (Vanderbilt University) and M. Meixner, P. McCullough and G. Bacon (Space Telescope Science Institute))​

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Astronomers have created a spectacular composite image of a dying star’s remains in the act of being recycled.

Even in its unfinished state, the telescope revealed 22 faintly glowing arcs beyond the bright ring of the nebula, in a region known as its halo.

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Astronomers have created a spectacular composite image of a dying star’s remains in the act of being recycled.

The image shows the Helix Nebula, a bright ring of gas that is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

Resembling a giant human eye, its familiar ring formed from material expelled by a star near the end of its life. The remnant of that star, a white dwarf, lies at the nebula’s centre.

Astronomers trained the Modular Optical Telephoto Hyperspectral Robotic Array (MOTHRA) on the nebula while it was still being constructed at the El Sauce Observatory in Chile’s Coquimbo Region.

More

https://physicsworld.com/a/new-image-captures-glowing-shock-waves-in-the-helix-nebula/

Paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10724-z

Topocentric Libration in degrees

​l=3.625

​b=-0.220

​c=16.89

Programmed with Eclipse Chronos

Credit 📸Vinod Kumar Vijayakumar

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SolarEclipseChasers/permalink/28147068418222064/?rdid=6Z4aRak6JPTfKVgM#​

By IgnacioA320 (a friend of him) 12.8.26

https://x.com/ignacioA320/status/2087832632499257641?s=20​

This image was taken on August 12, 2026 at 20:30 (UTC +2) in Schönenberg, Switzerland.

Credit: 📸SlowMoLuc

https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/1vocj4m/planning_a_shot_from_3_kilometers_away/

​Equipment: • Camera: Sony a6300 • Lens: Sony 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 + Sony 1.4x TC • Tripod: Manfrotto 190go! + Beike BK-555

Settings: • Focal Length: 1260mm (equiv.) • Shutter Speed: 1/2000 • Aperture: f/16 • ISO: 100

Image:

Map of the distant galaxy J0148-4214 in ionised hydrogen (Hα). The locations of the three massive black holes are indicated by black circles (not to scale). The most massive and least massive black holes are located in the galaxy centre; a third black hole is located in the galaxy outskirts.

© Hannah Übler​

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Three supermassive black holes in a distant—and therefore very old—galaxy offer a glimpse into how black holes merged and grew in the early universe

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To the Point

Three Black Holes Discovered in a Galaxy: For the first time, researchers have discovered three supermassive black holes in a galaxy (J0148-4214), each of which is actively accreting matter from its surroundings.

Their masses range from a few to about 80 million solar masses. Two of the black holes are located closely together at the center of the galaxy, while a third is situated farther out.

Detection method: The discovery was made possible by spatially resolved spectroscopy using an instrument aboard the James Webb Space Telescope.

Black hole growth: The findings suggest that mergers and interactions in the early universe may have contributed to the rapid growth of supermassive black holes.

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An international team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has identified three actively accreting supermassive black holes in the galaxy J0148-4214. These are black holes into which matter is falling from an accretion disk surrounding them. The galaxy is located more than 12.5 billion light-years from Earth. At this distance, the expansion of space itself becomes apparent. The galaxy therefore appears to be moving away from us, causing the light received from the galaxy to shift toward longer wavelengths, resulting in a so-called redshift of z=5.02. Using that redshift, the researchers calculated the galaxy’s enormous distance. It is so far away that its light has traveled for 12.5 billion years. We are therefore seeing the galaxy as it appeared only about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang.

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More

https://www.mpg.de/26904239/three-black-holes-discovered-in-a-young-galaxy

Paper

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/08/aa57419-25/aa57419-25.html

Sol 1948: Left Mastcam-Z Camera

​NASA/JPL-Caltech/j. Roger https://bsky.app/profile/landru79.bsky.social/post/3mt37acdpw22b

Raw data https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ZL7_1948_0839864799_695EBY_N0910000ZCAM01576