SPACE DAILY

Astrophysics and Space Exploration

[world-beauty]

Night on a Spooky Planet

Credits: Stéphane Vetter, Nuits sacrées

[of-stars-and-dust]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

2026 June 28

AR 4478: Giant Sunspot Group

The Sun is pictured in yellow with surface structure. In the middle of the frame are many circuitous dark spots. The edge of the Sun is visible at the top of the image.

Image Credit & Copyright: Alfredo Vidal Pérez

Explanation: Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun. Active Region 4478 is not only big -- it's violent, showing tangled magnetic fields capable of throwing off huge clouds of particles into the Solar System. Some of these CMEs might impact the Earth. At the extreme, these solar storms could cause some Earth-orbiting satellites to malfunction, the Earth's atmosphere to slightly distort, and electrical power grids to surge. When impacting Earth's upper atmosphere, these particles can produce beautiful auroras. Pictured here, AR 4478 and its dark sunspots were captured in visible light a few days ago from Barcelona, Spain. Almost as large as AR 3664 was in 2024, the AR 4478 sunspot group is so big that it is visible just with glasses specially designed to view solar eclipses. This week, skygazing enthusiasts all over the globe will not only be tracking AR 4478 during the day -- but keenly watching night skies for its corresponding bright auroras.

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

NASA Official: Amber Straughn

A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,

NASA Science Activation

& Michigan Tech. U.

[world-beauty]

Dark Sky, Bright Sun

Credits: STS-82 Crew, NASA

[spacewonder19]

Comet R3 PanSTARRS Through Time ©

[without-ado]

Comet Lemmon, Big Dipper and Cirrus Clouds

l Petr Horálek l Kopřivná, Czech Republic

[spacetelescopescience]

One of the most extreme known exoplanets could be more harsh than previously thought, according to researchers sharing the James Webb Space Telescope’s latest observations of HD 80606 b today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California.

The planet is seen here in an artist’s concept.

Webb’s powerful instruments show that HD 80606 b’s temperature swings are even more extreme than detected by its predecessor, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. Both saw that the planet’s exaggerated elliptical orbit resulted in huge temperature swings.

Initial analysis of Webb's results show that the planet's temperature can jump by 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius) as it speeds by its Sun-like star. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI).

[apod]

2026 June 14

10 Days of Venus and Jupiter Image Credit & Copyright: Aditya Pawar

Explanation: Venus and Jupiter may have caught your attention lately. The recent close conjunction of the two brightest planets in recent evening skies has been hard to miss. With Jupiter at the top, starting on May 30 and ending on June 8, their close approach was chronicled daily, left to right, in the featured panels from Maharashtra, India. Near the western horizon, the evening sky colors and exposures used for each panel depend on the local conditions near sunset. At their closest on June 9, the celestial pair appeared to be only about three times the width of a full moon apart. Of course, on that date, the two planets were physically separated by over 600 million kilometers in their orbits around the Sun. In the coming days, Jupiter will slowly settle into the sunset glare, but Venus will continue to move farther from the Sun in the western sky to excel in its current role as the brilliant evening star.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260614.html

[lonestarflight]

A mockup of the 12-man “Big G” spacecraft at McDonnell Douglas's factory in St Louis, Missouri.

Date: April 14, 1969

source

[quiltofstars]

The Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus, top) in the LMC // Cankun Wang

[world-beauty]

A Galaxy Collision in NGC 6745

Credits: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team, STScI, AURA, KPNO, NOAO, et al.

[quiltofstars]

The Dragon's Egg Nebula, NGC 6164 (lower left) // Imre Klacsány

[apod]

2026 May 28

NGC 1514: The Crystal Ball Nebula Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; 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) Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Explanation: What do you see in this crystal ball? The featured image shows NGC 1514, known as the Crystal Ball Nebula, observed by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, in Hawai'i. NGC 1514 is 1,500 light-years away and was discovered by William Herschel in 1790. This planetary nebula is formed when a star becomes a red giant and ejects its outer gas layers. The ejected shell of gas is heated up by the core of the star to temperatures hotter than the surface of our Sun: that makes the gas shine, creating beautiful images like this one. The slightly asymmetrical shape of the Crystal Ball Nebula reveals a secret: the bright star in the center has a companion. As the two stars orbit each other with a period of about nine years, they shape the gas around them. In about 10,000 - 25,000 years the nebula will be dissipated by their stellar winds.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260528.html

[astrophysics-daily]

APOD: 2026 May 24 – A Martian Eclipse: Phobos Crosses the Sun

A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

Explanation: What's that passing in front of the Sun? It looks like a moon, but it can't be Earth's Moon, because it isn't round. It's the Martian moon Phobos. The featured video was taken from the surface of Mars in 2022 by the Perseverance rover. Phobos, at 11.5 kilometers across, is 150 times smaller than Luna (our moon) in diameter, but also 50 times closer to its parent planet. In fact, Phobos is so close to Mars that it is expected to break up and crash into Mars within the next 50 million years. In the near term, the low orbit of Phobos results in more rapid solar eclipses than seen from Earth. The featured video is shown in real time -- the transit really took about 40 seconds, as shown. The videographer -- the robotic rover Perseverance (Percy) -- continues to explore Jezero Crater on Mars, searching not only for clues to the watery history of the now dry world, but evidence of ancient microbial life.

Video Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU MSSS, SSI

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

[apod]

2026 May 14

Messier Catalog at Uniform Scale Image Credit: Sylvain Villet Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Explanation: What are some of the most interesting astronomical objects you can see in the night sky? Armed with a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you can look for the very popular objects in the Messier Catalog. Most of them, but not all, are also visible from the southern half of the Earth. The featured image shows all 110 objects in the catalog at uniform scale – the same magnification. Charles Messier created the catalog in the 18th century. He was interested in comets, and his catalog was a list of known comet-like “objects to avoid” in the sky when observing or hunting for comets. The deep sky objects in the catalog include a supernova remnant (the Crab Nebula, M1), other galaxies (such as Andromeda, M31), nebulae (e.g. the Orion Nebula, M42, a star-forming region) and stellar clusters (such as the Pleiades, M45, a bright young open cluster).

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260514.html

[world-beauty]

Three Month Composite of Comet Holmes

Credits: John Pane

[spacetelescopescience]

Located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, NGC 346 is a region of star formation seen here in Hubble Space Telescope visible light data (red, green, and blue) and Chandra observatory X-rays (pinkish purple).

The large, neon-pink X-ray cloud hangs in the upper right, representing the high-energy environment of stars roughly 1 to 3 million years old. The dark blue background is scattered with orange and white stellar specks and hazy streaks of gas and dust.

NGC 346 is home to more than 2,500 newborn stars. The cluster’s most massive stars, which are many times more massive than our Sun, blaze with an intense blue light in this image.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Nota, P. Massey, E. Sabbi, C. Murray, M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare.

[apod]

2026 March 1

The Moon During a Total Lunar Eclipse Video Credit: Wang Letian & Zhang Jiajie

Explanation: How does the Moon’s appearance change during a total lunar eclipse? The featured time-lapse video was digitally processed to keep the Moon bright and centered during the 5-hour eclipse of 2018 January 31. At first the full moon is visible because only a full moon can undergo a lunar eclipse. Stars move by in the background because the Moon orbits the Earth during the eclipse. The circular shadow of the Earth is then seen moving across the Moon. The light blue hue of the shadow’s edge is related to why Earth’s sky is blue, while the deep red hue of the shadow’s center is related to why the Sun appears red when near the horizon. Tomorrow night, people living in Eastern Asia, Australia, and much of North America may get to see a Total Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse. Here the term blood refers to the (likely) red color of a fully eclipsed Moon.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260301.html