J. Dougherty

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Live view of Jupiter through 24" telescope eyepiece by Tom Williams

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Saturn, seen through a 24" telescope eyepiece

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Blue Moon on June 1, 2026 by Andrew McCarthy

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Red visuals in Project Hail Mary

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Aurora seen aboard the ISS taken by Jessica Meir

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One of my favorite pictures that Christina Koch has taken. I love the images where you can see the inside of the capsule and the windows

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Webb unveils young stars across every stage of formation in Orion's Molecular Clouds

For this NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month we return to the constellation Orion (the Hunter), a location familiar to Webb. This area of the sky is replete with star-forming clouds that make up a complex hundreds of light-years across. We find ourselves in the giant molecular cloud Orion A, of which the familiar Orion Nebula (also known as M42) is just a part; Webb has taken both close-up and wide-angle looks at M42 before.

The target of these observations, however, requires us to look behind the Orion Nebula. Behind the stars, gas and dust of M42 is a long, massive filament of cold gas and dust called (somewhat confusingly) the Orion Molecular Clouds, which is divided into four parts, OMC-1 through OMC-4. OMC-1 sits immediately behind M42, to the north are OMC-2 and OMC-3, and OMC-4 lies to the south.

This image shows just a small, northern portion of OMC-2, located 1280 light-years from Earth and a little north of the Orion Nebula. Every stage of star formation – from the youngest stellar embryos, to protoplanetary discs, to newly-minted pre-main sequence stars – is contained within just this scene, which stretches 150 light-years across. The intense star-forming activity has produced an impressive display of billowing outflows and sparkling stars atop swirling layers of gas and dark, obscuring clouds.

Molecular clouds such as OMC-2 are vast clumps of gas much more dense than the rest of interstellar space. This density allows complex molecules to form, protected from the radiation given off by other stars, and it means that gravity can cause the cloud to collapse and form stars. The earliest stage of this process is a protostar – a growing star that is being fed gas from the surrounding cloud through a spinning disc of gas. As gas falls onto the protostar, it heats up, powering the glow of the protostar. The immense amount of energy acquired during this process is unleashed in fierce jets of gas from the poles of the star, frequently seen as twin glowing outflows that mark the location of a protostar.

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Crescent Saturn

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Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin with the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon during his 1971 mission.

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Mars’ “tadpole craters” are unusual impact craters with long trailing tails of debris, making them resemble tadpoles when viewed from orbit. They’re found mainly in icy regions of Mars and are thought to form when meteoroids strike ground rich in subsurface ice.

The leading idea is that the impact melts or vaporizes buried ice, creating a muddy, fluidized flow rather than the normal circular spray of dry rock debris. Strong winds or sloping terrain may then stretch the ejecta into a tail shape. Some tails extend for miles across the surface.

These craters are scientifically interesting because they suggest significant buried water ice exists beneath the Martian surface.

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Planet Mercury with Sodium tail

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How can you not be emotional when you see a picture of our beautiful Earth?

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Watch the Artemis II re-entry from inside the capsule. Amazing POV video right here.

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Galileo Galilei's first drawings of the moon after seeing it through the telescope in 1609

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An amazing image of Saturn taken by NASA's space probe Cassini. Notice the pole is hexagonal - so cool!

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33 hour exposure of the Dolphin Nebula. Source

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A beacon of light in swirls of dust (MIRI)

The heart of galaxy M77 is shining so brightly in this Webb telescope image, it nearly outshines the galaxy itself. The intense glow is due to gas being pulled by the strong gravity of the central black hole into a tight and rapid orbit around it. The motion of the gas causes it to heat up, releasing tremendous amounts of radiation. 

This image is Webb’s mid-infrared view with swirling filaments of dust shown in blue. The glowing orange bubbles along the arms are being carved out by newly formed star clusters. 

Those bright orange lines radiating out of the center are diffraction spikes. They aren’t a physical feature of the galaxy, but an optical effect caused by the telescope itself. Observing a bright object results in the light being slightly bent (or diffracted) around the edges of the telescope primary mirror, and the struts that hold the secondary mirror. In this case, Webb’s primary mirror segments are hexagonal, and there is a tripod holding up the secondary, which gives the resulting spike effect a distinctive six-plus-two-pointed signature pattern. Hubble images will show 4 point diffraction spikes due to the different configuration. 

Read more: esawebb.org/images/potm2604a/ 

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy 

Image Description: A spiral galaxy shown in mid-infrared light. The image is dominated by an extremely bright glow from the galaxy’s nucleus. Six large and two smaller rays of light emit from the centre, which are diffraction spikes created by the telescope’s optics. The galaxy’s spiral arms are visible by two lines of glowing orange bubbles which whirl out into the disc. Swirling blue clouds of dust make up the rest of the galaxy.