https://deepfield.news/gallery/ 2026-10-12 /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science How many moons can you see? The best answer is five: four orbiting Jupiter and Luna orbiting Earth. This multi-moon picture was possible because Earth's Moon moved directly in front of Jupiter last week. The featured image is a series of exposures near alignment taken from Westchester, New York, USA. The sunlit crescent of Earth's Moon, on the lower left, is overexposed, while the Moon's night side, on the upper… /img/289f10b8c8b55cd3.jpg Massive antenna, silent mirror In today’s Picture of the Week, the decommissioned Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope ( SEST ), at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, shows its 15-metre diameter surface, reflecting the starry night sky of one of the most pristine sites for astronomical observations on Earth. SEST was, at the time of its first light in 1987, the only large telescope in the southern hemisphere designed for… /img/8f821887837ba3a2.jpg Antarctic Sea Ice Grows to Its 2026 Maximum The ice reached its third-lowest maximum extent since satellite observations began. The post Antarctic Sea Ice Grows to Its 2026 Maximum appeared first on NASA Science . /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science Scientists are melting holes in the bottom of the world. In fact, almost 100 holes melted near the South Pole are now being used as an astronomical observatory. Astronomers with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory lowered a long string knotted with basketball-sized light detectors into each vertical lake. The water in each hole soon refreezes. The detectors attached to the strings are sensitive to blue light emitted in… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science Tidally locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its familiar nearside to denizens of planet Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon's farside can become familiar, though. In fact this sharp picture, a mosaic from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's wide angle camera, is centered on the lunar farside. Part of a global mosaic of over 15,000 images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011, the highest… /img/643e022bf69b3b21.jpg Cosmic House of Mirrors This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features galaxies in incredible detail that have been warped and multiplied like they’ve stepped into a house of mirrors. /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet's moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This enhanced-color… /img/fb69f55c5651c06e.jpg Floodwaters Overwhelm Thailand Heavy rains since mid-September have caused widespread flooding that has affected millions of people across the country. The post Floodwaters Overwhelm Thailand appeared first on NASA Science . /img/423907c8a0e9b7ce.jpg Crew-12 Returns to Earth The SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft is seen as it lands with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026. /img/ba4fb052f39f2d8e.jpg Farthest Fast Radio Burst host galaxy spectrum Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope were able to study the host galaxy of the most distant known fast radio burst (FRB). By detecting light emitted from oxygen and nitrogen, they were able to determine the galaxy’s cosmological redshift, thereby confirming the FRB occurred just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. [Image description : A graphic titled “Fast Radio Burst Host Galaxy; Most… /img/31151826b439280b.jpg FRB 20240304B (NIRCam annotated image) This image of the host galaxy of fast radio burst FRB 20240304B, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera ( NIRCam ), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and colour key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science How was the Saturn system imaged so clearly? Astrophotographer Tom Williams captured such exquisite details due to one night of exceptional atmospheric conditions above the United Kingdom. This means more than a cloudless sky. Pockets of air at different temperatures and densities move around and bend light as it travels through Earth’s atmosphere, distorting astronomy images. This is called “seeing”. Less… /img/624f5a8f7fd20099.jpg Fighting Drought in Texas Cotton Country Drought and an ailing aquifer were major topics of conversation when NASA scientists visited with farmers in the Texas High Plains. The post Fighting Drought in Texas Cotton Country appeared first on NASA Science . /img/3214088cab1ac5e2.jpg 1976 Redux: Somewhere Over the Rainbow Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. Many of the telescopes at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory ( KPNO ), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, featured in this image, are equipped with spectrographs. These instruments separate light into its constituent colors, just as water droplets in rain clouds split sunlight into a rainbow. By measuring the light emanating from objects in space at… /img/3214088cab1ac5e2.jpg 1976 Redux: Somewhere Over the Rainbow Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. Many of the telescopes at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory ( KPNO ), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, featured in this image, are equipped with spectrographs. These instruments separate light into its constituent colors, just as water droplets in rain clouds split sunlight into a rainbow. By measuring the light emanating from objects in space at… /img/0cb4372862ff2826.png NASA’s Curiosity Looks Back After Reaching Elevation Milestone Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this view looking back at the floor of Gale Crater, with the crater’s rim visible in the distance, on Sept. 5, 2026, the 5,006th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Just nine days prior, on Aug. 26 (Sol 4,996), Curiosity set a mission milestone by reaching 1 kilometer […] The post NASA’s Curiosity Looks Back After Reaching Elevation Milestone appeared first on NASA… /img/2780c8ddf6e40a32.png NASA’s Curiosity Captures Dawn Breaking on Wind-Carved Cliffs Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this panorama of sunrise illuminating distant, wind-carved features called yardangs on Aug. 11, 2026, the 4,982nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Scientists are eager to learn more about how the yardang layer formed. Figure A is a crop zooming in on the distant yardangs. Since 2014, Curiosity […] The post NASA’s Curiosity Captures Dawn Breaking on Wind-Carved… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science "Happy New Year!" No, wait, this is not a fireworks display. 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… /img/b3e19a6cbf81c6e3.jpg Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Its 2026 Minimum Satellite records show Arctic sea ice covering less of the ocean in both winter and summer. The post Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Its 2026 Minimum appeared first on NASA Science . /img/9407c846e0cf5e1f.jpg Gemini North’s laser shines through airglow The Gemini North telescope’s laser guide star beams up into the atmosphere, backdropped by the mesmerizing green wash of airglow . The laser guide star is used to measure turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere so the telescope can correct for it and achieve clear images of the night sky. Airglow is faint light emitted by atoms in the upper atmosphere that have been excited by the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Gemini… /img/7988ebcf94d78c75.jpg Supernova remnant Pa 30 No, this is not a firework display. This is Pa 30 — the likely remnant of the historic supernova witnessed in the year 1181, now captured here in unprecedented detail by the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory , partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation ( NSF ) and operated by NSF NOIRLab. This image was captured with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph ( GMOS ), and… /img/bfaf554c4dd22300.jpg NGC 7129 (NIRCam image) The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam ( Near-InfraRed Camera ) has revealed many protostars and stars within the glowing gases of NGC 7129. The region to the left of the central star is filled with hot, atomic hydrogen gas, which creates a golden glow, while the region to the right is packed with cooler, molecular hydrogen. Embedded protostars in the rightmost region eject outflows that shock and heat… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science Have you ever seen a complete auroral oval? You can't see one from the ground because it makes too large a circle around one of Earth's magnetic poles. But spacecraft high above the Earth can see them. The featured video from ESA and CAS's robotic SMILE spacecraft shows not only a full auroral oval, but using ultraviolet light, one that occurred during the day. The time-lapse covers about an hour in late July and… /img/6e9150a15188f720.jpg The Beaver Brown Waters of Rupert Bay Dissolved organic matter and suspended sediment mingle in the southernmost extent of James Bay. The post The Beaver Brown Waters of Rupert Bay appeared first on NASA Science . /img/29d5c51d843fb180.jpg NASA Astronaut Christina Koch at Eagles vs. Rams NASA astronaut and mission specialist of the agency's Artemis II mission, Christina Koch, led the fans in singing the Eagles Fight Song from the field at an NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026, in Philadelphia. /img/8fb4a0ca06919a9a.jpg Hubble Spectrum of White Dwarf HS 0209+0832 This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spectrum shows the unusual abundances of certain elements it found in the HS 0209+0832 system. Dips indicate where niobium, nickel, and calcium are absorbing light, so less light in that part of the spectrum reached Hubble. The reason the starlight is showing elements that astronomers attribute to a planet has to do with interactions between the white dwarf star and planet. The… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science A deep image of the Sombrero galaxy reveals surprises. M104 is named the Sombrero galaxy because, on shorter exposures, it looks like a hat. A key defining feature of this huge galaxy is a dark brim of dust that circles the disk galaxy's center. A much longer exposure, however, brings up a hairy past where a bright, hazy halo is revealed that extends well past the central disk and contains many unresolved stars… /img/9b997a0aab19ba85.jpg Moon-Like Madagascar A bright lens of anorthosite, a rock type prevalent on the lunar surface, is cradled within sheared rocks in the country’s south. The post Moon-Like Madagascar appeared first on NASA Science . /img/eee7263c2711cf24.jpg A swirling galaxy Like a portal to another dimension, a hypnotising swirl features in today’s Picture of the Week. This is the spiral galaxy M83 , also known as the Southern Pinwheel , located approximately 15 million light-years away. It is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky, but this image –– taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA ), in which ESO is a partner –– doesn’t show how M83 looks in… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science Yes, but can your rainbow do this? After the remnants of Hurricane Florence passed over the Jersey Shore, New Jersey, USA in 2018, the Sun came out in one direction but something quite unusual appeared in the opposite direction: a hall of rainbows. Over the course of the next half hour, to the delight of the photographer and his daughter, vibrant supernumerary rainbows faded in and out, with at least five captured… /img/04b652d781b3bfa2.jpg NASA's DAVINCI Probe Can Stand the Heat An engineering model of NASA’s DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) descent probe passed a key test that ran from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, showing it can survive the extreme temperatures of Venus. /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science What does it take to image hundreds of nebulas? Today’s image contains the entire Sharpless Catalog of H II Regions, totaling 313 objects. Zoom in and explore! You may spot fan favorites like the Eagle (Sh2-49), Heart (Sh2-190), and Orion (Sh2-281) Nebulas. Despite its name, this catalog contains more than the glow of ionized hydrogen that makes up H II regions. There are planetary nebulas (the Medusa Nebula… /img/7de7dd9ffd0a2698.jpg Rains Swamp the Gandak River After days of torrential rain, the river rose to record-breaking levels in parts of Nepal and India. The post Rains Swamp the Gandak River appeared first on NASA Science . /img/675b85d706bfc896.jpg NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Launches A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov aboard, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. /img/fd1f5fdb82fdacf0.jpg Composition of extreme debris discs across time A team of researchers compiled the largest sample of extreme debris discs to date thanks to data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb and NASA’s Spitzer space telescopes. These young stellar systems are a subclass of debris discs, which follows the juvenile protoplanetary disc stage. Interested in the mineralogical makeup of these young stellar systems, the team separated their sample into silica-rich and silica-poor… /img/e2b9dfc202a4b3f7.png NASA Science Have you ever seen the full moon rise? This colorful image was photographed last weekend in Sicily, just outside the town of Nicosia, in Italy. It is a composite photograph that shows the Moon rising as the sky turns darker. Lower clouds are reflecting the colors of antitwilight, while ash and gas from Mount Etna are seen higher in the background. The pink band lower in the sky is called the Belt of Venus. During a… /img/e9f626a112596d9d.jpg An Agricultural “Island” in the Saskatchewan River Delta Surrounded by wetlands, Manitoba's northernmost farmland near The Pas turns from green to brown over the 2026 growing season. The post An Agricultural “Island” in the Saskatchewan River Delta appeared first on NASA Science . /img/992158a85491ce5f.jpg Let’s Go, Airglow! A color-packed sky full of brilliant orange airglow hangs over Gemini North in Hawai‘i. The Gemini North telescope is one half of the International Gemini Observatory , supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation ( NSF ) and operated by NSF NOIRLab. In the top right of this image, we see the constellation Orion (The Hunter). Three red emission nebulae of the Orion molecular cloud complex are vividly… /img/992158a85491ce5f.jpg Let’s Go, Airglow! A color-packed sky full of brilliant orange airglow hangs over Gemini North in Hawai‘i. The Gemini North telescope is one half of the International Gemini Observatory , supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation ( NSF ) and operated by NSF NOIRLab. In the top right of this image, we see the constellation Orion (The Hunter). Three red emission nebulae of the Orion molecular cloud complex are vividly… /img/02fccc815607d7c0.jpg Star Trails This long-duration image shows star trails above Earth and the blue lights of fishing boats and the yellow lights of Indonesian cities stretching below the International Space Station as it orbited 258 miles above the Banda Sea. /img/d3702b2cba080add.jpg Powerful Storms Continue to Prowl the Pacific Hurricanes Polo and Nolo sent destructive effects ashore amid an active season in the northeastern and central Pacific. The post Powerful Storms Continue to Prowl the Pacific appeared first on NASA Science . /img/08d09e9df4061f46.jpg Hubble seeks lensed supernova, marks 200,000 orbits The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on 19 September 2026, marking another new milestone for an observatory that continues to transform our understanding of the Universe. Hubble has traveled more than 8 billion kilometres around Earth over its 36-year lifetime, exceeding 1.7 million total observations. An observation completed on the day of the 200,000th orbit pertains to… /img/ee9f86fa75c0aad4.jpg Crew-13 Rocket and Spacecraft at Launch Pad Ahead of launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon spacecraft atop, is vertical at the launch pad of Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026. /img/a8e4852bb091bbd9.jpg Sh2-188: The Shrimp Nebula What causes the swirl in the Shrimp Nebula? Its high speed is likely. What is sure is that Sh2-188 is one of the larger planetary nebulas on the night sky, by angular size, spanning about half the diameter of the Moon. Moreover, the white-dwarf core -- leftover from the Sun-like star that shed its outer atmosphere -- is moving unusually fast through interstellar space, creating a bow shock most visible on the upper… /img/8e511192cdf61ac4.jpg Galaxies in a cosmic house of mirrors This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features galaxies in incredible detail that have been warped and multiplied like they’ve stepped into a house of mirrors. The brilliant golden galaxies splashed across this image belong to a galaxy cluster called MACS J0454.1-0300. The orange galaxies concentrated on one side of the cluster are not actually part of the cluster; these galaxies are much… /img/3df255f6df3ce590.jpg Fire Cloud With a Pileus on Top Scientists captured rare observations of an ephemeral pileus cloud hovering over a smoke-infused cloud that rose above a wildfire in Montana. The post Fire Cloud With a Pileus on Top appeared first on NASA Science . /img/73ee3d9317a15d17.jpg Space Station View of Earth at Night This nighttime view of the United States, dotted with city lights looking toward New York City (center), was taken at approximately 3:40 a.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above Earth. /img/a5f913e75073b137.jpg Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. In computer parlance: #FFF8E7. To determine this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of the larger… https://deepfield.news/gallery/2/ 2026-09-28 /img/f9f47913d8d69970.jpg Dark clouds and a starry night sky The centre of the Milky Way emerges between two telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, with splatters of light embedded in dark clouds. Two gleaming nebulae can be seen between the telescopes: the Trifid Nebula (left) and the Lagoon Nebula (right). They can be found in the constellation Sagittarius, and their red colour comes from hydrogen atoms ionised by young stars in these clouds… /img/16a5e4c91d2c5f94.jpg Uncovering the Valleys Hidden Below Greenland’s Ice A new map of the terrain beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet links hundreds of valleys that previous maps missed or left fragmented. The post Uncovering the Valleys Hidden Below Greenland’s Ice appeared first on NASA Science . /img/1dcb094d86f85b96.jpg Andromeda before Photoshop What does the Andromeda galaxy really look like? The featured image shows how our Milky Way Galaxy's closest major galactic neighbor really appears in a long exposure through Earth's busy skies and with a digital camera that introduces normal imperfections. The picture is a stack of 223 images, each a 300 second exposure, taken from a garden observatory in Portugal during 2019. Obvious image deficiencies include… /img/6cd708829dc7de87.jpg Mirrored Meteor and Milky Way On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The bright and colorful meteor trail was captured next to the central Milky Way, whose dark interstellar dust clouds and luminous starlight reach above the horizon. In the foreground of this tantalizing celestial scene is the 23 meter diameter mirror of the prototype… /img/726143744c290650.jpg Hubble Spots Chaotic Secret in Galaxy Though the spiral galaxy in this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret. /img/1f31593d1593a095.jpg Globular Cluster Omega Centauri Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen… /img/81989a5dfdcc9bc4.jpg Explosive Intensification for Hurricane Polo Several ingredients came together off the Pacific coast of Mexico to generate one of the strongest storms the eastern Pacific basin has ever seen. The post Explosive Intensification for Hurricane Polo appeared first on NASA Science . /img/b533955b4b43db89.jpg Practicing for Safe Landings on the Moon and Beyond An Alta-X drone flies an advanced guidance and navigation system known as the Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) experiment near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. /img/08bde159d0d5b123.jpg The Ghosts of Five Supernovas The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary image. It was acquired at Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco with approximately 200 hours of observations and shows a large patch of the sky, equivalent to the area of one thousand full moons tiled together, in the constellation of Auriga (the Charioteer). From left to right, the five supernova remnants visible across the field are G181.1+9.5, G182.4+4.3… /img/e001ec421d5f2a3d.jpg Cloudy Cloak Over the Northwest A low-lying cloud layer brought autumn ambience to western Washington and Oregon, while mountainous areas near the coast remained above the pall. The post Cloudy Cloak Over the Northwest appeared first on NASA Science . /img/0ab2f4f4aeadd640.jpg Rubin and the Seven Sisters The Pleiades glow in the southern sky above NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory from a viewpoint on Cerro Pachón in Chile. Rubin Observatory is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. Its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time ( LSST ) began earlier this year on 29 June 2026. This NOIRLab Image of the Week captures the seven bright stars of the… /img/7e6b3ab7b8db4c8d.jpg NASA's Hubble Telescope Reaches Milestone, Looks for Elusive Supernova An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of galaxy cluster MACS J0417 is part of repeated observations to monitor for the reappearance of supernova Athena, which can help astronomers measure the expansion rate of the universe. /img/111d7f166a930b86.jpg Boom Year for Desert Blooms Carpets of wildflowers burst from arid, ochre-colored land in Western Australia following winter rains. The post Boom Year for Desert Blooms appeared first on NASA Science . /img/98c45e2299c90ab8.jpg NASA's Chandra Finds Unusual Objects in Pinwheel Galaxy Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have seen before. /img/f4f029257d53734c.jpg Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun This shot captured an unexpected silhouette. Which is it? It isn't the sunspots, the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic fields visible around the Sun's bright disk. Sunspots typically last for weeks and were expected, since these spots were seen previously. It isn’t the International Space Station (ISS), the small dark structure on the middle left. This is because the featured picture was planned… /img/16fbae4120346c59.jpg An Epic View of the Seasons The tilt in Earth's axis of rotation makes the apparent position of continents shift with the seasons in imagery from a NASA camera in deep space. The post An Epic View of the Seasons appeared first on NASA Science . /img/b3616151654fd64e.jpg Perseverance’s View of ‘Turquoise Bay’ Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this 360-degree panorama of “Turquoise Bay,” a geologic area of interest in the “Margin Unit.” The 818 images used to create the natural-color panorama were captured between Oct. 5 and Oct. 16, 2023, the 933rd to 944th Martian days, or sols, of the mission. […] The post Perseverance’s View of ‘Turquoise Bay’ appeared first on NASA… /img/3a6d75148d5904da.jpg Cocoon Nebula Wide Field When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. A compact star forming region, the cosmic Cocoon punctuates a nebula bright in emission and reflection on the lower right, with a long trail of interstellar dust clouds to the left, making the entire complex appear a bit like a… /img/d18b1ebcdc170ce4.jpg A wheel fit for a giant In a cleanroom at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics ( MPE ) in Garching, Germany, two engineers look up at the heart of MICADO . One of the first instruments that will operate on ESO's Extremely Large Telescope ( ELT ) in Chile’s Atacama Desert, MICADO will observe the Universe in the infrared, and each slot in this giant rotating wheel carries a different filter that lets light through at… /img/e6c311fbf905aeab.jpg Arctic Melt Season Length Levels Off While the sea ice melt season has lengthened dramatically in most of the satellite era, the trend unexpectedly stabilized around 2010. The post Arctic Melt Season Length Levels Off appeared first on NASA Science . /img/b3616151654fd64e.jpg Perseverance’s View of ‘Turquoise Bay’ Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this 360-degree panorama of “Turquoise Bay,” a geologic area of interest in the “Margin Unit.” The 818 images used to create the natural-color panorama were captured between Oct. 5 and Oct. 16, 2023, the 933rd to 944th Martian days, or sols, of the mission. […] /img/0ac0f80a4af19a92.jpg Analemma over the Callanish Stones If you went outside at the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun's position change? A visual answer to that question is an analemma, a composite image taken from the same spot at the same time over the course of a year. The featured analemma was composed from images taken every few days at noon near the village of Callanish in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, UK. In the… /img/66af187fbe9e760e.jpg A Zodiacal Night Also known as the false dawn, a luminous band of zodiacal light is captured in this dark night skyscape. The serene view was recorded just before the beginning of astronomical twilight during September's star party at the remote Hanle Dark Sky Reserve, Ladakh, India, planet Earth. At about 4,500 meters altitude, the dark sky reserve presents a haven for hardy stargazing and astrophotography enthusiasts. While… /img/de9f9898ffe0815f.jpg COSI Telescope Comes Together UC Berkeley engineers and managers watch as the COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) detector assembly is slowly raised from a table in this July 8, 2026, image. /img/00beb047381028b1.jpg Messier 33: The Triangulum Galaxy The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, Messier 33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of… /img/72dc8162853b9b43.jpg A galaxy spinning out of sync potm2609 - A galaxy spinning out of sync /img/72dc8162853b9b43.jpg A galaxy spinning out of sync Though the spiral galaxy in this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret. This galaxy is NGC 4698, and it lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo . It’s one of over one thousand galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity. As a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way galaxy, NGC 4698 has spiral arms that… /img/169785b49558382d.jpg Lake Powell Drops to Record-Low Levels Snow drought and unusually warm temperatures in the Colorado Basin in 2026 helped drive down reservoir water storage in the U.S. West. The post Lake Powell Drops to Record-Low Levels appeared first on NASA Science . /img/ea96da24627c2066.jpg A Treasure Chest in the Carina Nebula This treasure chest is full of stars. The featured image was obtained with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and shows a dust pillar in the Carina Nebula inside our Galaxy, roughly 7500 light-years away. It is formed by interstellar gas and dust, and shaped by powerful stellar winds and radiation form neighboring stars like the nearby Eta Carinae stellar system which is more luminous than 5 million suns. The star… /img/7ff73c644f75a66a.jpg Summer Goes Out With a Heat Dome Temperature records toppled across the central and southern U.S. as the autumnal equinox approached. The post Summer Goes Out With a Heat Dome appeared first on NASA Science . /img/b1ed8d08d2126a27.jpg Three Faces of the Moon over Kitt Peak On 3 March 2026, the Moon showed us three of its “faces”: the full Moon, the blood Moon, and the distorted Moon. This image compares these views as seen from the U.S. National Science Foundation ( NSF ) Kitt Peak National Observatory ( KPNO ) in Arizona, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. When full, the Moon is completely illuminated by the Sun. The full Moon appears on the left of the image, taken at 1:12 a.m., before the… /img/51266dfc120ab94a.jpg Three Faces of the Moon over Kitt Peak (Unannotated) On 3 March 2026, the Moon showed us three of its “faces”: the full Moon, the blood Moon, and the distorted Moon. This image compares these views as seen from the U.S. National Science Foundation ( NSF ) Kitt Peak National Observatory ( KPNO ) in Arizona, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. An annotated version of this image was featured as a NOIRLab Image of the Week . Petr Horálek, the photographer, is a NOIRLab Audiovisual… /img/2679c86bb21fd80c.jpg Indonesia's Anak Krakatau Anak Krakatau erupts ash and volcanic gases in this image acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 on Sept. 5, 2026. /img/44cd97aee0a7d012.jpg Curiosity Postcard Celebrates Rover’s 5,000th Day on Mars Description While parked at a sand ridge nicknamed “Chocolatal,” NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times of day. The first was taken on Aug. 30, 2026, at 9:56 a.m. local Mars time; the second was taken on Sep. 2, 2026, at 5:39 p.m. local Mars time. Those […] The post Curiosity Postcard Celebrates Rover’s 5,000th Day on Mars appeared first on NASA… /img/c2c737fa18ec0da8.jpg Webb's View of M64 Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are… /img/011d96fba5324f3d.jpg Purple Haze Aurora 'Scuse me while some charged particles kiss the sky. The post Purple Haze Aurora appeared first on NASA Science . /img/44cd97aee0a7d012.jpg Curiosity Postcard Celebrates Rover’s 5,000th Day on Mars Description While parked at a sand ridge nicknamed “Chocolatal,” NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times of day. The first was taken on Aug. 30, 2026, at 9:56 a.m. local Mars time; the second was taken on Sep. 2, 2026, at 5:39 p.m. local Mars time. Those […] /img/c69c85d930731bb0.jpg Artemis III Crew Visits NASA Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik (left) and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano view progress on the solid rocket booster integration in High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. /img/d4ab53229f5d4365.jpg Collage of cutouts of star-forming region IC 348 (Webb NIRCam image) This collage features a collection of cutouts from the massive star-forming region IC 348. Each of these six panels showcase features of interest that are visible throughout the field. 1: Star embedded in a nebula — This small portion of the field contains two stars deeply embedded in a cloud of gas and dust. The large star’s shorter-wavelength infrared light is absorbed by the dust, leaving it brightest at longer… /img/b593685df85ddcde.jpg Star-forming region IC 348 (NIRCam image) The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently observed IC 348, a star-forming region just 1000 light-years away. This is one of the largest Webb images released to the public so far. This near-infrared vista of IC 348 reveals a collection of objects called brown dwarfs, which are smaller than the smallest stars. Researchers used the unparalleled sensitivity of Webb’s NIRCam ( Near-Infrared Camera ) to track… /img/3f4e9d088cfb9756.jpg IC 348 Crop: Central star cluster This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the central portion of the star cluster IC 348. The wispy curtains filling the image are interstellar gas and dust reflecting the light from the cluster’s stars — what is known as a reflection nebula. The material also includes carbon-containing molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. The bright star closest to the centre of the… /img/f9b8ee0b8ace808e.jpg IC 348 Crop: Spiral galaxies This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows a few of the spiral galaxies that can be seen behind the clouds of gas that make up the nebula around IC 348. The nebula is located around 1000 light-years from Earth: these spiral galaxies are a thousand times further away than that, being millions of light-years distant. The small, featureless dots in the background are further galaxies, and these… /img/39906ff4b0efecc7.jpg IC 348 Crop: Gravitational lensing This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows an example of gravitational lensing hidden in the background of the star-forming region IC 348. The round blue dot in the centre of the image is a distant galaxy. The orange line which arcs around it on one side, and the small orange loop touching its centre, are both images of another, even more distant galaxy behind it. Because this orange galaxy… /img/cdf73c32314da94c.jpg IC 348 Crop: Herbig-Haro objects This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows stars and protostars in the vicinity of the star cluster IC 348. The long, narrow object that is oriented horizontally on the left side of this image is HH 797, which was featured previously as a Webb Picture of the Month . Upon close inspection, this source is revealed to be two protostars with nearly parallel outflows. To the right and oriented… /img/724fe03d8f9b65a8.jpg IC 348 Crop: Stars and faint outflows This image showcases a portion of the larger IC 348 field to highlight two stars among the outskirts of the nebula. These two stars appear equally-sized, because they are similarly bright, but one is orange while the other is blue. The reason for this is that the orange star is more deeply embedded in the clouds of interstellar gas and dust; these clouds block more of the shorter-wavelength infrared light that the… /img/dcc50e4aa90b5e89.jpg IC 348 Crop: Star embedded in a nebula This image showcases a portion of the larger IC 348 field to highlight two stars embedded within a cloud of gas and dust. The central star, despite being brighter and appearing larger than its companion to the lower-right, is in fact more deeply wrapped in the clouds of gas and dust. These clouds block more of the shorter-wavelength infrared light that the star emits, leaving it brightest in the longer wavelengths… /img/89f4584a35367441.jpg A Daytime Eclipse: Moon Occults Venus There was something behind the clouds. Upon close inspection, it was the Moon, which was hard to see yesterday around noon above the small village of Cessy, France. But soon, it was not only the Moon. As expected, a bright dot suddenly appeared from behind the Moon -- the planet Venus far in the distance. Captured in the single featured exposure, both appeared to show a crescent phase. The Moon's crescent was quite… /img/07dd830f4d55d6b3.jpg An Accidental Impact Crater Discovery An amateur astronomer scouting online satellite maps for campsites in Quebec found an impact crater instead. The post An Accidental Impact Crater Discovery appeared first on NASA Science .