Cassini Approaches Saturn

2026-08-23 Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, NASA, ESA, S. Van Vuuren et al.; Music: Adagio for Strings (NY Philharmonic)

What would it look like to approach the grand planet Saturn? One doesn't have to just imagine -- the Cassini spacecraft did just this in 2004, recording thousands of images along the way, and hundreds of thousands more since entering orbit. ...

Mostly Perseids

2026-08-22 Valašské Meziříčí Observatory

Recorded the night of August 12-13, images from four dedicated meteor-monitoring cameras at an astronomical observatory in Czechia were aligned and combined to create this all-night, all-sky view. On that night, the total count came to 1,706 ...

Time-Lapse of the Star S301 Orbiting...

2026-08-21

What does it feel like to zoom around a spinning supermassive black hole? The featured video is an animation showing a time-lapse of 4 years of observations of the star S301 orbiting Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole in the ...

The Elephant's Trunk in Cepheus

2026-08-20 Eddie Sgarbossa

Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic ...

The Case of the Mysterious Maybe Meteor

2026-08-19

Whatdunit? What disappeared while crossing a partially eclipsed Sun? Let’s present the evidence. The 24 frames-per-second video was taken in Spain (40°34'30.3"N 1°12'28.8"W) at 20:28 local time on August 12, 2026. The Perseids ...

Perseids from Perseus

2026-08-18 Jakub Kuřák

This was a good year for the Perseids meteor shower. A key reason was the Moon was absent from lighting up Earth's night sky so that more meteors were visible than usual. Where was the Moon? It was busy visiting the Sun. Near the ...

A Golden Corona Eclipse

2026-08-17 Rui Santos (Living Impressions)

This total solar eclipse appeared not only poetically beautiful but scientifically interesting. Usually the solar corona appears white, and to some observers the corona of last week's total solar eclipse did appear this pearly color. But ...

Milky Way over Yellowstone

2026-08-16 Dave Lane

The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The colorful pool of water, about 10 meters across, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Illuminated artificially, the colors are caused by ...

Bright Perseids from Sweden

2026-08-15 Clear Skies

Known for its bright and fast meteors, the annual Perseid Meteor Shower comes to planet Earth's skies from a radiant in the heroic constellation Perseus. The popular northern summer celestial spectacle is created as grains of dust cast off ...

Total Solar Eclipse from Greenland

2026-08-14 On August 12

On August 12, the Moon's shadow reached out to touch our fair planet. Beginning in the Arctic Ocean, it swept along a narrow track that led the dark lunar umbra across parts of Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic, Portugal, and northern Spain. ...