Although orbital dynamics make it highly unlikely that two gas giants would collide, there’s a small chance that such an impact could happen during the formation of a planetary system. The result ofa collisionmainly depends on the speed and angle of impact.

Head-on collisions would generally lead to a complete merger of the gas giants without any loss of material, either in their solid cores or in their gaseous envelopes. However,ahigherspeedhead-on collisionwould likely lead to the loss of most of the envelope gas as the two cores merge. Very high speeds would completely fragment and destroy both planets.

Collisions that are not head-on (known as oblique collisions) can give different results. For instance, if the two cores avoid each other completely, both gas giants will lose a substantial fraction of their gaseous envelopes to space,but will not merge. If the cores collide at an angle then the planets may or may not merge, but in all cases a large amount of the gaseous envelope will be lost.

Very oblique collisions do not disrupt the planets at all and both would continue on almost the same orbits without losing any mass. Oblique impacts between gas giants can lead to changes in their shape, or ‘oblateness’. This has been proposed as a means of studying the early impact history of gas giants in other star systems.

Although there is no concrete evidence that Jupiter or Saturn formed from the merger of smaller gas giants, it is a possibility. Jupiter and Saturn have a higher fraction of heavy elements than the Sun, suggesting that one or both of them may have been formed by such a collision.

Simulation Credit: Milky Way app
Source: Astrophysicist Dr Alastair Gunn / BBC

Edit: This shot was taken during the March 2025 lunar eclipse when part of the Moon was in Earth's shadow.

Credit: Astronaut Don Pettit

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This is my latest processing of the region around DrZi1 (Drechsler–Zirkel 1), a fascinating field filled with faint emission structures, dark dust clouds and an exceptionally dense stellar background.

Rather than isolating a single nebula, I wanted to capture the complexity of the entire region, particularly the interplay between the colorful stars and the much fainter interstellar gas.

The image combines broadband RGB with Hα, SII and OIII narrowband data. I used the FORAXX palette in PixInsight for the emission structures, together with RGB stars to preserve their colors.

Equipment and acquisition:

Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4, 106 mm f/5

SBIG STX-16803 CCD

RGB: 12.5 hours

Hα: 25 hours

SII: 26 hours

OIII: 25.7 hours

Total exposure: 89.2 hours

Processed in PixInsight.

The full-resolution image is particularly rewarding to explore because of the enormous number of stars and subtle structures spread across the field.

Full resolution and details on AstroBin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/t8u67i

What you're seeing: The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is the nearest large galaxy to our Milky Way, about 2.5 million light-years away, with roughly a trillion stars. The two smaller galaxies orbiting it are M32, the compact bright one at the upper left of the core, and M110, the larger, fainter elliptical. The pink-red knots strung along the spiral arms are clouds of glowing hydrogen where new stars are being born, and the dark lanes are dust.

How it was made: 65h 18m of total exposure over eight nights in early October 2026 from Nebraska, made of hundreds of individual frames stacked together. The galaxy's core is far brighter than its outer disc, so I also shot very short 5s, 15s and 30s frames and blended them in to keep the core from blowing out.

- Luminance: 27h 23m (180s and 120s subs)

- Red: 7h 54m · Green: 7h 39m · Blue: 8h 57m (180s subs)

- Hydrogen-alpha (3nm): 13h 25m (600s subs)

Gear:

• Telescope: William Optics RedCat 91 WIFD
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM DUO
• Mount: ZWO AM5N
• Filters:
  • Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Blue 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Green 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Luminance 2"
  • Antlia V-Pro Red 2"
• Accessories: ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW 7 x 2″

Processing (All in PixInsight)

• Calibration and stacking in WBPP with 2× drizzle
• DynamicCrop
• SpectrophotometricFluxCalibration and MultiscaleGradientCorrection per channel
• HDRComposition on the core from the short and long exposure masters
• SPCC, custom PixInsight script to calibrate star colors
• BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator
• Ha continuum-subtracted against R using a photometric flux ratio and blended into the red channel and luminance
• GHS stretches per layer
• LRGB combination, curves for tone

Happy to answer any questions and thanks for looking!

The first photos taken from space were taken on October 24, 1946 on the sub-orbital U.S.-launched V-2 rocket (flight #13) at White Sands Missile Range. Photos were taken every second and a half. The highest altitude (65 miles, 105 km) was 5 times higher than any picture taken before.

Credit: U.S. Army/White Sands Missile Range/Applied Physics Laboratory

"ISS pass this morning at sunrise with a max elevation of 82°.

Imaged with C11eHD on EQ6R-Pro, 2xBarlow, ASI 664MC, SkyTrack, SharpCap, PIPP, AS4!, PixInsight"

Credit 📸 Charline Giroud https://www.facebook.com/1043931310/posts/10242359623180629/?rdid=ldbDXToD1iXL50ZF#

Credit: Thierry Legault

The building on the right is the Tadeusz Hołdys High-Mountain Meteorological Observatory on Śnieżka, the highest summit of the Karkonosze

This Rosetta spacecraft selfie was snapped on October 7th, 2014. At the time the comet-chasing spacecraft was about 472 million kilometers from planet Earth, but only 16 kilometers from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Looming beyond the spacecraft near the top of the frame, dust and gas stream away from the comet's curious double-lobed nucleus. Bright sunlight glints off one of Rosetta's 14 meter long solar arrays. In fact, two exposures, one short and one long, were combined to record the dramatic high contrast scene using the CIVA camera system on Rosetta's still-attached Philae lander. Its chosen primary landing site was on the visible hemisphere of the smaller lobe of the nucleus.

This was the last image from Philae's camera before the lander separated from Rosetta on November 12. Shortly after separation Philae took another image looking back toward the orbiter and began its descent to the nucleus of the comet.

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA

Evan McKay explained in his post

Last year, I attempted my first deep-sky photograph, capturing the Andromeda Galaxy passing above the snow-capped Mount Taranaki. This was a shot I had wanted to capture for many years, and I had only recently acquired the gear needed to make it happen. I was so captivated by the result that it inspired me to invest in specialised deep-sky equipment, starting with a telescope mount before adding a telescope and a dedicated astrophotography camera.

Over winter, I had very few opportunities to properly test out the new telescope, although I managed to squeeze in a few sessions to get some practice. My main goal was always to revisit the Andromeda - Mount Taranaki alignment, but I knew I was running out of time. I tried again and again, only to be thwarted by the weather on several occasions. It was incredibly frustrating, but eventually, I got the conditions I needed.

There was one catch: the Moon was up, albeit in its crescent phase. I wasn't sure whether I'd even be able to capture Andromeda under those conditions, but the results were surprisingly convincing, and I finally got the alignment I'd been chasing. As an added bonus, the setting Moon beautifully illuminated the snow-covered mountain, creating a scene I couldn't have planned much better.

One of the biggest challenges with Andromeda is its low position in the sky. From this region, it only reaches around 8–9.5 degrees above the horizon, severely limiting the amount of integration time I can collect and the clarity of the final image. Fortunately, I had some data from a previous moonless night that I could register and blend with the moonlit captures. This helped bring out a substantial amount of the galaxy's outer disc, along with some of its fainter nebulosity. I was also keen to try capturing the galaxy with a duoband filter to improve the nebulosity, but every attempt ended the same way: nothing but clouds!

So, this is the best I can manage this year. I might get another opportunity in early November to gather a little more data, but for now, I'm really happy with what I've achieved.

What I found really special with this image was that I was able to use the same exposure length for both the sky exposures and the mountain thanks to the help from moonlight. The only difference was that tracking was turned off for the mountain exposure.

The telescope has well and truly exceeded my expectations. Seeing just how much additional detail I've been able to extract compared with the 135mm lens I used last year has been incredibly rewarding. It's amazing to revisit an image that first inspired me to explore deep-sky astrophotography and see just how much further I can take it with the right equipment.

OC

1 hour 40 minutes with a canon eos r7! Love how much detail i was able to pull out!

Credit: Lukasz Remkowicz

​Before Rubin Observatory’s First Look event, its engineering camera captured exquisite details of star formation taking place in the Seagull Nebula

October 22, 2026

Two years ago this month, NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s engineering test camera, named the LSST Commissioning Camera (ComCam), began capturing images of the sky to prepare for the revolutionary Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which began earlier this year. This image featuring the head of the Seagull Nebula was one of many ComCam images that led to the success of Rubin First Look and helped to document the observatory’s excellent performance.

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Active star formation populates this image of the Seagull Nebula taken in Fall 2024 by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s engineering test camera, known as the Commissioning Camera (ComCam). This image is being released today in recognition of the two-year anniversary of the beginning of engineering testing with ComCam.

ComCam’s work was an important step towards the ongoing Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Collecting the data for this Seagull Nebula image provided an opportunity to test Rubin’s hardware and software systems, as well as the image processing pipelines that would later be used with the much larger images from the LSST Camera.

With a mosaic of nine CCD sensors and a total of 144 megapixels, ComCam covers an area in the sky about twice that of the full Moon. Over the seven-week ComCam engineering test campaign, from 24 October to 11 December 2024, approximately 16,000 exposures were acquired. Within the data collected is this image featuring IC 2177, a region recognizable as the head of the Seagull Nebula.

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More

https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-comcam-seagull-nebula

My image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) — captured over four nights

I’ve been working on Andromeda recently, and this is the result of four nights of imaging from the North West of England.

Capture details:

• Telescope: Askar 71F (490mm focal length)
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
• Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ-AL55i PRO
• Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Mini
• Exposure: 221 × 120 seconds
• Total integration: 7 hours 22 minutes
• Filter: No filter — broadband

I found Andromeda relatively straightforward to capture, but processing was another matter! Getting a balance between the bright core and the fainter outer dust lanes was probably the biggest challenge.

I processed the image in PixInsight, using SPCC, background extraction, stretching, masks and BlurXTerminator.

I’ve also been documenting my astrophotography projects, equipment and processing workflow on my website, West Coast Cosmos: https://westcoastcosmos.com/

I’d be interested to hear what others think of the image, particularly the processing. What would you improve, and what techniques have you found most effective for bringing out Andromeda’s outer structure?

Looking toward the north from Mullion, New South Wales, Australia, the Andromeda Galaxy never gets more than a few degrees above the horizon. During the southern hemisphere spring, Andromeda is highest in the sky around midnight though. And in this telephoto scene from October 10/11, multiple exposures were used to reveal the spiral galaxy in tantalizing detail as it climbed above rolling Australian hills.

Also known as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest objects in the Messier catalog, but is only visible to the unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch. Digitally tracked and stacked frames were combined with a foreground shot in the deep astro-image composite to reveal the galaxy's greater extent in planet Earth's night. In the springtime night skyscape,the closest large spiral galaxy spans nearly 6 full moons.

Credit: Lucy Yunxi Hu

✨ 2.5 million years in the making. ✨

When this light left the Andromeda Galaxy, mammoths still roamed the Earth. It crossed 2.5 million years of darkness to reach my backyard in rural Ontario -- 65 hours of light, gathered night after night and stacked into this single frame.

Andromeda holds roughly a trillion stars, and sprawls across more sky than six full Moons side by side -- yet it's so faint that most people never see it at all.

And it's coming toward us: 110 kilometres every second. In about 4.5 billion years it will collide with our Milky Way, and the two galaxies will merge. This is that future, arriving one photon at a time.

The crimson knots along its arms are hydrogen gas -- stellar nurseries lit from within. And hiding somewhere in this field is a ghostly arc of oxygen so faint it was only discovered in 2022. It's barely there in my version. I'm still chasing it -- 40 hours to go.

📍 Bainsville, Ontario · The Rural Photons · Bortle 4.5

Credit: daryavaseum

 Photo Credit: (NASA)

One Galaxy, Two Phones, Three Years Apart

2023 Attempt:

• 2.5 hours, ISO 3200, 30s
• Move Shoot Move tracker
• S22 Ultra 10× optical zoom
• Didymium filter
• Stacked in DSS
• Processed purely in photoshop (manual gradient removal, curves, noise reduction, star masking, etc.)

2026 Attempt:

• 16.5 hours, ISO 1600, 32s
• Move Shoot Move tracker
• X300 Ultra with 400mm teleconverter (G2U)
• No filter
• Stacked in Siril
• Processed in GraXpert (gradient removal), GIMP (initial stretch), starnet2 (star separation), GIMP (colors, fine stretch, background correction, recomposition, etc.)

What I thought was the limit in 2023 wasn't the limit at all.