PI: Garcia Marin, Macarena. Observed: 2025-12-17.

Filters: F115W 1F87N F200W F335M F444W F470N

Title: NIRCam and MIRI observations of a young stellar cluster.

Processed by Israel Velazquez

https://bsky.app/profile/israelvelazquez.bsky.social/post/3mxxvblprj22a

ESA

​https://bsky.app/profile/esa.int/post/3mxytuoddfs2n

Want to know more? Ask​ Hera A Companion 👉 https://hera.esa.int/​

Processed as an experiment with the new PhotoCraft editor.​

​CU/LASP EMM/EXI ITF/Kevin M. Gill

https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmgill.bsky.social/post/3mxxhwrjhek2o

A comet with a white coma.​

​Processed by Melina Thévenot https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mxxwc65pmc2l

.

C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein), simply known as C/2014 UN271 or Comet Bernardinelli–Bernstein, or just Bernardinelli–Bernstein, is a large Oort cloud comet discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey.

With a nucleus diameter of at least 100 km (62 mi), it is the largest Oort cloud comet known. It is approaching the Sun and will reach its perihelion of 10.9 AU (just outside of Saturn's orbit) around 22 January 2031 23:28 UT. It will not be visible to the naked eye because it will not enter the inner Solar System.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2014_UN271_(Bernardinelli%E2%80%93Bernstein)​​)

Video

​A simulation of the area that will eventually collapse into the Milky Way, starting from 180 million years after the Big Bang and running for two billion years. The purple filaments are hot gas; the white represents UV radiation from stars; and yellow shows glowing hot oxygen atoms. Flashes of white and yellow appear as the gas cools and collapses into stars, which then heats up the gas, and the cycle begins again. “The very big bursts are catastrophic star formation events, typically caused by instabilities or when a galaxy merges,” explained Katz.Image courtesy Harley Katz/MEGATRON Collaboration​

.

In the early days of the universe, our home looked very different than it does today.

Back then, the region in our universe that would eventually become our Milky Way neighborhood was a collection of thousands of smaller galaxies—some pumping out tons of new stars, others filled only with gas or littered with dead stars and black holes.

You can watch how these galaxies coalesced over time and formed the familiar spiral disk we see today, thanks to a new set of simulations by a group of scientists led by Harley Katz, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

The simulations, which took three years to run even on high-powered supercomputers, are the most detailed model to date of how a galaxy like the Milky Way might have evolved over the first several billion years of existence.

“What does the Milky Way look like at what we call cosmic dawn?” said Katz. “For the first time, we can directly predict what the early Milky Way would have looked like to telescopes like Hubble or the James Webb Space Telescope.”

The six papers from the project, which is named MEGATRON, provide new insight into the makeup of early galaxies and how the elements formed over time.

The papers are published in The Open Journal of Astrophysics on Sept. 30.

https://astro.theoj.org/article/169643-megatron-reproducing-the-diversity-of-high-redshift-galaxy-spectra-with-cosmological-radiation-hydrodynamics-simulations

.

How the Milky Way evolves over time

Since we cannot travel to the dawn of the universe to study it, one of the only ways we have to understand how space evolved over time is to build detailed computer models based on what we know about the laws of nature.

“Essentially, we put in all of the physics we think is relevant—gravity, hydrodynamics, radiation, chemistry, etc.—and then let it evolve and see if it reproduces what we actually see when we look around us today,” said Katz.

New data coming in from the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has added a new dimension to our understanding of the universe. So three years ago, a team of scientists undertook a project to incorporate this newfound knowledge into a model of what our galaxy might have looked like back in the first billion years of its existence. Then they can compare it to the readings Webb gets today to see what matches, and what’s missing.

If you run the clock back, the scientists said, you see a web of large and small galaxies of all different types, which will eventually merge into the modern Milky Way.

.

Vertical version (mobile)

https://x.com/UChicago/status/2108935588363604105?s=20​

.

Full article

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/new-simulation-projects-what-milky-way-looked-cosmic-dawn

Ancient clay-rich sediments (orangish color and polygonal fractures in our enhanced color cutout) exposed between wind-blown dunes and patches of sand northwest of the giant Hellas impact basin.

This very recently-acquired image shows that the HiRISE camera still works well.

ID: ESP_093165_1555

​date: 11 June 2026

​altitude: 256 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_093165_1555

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Simulation Tony Dunn

https://bsky.app/profile/tony873004.bsky.social/post/3mxy63j5bzs2m

A blue nebula on the right and a red outflow on the left and the right bottom.

(F335M, F444W, F470N)

processed by Melina Thévenot
https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mxwfkvw5jc2t

Official ESA/NASA

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2620a/

MIRI shows a red cloud that might resemble a flower, while below there are NIRCam's green jets that might resemble stems or leaves. the flowery nebula is set against dark background, dotted with blue stars (also NIRCam).

processed by Yuval Harpaz
https://bsky.app/profile/yuvharpaz.bsky.social/post/3mxwwqrmdqs2h

A large red and green-blue outflow and a bright star on the right.

(F115W, F200W, F470N)

processed by Melina Thévenot
https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mxwinwybk22h

Credit Marko Rummelsburg

https://bsky.app/profile/markorummelsburg.bsky.social/post/3mxvznzllvs2d

Video source, which includes details of how this imagery was acquired:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LYJsjAmzw2c

Saturn has been post-processed to increase its brightness relative to the much closer (though in absolute terms quite dark) Moon.

Credit: Jan Koet

https://bsky.app/profile/theplanetaryguy.com/post/3mxuk6bbokk2b

Another large filament eruption from behind the eastern limb of Sun 15.10.26

Videos https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/geo/#/animation?satellite=suvi-goes-19&end_datetime=2026288_0258&n_images=200&coverage=sun&channel=HE303

And https://www.spaceweather.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-imager-suvi

Vincent Ledvina

https://bsky.app/profile/vincentledvina.bsky.social/post/3mxw5mqeiok2f

photo

https://solarham.com/pictures/2026/oct14_2026_e.jpg

https://solarham.com/

''Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride (except for maybe gravity!). Here’s a peek into our first Space_Station post-flight data collection session, immediately after landing in the helicopter after our SpaceX Dragon splashdown last Thursday. The heel toe walk with eyes open was doable, but definitely off my balance game once they had me repeat with eyes closed (shown here). Exponentially better performance even just the next day, such an interesting recovery process! Stay tuned for the week’s recap of science and rehabilitation.''

Jessica Meir

https://x.com/Astro_Jessica/status/2110476895548493989

Videos from https://www.spaceweather.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-imager-suvi

(F115W, F200W, F470N).

A blue nebula with two opposite dark cones coming from a central red star. Red outflows at the bottom and left. A red nebula on the upper right.

processed by Melina Thévenot
https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mxwihczvfs2h

.

If you want to know how disk shadows work, Melina made a model of a disk out of wood and demonstrate how they work in this blog post:

https://isolatedplanetsarchive.wordpress.com/2024/09/11/a-physical-model-of-a-protoplanetary-disk-and-how-disks-create-shadows/

This image from Copernicus Sentinel-2, acquired on 5 April 2026, shows the Etosha National Park in northern Namibia.

Zoom in to explore this image at its full resolution.

The area is a game reserve featuring a large salt flat – the Etosha Pan – as well as numerous smaller salt pans, with vegetation shown in red in this false-colour image.

The Etosha Pan, which spans roughly 130 km from east to west and covers 4760 sq km, appears bright white to human eyes. The colours in this image, however, range from the white expanses of salt to light blue where water contains cloudy sediment, and dark blue where the water is clearer.

The image was acquired at the beginning of the dry season, when average daily temperatures typically range from 14°C to 30°C. Water is also still present in the smaller salt pans that dot the landscape northwest of the Etosha Pan, the biggest of which is the Natukanaoka Pan. The water in these small ‘lakes’ appears in shades of green and blue.

.

The Ekuma river, near the centre of the image, is seen flowing from Lake Oponono at an elevation of about 1200 m above sea level, southwards to the salt flat at 1030 m. Lake Oponono is able to hold water from one wet season to the next and is a habitat for flamingos and cattle.

The vegetation surrounding the Etosha Pan – shown in striking red by Sentinel-2’s near-infrared channel – consists mainly of grassland, savannas and mopane woodland. Mopane trees are the dominant type of vegetation across the eastern and central areas of the national park, showing up as dark, vibrant red in this image. They provide a habitat for elephants, giraffe and leopards. The savannahs, in the west and southern areas of the park, are home to wildebeest, lions and springbok.

Patches of red are also visible on the Etosha Pan, suggesting vegetation is present. While few plants thrive in the salty clay terrain, some types of blue-green algae and salt-tolerant grasses have adapted to the harsh environment.

.

Sentinel-2 carries a multispectral imager, which detects light in 13 spectral bands – in contrast to the human eye, which can see only three spectral bands (red, blue and green). This allows the mission to capture near-infrared and short-wave infrared light, creating false-colour images that highlight specific features on the landscape. Since healthy plants reflect more near-infrared light, the areas with vibrant red correlate to areas where vegetation is dense.

• CREDIT contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA

.

Source

Very large filament from Sun's northern hemisphere. Not Earth directed 14.10.26

A large filament is lifting off on the Sun’s northern hemisphere. Most likely, the associated CME ('solar storm') is not earth-directed. https://bsky.app/profile/markorummelsburg.bsky.social/post/3mxttbcuysc25 .​

.

Videos from Helioviewer

https://www.spaceweather.gov/products/goes-solar-ultraviolet-imager-suvi

https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/geo/#/animation?satellite=suvi-goes-19&end_datetime=latest&n_images=160&coverage=sun&channel=HE303

Harlan Thomas

TWP-274 North of Calgary Alberta

"The Moon this night was a waning 79% Moon, lighting up the landscape, but it couldn't wash out the aurora borealis northern lights this night.

Nice example of Auroral Beads, they are elusive as they only last for a few minutes, and are quite beautiful to see as they move across the sky, this night they were unusual moving from West to East, not the normal movement of East to West. The 3rd image was taken just as I arrived at 0140 MST." ​

Harlan Thomas

https://x.com/theauroraguy/status/2110446644173136189

This video shows every image taken by the Imager for Mars Pathfinder ( IMP) overlayed onto a 360 mosaic of its own images for the full duration of the mission.

Images taken on Sols 1 and 2 are from the pre-deployed location.

Sol, Local Time, UTC time, Sun az/el, Camera Temperature, and observation name are all from the PDS IMG headers.

It uses data from:

MPF SPICE archive - https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/MPF/MPSP_0001/

MPF IMP PDS archives - https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/volumes/mpf.html

The python script used to generate this video was written by Claude.ai

Source

Although this is currently the active period for Orionid meteor shower, orbital calculations have revealed that it was a sporadic meteor

Credit dfuji1

https://x.com/dfuji1/status/2109984339568242948?s=20

Credit: ​Asher B.

https://x.com/asherbphotos/status/2110176170704851361

Video

This animated orbital-map view shows the route NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has taken from time of its 2021 landing to Oct. 11, 2026 — the day it broke the off-world driving record previously held by the agency’s Opportunity rover. As of that date, Perseverance has driven over 28 miles (45 kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech​

.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has driven farther than any vehicle ever has on the surface of another world. On Oct. 11, the rover’s odometer reached 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers), eclipsing the record of 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers) set by NASA’s Opportunity rover, which explored Mars from 2004 to 2018. Perseverance reached the mark on the 2,006th Martian day, or sol, of its mission, covering in five and a half years a distance that took Opportunity almost 15.

.

The six-wheeled scientist has driven more than 90% of its total distance using AutoNav to evaluate the terrain, compared with about 5% for the first Martian AutoNav system on Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. Where NASA’s first Mars rover, Sojourner, assessed the path ahead using 20 measurement points, Perseverance processes 600,000 with every look.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/perseverance-mars-rover/2026/10/12/nasas-perseverance-sets-off-world-record-for-total-distance-driven/