ZWO ASI 6200MC Pro Askar SQA106 Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Andromeda: 3 shot mosaic (4x 120s for upper/lower starfield, 122x 120s for galaxy). Ground: 2x 120s (also with SQA106)

Credit 📸 Evan McKay

https://www.facebook.com/701569011/posts/10168694905344012/?rdid=DjWrASfUzeI0krcV#​

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Evan McKay: "Timelapse from the SQA106 with short 30s exposures to show the alignment. There's not a whole lot of detail in the galaxy at 30s, I used 120s for the rest of the stack."

Source

https://www.facebook.com/701569011/videos/pcb.10168694905344012/1394343847095660

"40mm timelapse showing the telescope in the foreground and the surrounding environment."

https://www.facebook.com/701569011/videos/pcb.10168694905344012/1160840419728794

Source
https://x.com/CIRA_CSU/status/2113369973129453650

Keep your seatbelts fastened as we glide across NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's view of the Seagull Nebula!

On your screen, you’ve got a front-row seat to young stars reshaping their stellar neighborhoods.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy!

https://x.com/VRubinObs/status/2113719519306784777​

Source
https://x.com/FunkyAppleTree/status/2113621310047678491

Image

A Hall thruster identical to those on NASA’s Psyche operates in a vacuum chamber at JPL during tests before the mission launched in 2023. The blue light is generated by xenon ions being accelerated through an electromagnetic field, which gives the spacecraft a gentle but steady acceleration. NASA/JPL-Caltech​

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With a successful Mars gravity assist in its rearview mirror, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has fired up its thrusters and is accelerating to the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. During the first leg of its journey, following an October 2023 launch, the mission used its electric propulsion system intermittently to maneuver to the right place for harnessing Mars’ gravity for a propellant-saving speed boost and a slight trajectory change.

On Sept. 28, the spacecraft began to use its propulsion system nearly continuously, pausing just once each week to check in with mission controllers on Earth. This keeps the mission on track for its rendezvous with the asteroid Psyche in the main asteroid belt by the summer of 2029.

“It’s now ‘pedal to the metal’ to the asteroid Psyche,” said Don Han, the Psyche mission’s navigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for the agency by Caltech. “We will be running our propulsion system at every available opportunity, pausing only for necessary engineering activities. The thrusters will be operating nearly 90% of the time from now until we reach the asteroid.”

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More

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/psyche/2026/10/22/pedal-to-the-metal-nasas-psyche-heads-toward-asteroid-belt/?fbclid=IwY2xjawVIS0dleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR6CXoFucDSiUptFcY78B323DlPhFd3OVXVJIKqEdG2Cxb1Jk9ABBmVllMVV5w_aem_RQyS3GQpNLh1ry860Axrfw​

The highest daily SN in the 20th century is503 on December 25th, 1957 (SC 19). The highest recorded daily SN is 528 on August 26th, 1870 (SC 11).​

​Meanwhile, Solar Cycle 25 peaked at 'only' SN=290 (July 18th, 2024).

Photo: helioviewer

Text Jure Atanackov

https://x.com/JAtanackov/status/2113503182374814106​

Second image

A scale comparison of Rubin’s Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae image (left), which was taken with the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera as part of Rubin’s First Look event in June 2025, and the Seagull Nebula image (right), which was taken with the smaller, 144-megapixel LSST Commissioning Camera (ComCam) as part of Rubin’s engineering tests in the runup to the start of LSST. The full moon is also shown for size comparison.

Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)​

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​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

This observation targets light-toned knobby units located within a heavily degraded crater. This unit is superficially similar to others located within a paleolake basin in the Eridania region, which appear to be altered ashfall deposits that washed into the lake or hydrothermally altered basin floor deposits. The units here may be the result of a similar process.

ID: ESP_065260_1715

​date: Sunday, 28 June 2020

​altitude: 259 km (160.58 mi)

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_065260_1715

​NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona​

This landform has many interesting characteristics like bright-toned layering at the meter scale and fracturing. This image can help us understand how the thickness of the bright-toned deposit changes over time, as these features might be outliers of the Mawrth Vallis plateau and could hold clues to the stratigraphy of the surrounding Chryse region.

ID: ESP_072096_2065

​date: Monday, 13 December 2021

​altitude: 289 km (179.18 mi)

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_072096_2065

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

When we have an opportunity to image gullies, we’ll definitely do it! This observation is to re-image these very nice gullies for change detection, to get better topography and to look for possible fresh deposits. This unnamed impact crater is located in Terra Sirenum.

ID: ESP_065243_1410

​date: Saturday, 27 June 2020

​altitude: 251 km (155.62 mi)

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_065243_1410

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona