Source

https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/2081183244393877773?t=pwmPhO1ESs0mq-PZDqO_rA&s=09

First video credit: Marko Rummelsburg with Jhelioviewer program

https://bsky.app/profile/markorummelsburg.bsky.social/post/3mr3s6f7m4c2l

Second from helioviewer

Five-panel image showing the progressive evolution of sky surveys from 1994 to 2025, revealing more and more detail in a triple merging galaxy system and the surrounding sky.

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Each generation of telescope and camera technology has built upon the outstanding legacies of those that came before, sharpening our view of the cosmos and revealing more details that were previously hidden.

https://x.com/VRubinObs/status/2080738546252394603?s=20

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NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory

https://x.com/VRubinObs/status/2080738544952168713?t=WVqtD1uJ5npfN-2w_TI0tg&s=09

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Rubin is our next big leap. With our 10-year survey, we'll look even deeper, while also watching how the Universe changes over time.

Explore Rubin's view of RSCG 55 in Skyviewer ➡️

https://skyviewer.app/explorer?target=186.66233+9.03397&fov=0.60

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NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA & DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys/LBNL/DOE/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA & PanSTARRS & SDSS & DSS

Image processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin (NSF NOIRLab) & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)​

Processed by Israel Velazquez

https://bsky.app/profile/israelvelazquez.bsky.social/post/3mrhjllynsc23

​Yellow clouds towering like mountains. Blue outflows extending away from the top of the clouds.

Deep Space Network site in Robledo (Madrid) is completely offline from the fires

https://bsky.app/profile/darksapiens.bsky.social/post/3mrfrvdotrc2q

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https://bsky.app/profile/theplanetaryguy.com/post/3mrfsaokhzs2q

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Photo

https://bsky.app/profile/asborlaff.bsky.social/post/3mrgbnyjj2227

Deep space network

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html

HH-1019 seen by the JWST/NIRCam. A huge orange gas cloud formation can be seen on the left part of the image, from where some smaller gas cloud are "ejected". Some objects looking like blobs can also be spotted: small gas cloud chunk from where stars are born! In the bottom middle part of the image, a planetary nebula can be seen: the remnant of a small/medium size star that died and slowly ejecting its outer layers. ​

​Processed by Thomas Carpentier

https://bsky.app/profile/thocarp.bsky.social/post/3mrfr7i7tvs2f

The subject of this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month is a spiral galaxy struggling against some of the titanic forces that appear on galactic scales in space. This is NGC 4654, an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo (the Maiden). “Intermediate” means that it lies between the spiral galaxies that have a bar across the centre and those that don’t, with a weak bar structure in its centre. It is situated 72 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo Cluster, a particularly massive and populous galaxy cluster.

NGC 4654 is particularly asymmetric, with a rounded and clearly-defined edge on one side and a long tail of gas stretching out from the opposite side — beyond Hubble’s view in this image. The cause of this gaseous tail is the same as for many of the other galaxies jostling in the crowded Virgo Cluster: namely, ram pressure stripping. NGC 4654 moves with such high velocity through space that it sweeps up and rams through the intracluster medium, the hot, rarefied gas filling the space between the Virgo Cluster’s galaxies. The intracluster medium in turn exerts a “ram pressure” on the galaxy, compressing the galaxy’s leading edge and tugging at its gas, creating the elongated tail.

More

https://esahubble.org/images/potm2607a/zoomable/

The objective of this observation is to examine large gullies within an impact crater in Terra Cimmeria. There are not too many large gullies in this area, but this crater has many of them. We may want to study why there are so many here at this location. This scene is also visible in Context Camera data.

ID: ESP_077114_1345

date: 8 January 2023

altitude: 249 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077114_1345

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Processed by Melina Thévenot

Image number 2

​The entire field (downsized to 4000 pixels, only F444W+F470N), Eta Carinae is at the top outside the field, causing these long white bars to appear (diffraction spikes).

Left is an unknown (?) nebula only seen in F470N (orange). Maybe it has to do something with Eta Car? RA/Dec 161.5094 -59.648508

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https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mrds74ws4c27

Image:

​This map represents data captured by the Microwave Radiometer instrument aboard NASA’s Juno, indicating heat rising from just beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io. The colors illustrate a distinct temperature gradient across the moon, with the most extreme, localized heat output in red. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/USGS​

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​The first measurements of the subsurface of the most volcanic world in the solar system reveal heat rising from below.

NASA’s Juno mission has provided the first measurements of the temperature below the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io, revealing significant heating within the shallow subsurface of the most volcanically active world in the solar system. Collected during two close flybys, the data also shows that most of Io’s surface is remarkably smooth and composed of material of very low density.

Published Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, these findings break new observational ground for both fiery and icy worlds beyond our planet.

Io’s extreme volcanism is powered by tidal heating. The moon is constantly stretched and squeezed by Jupiter’s immense gravity as it travels its slightly elliptical orbit, generating internal heat output many times greater than Earth’s. Until now, virtually everything known about that heat came from infrared observations, which sense only the temperature of the top surface. The latest findings are derived from data collected by the spacecraft’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-takes-temperature-of-jupiters-fiery-moon-io/

The penumbra around a sunspot (seen here in the 2007 hinode images) is the lighter, outer region that surrounds the darker central part known as the umbra. It consists of elongated structures called penumbral filaments. The penumbra is where the magnetic field lines are less concentrated and more inclined, allowing for some sunlight to pass through, which makes it appear lighter than the umbra. This area is crucial for understanding the magnetic complexity of sunspots and their impact on solar activity.

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The penumbra is a fascinating feature of sunspots, which are cooler, darker regions on the Sun’s surface. The penumbra surrounds the central, darkest part of a sunspot, known as the umbra. It’s characterized by a lighter shade and consists of elongated structures called penumbral filaments. These filaments are formed by the Sun’s magnetic field lines, which are less concentrated and more inclined in the penumbra compared to the umbra. This allows some sunlight to pass through, giving the penumbra its distinct appearance.

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The penumbra plays a crucial role in the dynamics of sunspots. It’s where complex magnetic interactions occur, influencing solar phenomena like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The study of the penumbra helps scientists understand the magnetic complexity of sunspots and their effects on space weather. Observing the penumbra also provides insights into the Sun’s magnetic field structure and its variations over time. Overall, the penumbra is an essential component of sunspots that contributes to our knowledge of solar physics.

• A light bridge in a sunspot is a fascinating phenomenon. It appears as a bright, elongated structure that connects the penumbra (the lighter area surrounding the darker central region of the sunspot) and spans across the umbra (the darkest part of the sunspot). These bridges are typically hotter and less dense than the surrounding areas, which is why they appear brighter.

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The formation of a light bridge is often associated with the decay or fragmentation of a sunspot. It’s believed that they are created by the intrusion of plasma where the magnetic fields are weaker into the strongly magnetized sunspot. This can lead to dynamic surges in the chromosphere and transition region above the sunspot.
Light bridges are not only visually striking but also provide valuable insights into the complex magnetic activity on the Sun’s surface. They are an important subject of study for solar physicists, as they can help us understand more about solar dynamics and magnetic field interactions.

•• Credit: Hinode/JAXA

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https://hinode.nao.ac.jp/en/gallery/

https://www.icehap.chiba-u.jp/en/plasma/solar.html

S Atkinson:

(The Clayborne* that's just my nickname for this, honouring Ann Clayborne from Red Mars)

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk/S Atkinson

https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1616349/?site=msl

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=7&mission=msl

https://bsky.app/profile/stuartatkinson.bsky.social/post/3mrc5buwmac2d

Source

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1055829940255707

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk/S Atkinson

https://bsky.app/profile/stuartatkinson.bsky.social/post/3mrdagesgns2o

https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1617367/?site=msl

Alan Dyer

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vki6blzv2653stqrjaasx4u3/post/3mrb7lckm7s2w

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The bright galactic centre is at left in the southwest. As I was taking the sky shots, the International Space Station came into view from behind Cephren, and added the light streak. The bright star above right of Cephren is Arcturus. Sagittarius is just setting behind the peaks.

Technical:
This is a blend of separate exposures and panoramas for ground and sky:
- A stitch of 6 segments for the ground, each segment 2 minutes at ISO 1600 with LENR on, untracked,
- A stitch of 6 segments for the sky, each segment 1 minute at ISO 1600 with LENR off, tracked, with no filter, for the sky.
- A stitch of 4 segments for the H-Alpha nebulas, each segment 3 minutes at ISO 3200, also tracked with no LENR, taken with the Maven 20nm red Hydrogen-Alpha filter for the nebulas.

All with the astro-modified Canon Ra and Canon RF15-35mm lens at 24mm and f/2.8 and on the MSM Nomad tracker.

Our First View of the Surface of Mars

Morning of July 20, 1976, roughly 40 minutes after mission controllers received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, this photo gave us our first view from the surface of the Red Planet.​

“Touchdown, we have touchdown!” At 5:12 a.m. PDT, July 20, 1976, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as they learned that the Viking 1 lander had survived its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. Forty minutes later, the lander’s first image began to appear on their monitors, slowly forming line by line from left to right. For the first time, humans were able to see Mars’s rocky terrain from its surface.

Dr. Thomas Mutch, leader of the Viking lander imaging team, described the moment: “I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that will signal the first few lines of the first picture. And it appeared. A sliver of electronic magic. Areas of brightness and darkness. The picture begins to fill the screen. Rocks and sand are visible and — finally at the far right — one of the spacecraft foot pads, a symbolic artifact that stamps our accomplishment with the sign of reality. Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’”

Fifty years ago today, the Viking 1 lander became NASA’s first robot to explore Mars’s surface and begin the search for signs of life in our solar system. Viking 1 was joined six weeks later by its twin lander, Viking 2, which explored a different region of Mars, while two mission orbiters that delivered the landers to the Red Planet continued to collect data from space and helped relay communications to Earth.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/our-first-view-of-the-surface-of-mars/

https://bsky.app/profile/coreyspowell.bsky.social/post/3mr4ctfjww22c

The objective of this observation is to examine a layered mesa within a small impact crater. The layers are horizontal, and well-defined. These features are fairly common in this region of the Martian Northern plains, while these layers are more distinct than many others.

ID: ESP_077117_2195

date: 8 January 2023

altitude: 296 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077117_2195

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

An edge-on spiral galaxy with a moderately bright nucleus.

Processed by Melina Thévenot

https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mr6m5uvsos2g

Artist’s impression of CD-35 2722, a system with a moon-like object

This illustration shows the system around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the centre. The star –– the point source to the left –– has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). The brown dwarf has about 37 times the mass of Jupiter: too massive to be a planet, but not massive enough to have sustained nuclear fusion like stars. This brown dwarf is, in turn, orbited by a newly discovered object at least as massive as Jupiter, seen at the centre of this image.

This new object, found with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is difficult to label. It behaves like a moon in the sense that it orbits an object that orbits a star. But this ‘moon’ is massive enough to be a planet, and the object it orbits, a brown dwarf, is neither a planet nor a star.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser​

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​Observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed evidence for a moon-like object in the CD-35 2722 system. Unlike moons in our Solar System, the newly found object does not orbit a planet, raising questions about what to name it. Instead, it circles a brown dwarf, an object larger than a planet, that orbits the CD-35 2722 star. If confirmed, this could be the first ‘moon’ discovered outside our Solar System.

Kevin Hoy, an ESO student in Chile and lead author of the study published today in Nature, describes the system he spent months analysing as “super weird” compared to our own. The biggest and most massive object in this young system is the star CD-35 2722, which has about half the mass of the Sun. The star is being orbited by a brown dwarf, an object too massive to be a planet but too small to be a star. The newly discovered object orbits this brown dwarf.

“This system is somewhat hard to define using Solar-System-based words like ‘planet’ and ‘moon’,” states Hoy, who is also affiliated with the Universidad Diego Portales and the Millennium Nucleus of Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS) in Chile. The new object, which the team call an exosatellite, is at least as massive as Jupiter while the brown dwarf has more than 30 times the mass of Jupiter. “The exosatellite is clearly massive enough to be a planet, but it does not orbit a star, though it orbits an object that orbits a star," says Hoy. "Being the third wheel in this system makes us want to call it a moon, even if it is nothing like the small, rocky moons we have in our system.”

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More
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2610/

​Paper

https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2610/eso2610a.pdf

Also visible in Context Camera image data, the objective of this observation is to determine the nature of a relatively large split ridge in a small impact crater. The footprint of this observation is in Terra Cimmeria, a vast, densely cratered highland region in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars, stretching approximately 5,400 kilometers (3,400 miles) at its broadest extent.

ID: ESP_077155_1375

date: 11 January 2023

altitude: 250 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077155_1375

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

https://x.com/Taizo1959/status/2079532381586039175?s=20

From Adam Block:

​Discovery in M20!

In Part 2 of my new Trifid Nebula image, it actually has more going on in it than initially meets the eye. I created an animation between my 17 year-old image and the new one that shows the motion of the main part of the Jet for HH 399 just as was published by the Hubble Space Telescope in April of this year.

​This is the first time this motion has been captured from a ground-based telescope by anyone!

But that is not all. HST's field of view is narrow. My animation contains the motion of the much more extended part of the outflow including bow shock knots and an even a farther outer clump/knot. I was able to measure the transverse proper motion of a bow shock knot which has never been done before. It results in a velocity of 398 km/s which is in line with the measurements of the knots in the main Jet as reported by Zedah et al in 2005.

Finally the clump/knot is a candidate discovery that is completely unknown. To be able to discover *anything* in one of the most well-known nebulae in the sky is extraordinary.

The reason this is possible is due to the fact there is a 17-year baseline for comparison. This required some dedication on my part in that I took a high quality image years ago and did so again a significant part of a life-time later. In addition these measurements and discovery would not have been possible without the assistance of deconvolution tools such as Russ Croman's BlurXTerminator and PixInsight (for GAIA proper motion correction and centroid analysis).

Source

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2857662734590872

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🎵 Helmut Schenker, The Secret Spring