Planetary Picture of the Day - Week of June 8, 2026

Monday, 8 June 2026

A Vast Clay Region on Mars

Taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this view shows the transition between clay units in the Oxia Planum and Mawrth Vallis regions on Mars. A new study found that the clay deposits at Oxia Planum, the landing site of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover, reached as far as Mawrth Vallis. Stretching roughly 600 km across and rising over a kilometer in altitude, the deposits are vast in scale.

At the boundary between the two main clay-bearing units, scientists have identified a paleosurface: a remnant of an ancient, exposed surface that was heavily cratered and later covered by younger deposits. This paleosurface marks a pause in sedimentation, followed by a shift in water chemistry and mineralogy across both sites. If an ocean did form these clay units, its shorelines would rank among the highest ever theorized for Mars.

Wednesday, 10 June 2026

Flame Nebula (NGC 2024)

The Flame Nebula image features Chandra’s X-rays (purple) embedded within a dusty-grey landscape seen in infrared by JWST. Several dozen young stars illuminate the gas cloud, appearing as white cores surrounded by thick, neon purple-pink X-ray halos. This image captures the "stellar soil" of a region where stars are currently forming and beginning their life cycles.

Friday, 12 June 2026

Celebrating the Birth of New Stars... and the VST!

These pareidolia-inducing clouds are a pair of nebulae — collections of dust and gas in interstellar space — called Gum 10 and Gum 11. Visible mostly from the southern hemisphere, they are part of a larger complex, in which stars are born. Gum 10 is the brightest cloud that occupies most of the image, whereas Gum 11 is the fainter, detached cloud to the bottom-left. Their bright glow comes from a special interaction between hydrogen and the hot massive stars in each nebula.

These stars emit ultraviolet light, which has enough energy to remove electrons from atoms, forming ions. These electrons eventually recombine with hydrogen ions, which causes the emission of the specific shade of red light seen in this image. The black lines in the nebula come from dust that blocks the light behind it.

This image was taken with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), which celebrates the 15th anniversary of its first light this week.