Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Monday, 18 May 2026

Moon-Venus Conjunction

The Moon and Venus, center, are seen in conjunction above the Washington Monument, Monday, May 18, 2026, as viewed from the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters Building in Washington.

The Moon and Venus look close together because they line up from our point of view on Earth. In reality, they are separated by millions of miles in space.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Text: ESA

Tuesday, 19 May 2026

A Galactic Hybrid

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the remarkable galaxy UGC 12591. UGC 12591 sits somewhere between a lenticular and a spiral. It lies just under 400 million light-years away from us in the westernmost region of the Pisces–Perseus Supercluster, a long chain of galaxy clusters that stretches out for hundreds of millions of light-years — one of the largest known structures in the cosmos.

The galaxy itself is also extraordinary: it is incredibly massive. The galaxy and its halo together contain several hundred billion times the mass of the sun, four times the mass of the Milky Way. It also whirls around extremely quickly, rotating at speeds of up to 1.8 million kilometers per hour.

Observations with Hubble are helping astronomers determine the mass of UGC 12591 and whether the galaxy formed and grew slowly over time or grew unusually massive by colliding and merging with another large galaxy at some point in its past.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Wednesday, 20 May 2026

Curiosity Shakes Loose a Pesky Rock

After NASA’s Curiosity #Mars rover drilled a sample from this rock on April 25, 2026, it withdrew its robotic arm and pulled the entire rock off the surface with it. Engineers spent several days repositioning the arm and vibrating the drill to try to loosen the rock. When it finally detached on May 1, the rock broke into pieces.

This close-up image of the rock was produced by Curiosity’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on May 6. Nicknamed “Atacama,” the rock is estimated to be 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick. It would weigh roughly 28.6 pounds on Earth (and about a third of that on Mars). The circular hole produced by Curiosity’s drill is visible in the rock.

Credit: NASA/ESA – S. Adenot

Thursday, 21 May 2026

A Lyrid From Orbit

The Expedition 74 crew on the International Space Station turned into meteor chasers as Earth passed through a cloud of dust and small debris left behind by comet Thatcher in 1861.

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot set up a camera to automatically record thousands of images in the hope of catching a shooting star, an elusive event that often lasts only a fraction of a second.

“In scientific terms, a shooting star is actually a meteor: a tiny fragment of rock or dust from space that disintegrates as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, after traveling astronomical distances. For those with their heads full of dreams, seeing a shooting star often feels like the perfect moment to make a wish… just in case!” says Sophie.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy

Friday, 22 May 2026

Messier 77 from JWST

Messier 77, also known as the Squid Galaxy, was imaged by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope in the mid-infrared. The six orange lines emanating from the center of the image are an effect of the telescope's optics, while the bright region at the center of the galaxy marks where material is falling around a supermassive black hole.

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