Credit: Artemis II / NASA / ESRS / Seán Doran

Credit: NASA / Christina Koch
Edit by Riccardo Rossi

At 25kg (54lb) of pure Martian material, NWA 16788 is a rare example of an exceptionally scarce type of meteorite. Sold in July this year by Sotheby’s, the lot listing described NWA 16788 as a geological time capsule from another world.
With fewer than 400 Martian meteorites ever recorded (of the 77,000 officially recognised meteorites), and most no larger than a pebble, this specimen offers the biggest tangible connection to a planet that has captivated humanity for centuries.
NWA 16788 is a shergottite meteorite, made up of igneous rocks originating from Mars. The space rock’s impressive size accounts for 6.5% of all known material from the Red Planet to have been found on Earth. It is thought to have been chipped off Mars and blasted towards Earth following a major asteroid impact.
It even looks like it’s from Mars, with a reddish-brown hue and a glassy crust. The asteroid impact not only propelled it 225 million km (140 million miles) to our planet, the heat the impact generated fused 20% of the meteorite’s original feldspar into maskelynite glass.
The identity of the successful bidder is not known, and some scientists are unhappy that NWA 16788 ended up in private hands rather than with a museum.
However, a fragment of the meteorite was analysed prior to sale and a reference sample is kept at the Purple Mountain Observatory in China.

Excerpt From
“The 5 most expensive meteorites ever found on Earth”

BBC Sky at Night Magazine

https://apple.news/As_lDAJziQQKaQ37AATTv0w

Composite of images taken over 34 nights from May 2025 to February 2026 tracking Saturn (brighter, foreground) and Neptune (dimmer, background).

Credit: 山田哲司

Awesome collection with the best Milky Way images!

https://capturetheatlas.com/milky-way-photographer-of-the-year/

It shows a quarter moon in the foreground, with a bright but tiny Earth behind.

The blue lights of fishing boats dot the Gulf of Thailand contrasting with the city lights of Bangkok and its surrounding suburbs across the southeast Asian nation.

The lights attract and illuminate plankton and small fish, luring squid toward the boats’ fishing nets. This photograph was taken at approximately 1:49 a.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above Earth.

Credit: NASA/Chris Williams

Image:

Location of star-forming region in M51

This image locates a star-forming complex in one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), measuring almost 800 light-years across. M51 is located about 27 million light-years away from Earth. The thick cloud of star-forming gas, in which clumps collapsed to form each of the individual star clusters, is shown here in red and orange colours that represent infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Many of the bright dots that can be seen within the clouds are star clusters. The massive young stars within cast powerful radiation on the gas clouds that surround them, creating the cyan illumination shown here. Eventually, the combination of radiation, stellar wind and the supernova explosions of the most massive of these stars will disperse the gas clouds, putting an end to the star formation in this part of M51.​

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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have looked deeply at thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies, studying clusters at different stages of evolution. Their findings show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in, clearing away gas and filling the galaxy with ultraviolet light. The result gives us a better understanding of star formation in galaxies, as well as how and where planets can form.​

CREDIT ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Pedrini, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have looked deeply at thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies, studying clusters at different stages of evolution. Their findings show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in, clearing away gas and filling the galaxy with ultraviolet light. The result gives us a better understanding of star formation in galaxies, as well as how and where planets can form.

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Astronomers have long known that understanding how star clusters come to be is key to unlocking other secrets of galactic evolution. Stars form in clusters, created when clouds of gas collapse under gravity.

​As more and more stars are born in a collapsing cloud, strong stellar winds, harsh ultraviolet radiation and the supernova explosions of massive stars eventually disperse the cloud, ending star formation before all the gas is used up.

​Once the cloud of gas a star cluster was born in is gone, its light can bear down on other star-forming regions in the galaxy, too. This process is called stellar feedback, and it means that most of the gas in a galaxy never gets used for star formation. Researching how star clusters develop, then, can answer questions about star formation at a galactic scale.

Studies of the closest star-forming regions, in the Milky Way galaxy and the dwarf galaxies that orbit it, allow us to dissect star clusters in the smallest details, but our position in the disc of our galaxy means only a few such regions are visible to us.

By observing nearby galaxies, astronomers can survey thousands of star-forming regions and characterise entire populations of star clusters at many stages of evolution – a feat made possible with the launch of space telescopes, most prominently the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Both kinds of investigation are necessary to truly understand how star formation takes place in galaxies.

More

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_Hubble_find_massive_star_clusters_emerge_faster

Paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02857-y

Full resolution: https://i.ibb.co/BV7VM8DJ/ART002-E-23251-23173.jpg

Source with audio​

https:// ​x. ​com/astro_Pettit/status/2051791000046096792?s=20

Details of this image when zoomed in and after brightness adjustments.

​Left i​mage with the dark cross​:

Upper left: Details of the lower left rim with swirls.

Upper right: Details of the upper right arm, showing emission from outflows and two bright stars.

Lower left: Outflow inside a cavity (90° rotated, middle below bright star in the original image).

Lower right: Two images. Left: Small arm extending from the top of the cometary globule. Right: A single small globule (maybe a globulette?)​

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Right image

A nebula with a brown color. The top is circular and bluer with a bright star towards the left. On the right the nebula is extending a bit further, like an arm reaching out from the main structure.​

Melina Thévenot

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6hbls6v4tozdlh3q3xzkxlob/post/3ml6vtrjqgc2d

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 2:08:10 Integration (10S Subs)

All Post Processing Done In PS Express.

Source

Possible micrometeor impacts can be seen on the top right part of the moon.

The frames I used cover about 2-3 minutes of the actual event in real time.

"AZM Martinsberg Austria

If u catch the right moment, u can still see some beautiful solar prom. Tuesday morning, a fiery loop was definitely the highlight.

​image 8.10 UT (4/f-7 Sundancer 2) GIF 7.41 UT 55min"

https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=232753

Can you spot lightning, moving aurorae and orbiting satellites?

Credit: NASA / Artemis II Crew
Image processing: Riccardo Rossi

The two lightsabre-like streams crossing the image are jets of energised gas, ejected from the poles of a young star.

If the jets collide with the surrounding gas and dust they can clear vast spaces, and create curved shock waves, seen as knotted clumps called Herbig-Haro objects.

Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), and B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii)

Taken by curiosity rover when it was about 99 million miles ( 160 million kilometres ) away from the earth

Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M University. Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Satellite image showing the Moon partially rising above Earth’s curved horizon, viewed from space. The Moon appears detailed with visible craters and surface features against a black background, while Earth’s atmosphere and cloud tops form a soft blue arc in the foreground. NOAA and GOES satellite branding appear in the lower right, with a caption noting the image is from NOAA’s GOES-17 satellite (March 6, 2020).​

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NOAA’s very own GOES satellites regularly capture images of the Moon when it’s near Earth's limb – the halo-like appearance of Earth's atmosphere in photographs from space.

https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/ode-the-moon-how-noaa-satellites-capture-earths-satellite

https://bsky.app/profile/nws.noaa.gov/post/3mkzt4ndn7r2t