Cosmos & Exploration
Exploration spatiale, astrophysique et merveilles de l'univers.
▲ 2.9k r/space
The milky way over the endless sand dunes in Oman [OC]
After a long time at the top of my list I finally visited beautiful Oman! I am working on a project where I travel to and document the darkest skies in the world. I set an alarm for 3 AM at our desert camp and hiked out to this spot in pitch darkness. It took me a while to find a photogenic dune like this but I'm THRILLED with the textures on this one. exacctttly the shot I wanted!
With my color correction I went for an "Aladdin" vibe and I think it really hits the spot artistically. I hope you enjoy!
u/advillious — 3 days ago
▲ 811 r/space
SpaceX calls for better coordination in orbit after near-misses with Starlink: “These led to conjunctions of tens of meters to hundreds of meters. Way too close to comfort.”
arstechnica.comu/ControlCAD — 4 days ago
Aurora over the Geysir area – Iceland
Captured during a strong G4 geomagnetic storm in a unusual spot in Iceland
Two exposures blended:
• Sky: 15s | ISO 1600 | f/2
• Foreground: 5s | ISO 3200 | f/2
Canon EOS R
One of the most intense auroras I’ve ever seen in Iceland.
u/flory_ro — 3 days ago
▲ 158 r/space
First time shooting the Milky Way
I pointed my phone up randomly while shooting the wrong part of the milky way apparently on my camera and the results. Any tips with editing to bring out the white and purple of the cluster more?
u/micvick24 — 3 days ago
A 47-meter giant external tank drifting in space
On April 29, 2011, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour filmed the spacecraft's external tank after its separation. It continued its trajectory before disintegrating over the ocean.
Credit: NASA
Edit: Milky Way
u/Busy_Yesterday9455 — 5 days ago
Salut regarde, j'ai créé un télescope spatial James Webb à l'échelle 1/40, dis-moi si ça te plaît, merci 😘
u/Sea-Loquat227 — 4 days ago
▲ 94 r/space
ISS above Lofoten
Oct9 at 00.23, looked at an iss tracker and it didn’t looked like it was flying above at all, but all the trackers i quickly checked frustrated me and i might have wrong info. Can it be something else? Bright and moving slow.
u/cristi_baluta — 3 days ago
▲ 1.3k r/space
China aims to return Mars samples around 2031, scientist says
globaltimes.cnu/Adept_Ad_1543 — 5 days ago
▲ 94 r/space
It's the 58th anniversary! Oct. 11, 1968: Apollo 7 launches into space, NASA's 1st Apollo astronaut crew in orbit
It's incredible how it only took nine months to go from this first crewed mission of NASA’s Apollo program to straight up landing on the Moon. I think missions like this deserve more recognition alongside Apollo 11.
What do you think is the most underrated achievement in the history of space exploration?
u/ManagerGames — 3 days ago
▲ 91 r/space
Orion Nebula (M42) — Xiaomi 13 Ultra
A smartphone astrophotography collaboration with u/zTrojan. The data acquisition and stacking are his work. I handled the entire post-processing workflow. Thanks to u/zTrojan for providing the stack!
Acquisition
- Imaging device: Xiaomi 13 Ultra, 3.2× telephoto
- Exposure: 50s at ISO 800
- Lights: 45
- Darks: 135
- Integration time: 37m 30s
- Main optics: Sky-Watcher 150/750 Newtonian telescope
- Mount: EQ3-2 with OnStep
- Guiding: SVBONY SV106 + ZWO ASI120MM Mini
- Eyepiece: SVBONY SV190 18mm Ultra Flat Field
- Phone adapter: SVBONY SV214 Pro 3-Axis Universal Smartphone Adapter
- Stacking: Astro Pixel Processor
Processing
- Siril: cropping, BGE background extraction, background neutralization, color calibration and aberration correction
- StarNet++: star separation
- Siril: separate stretching of the starless image and star layer
- Photoshop: star recomposition and final adjustments
For this collaboration, I focused on the post-processing side, working with the background and stars separately before recombining them into the final image.
u/Buffur — 3 days ago
▲ 905 r/space
NASA issues long-awaited call to industry for private space stations: “We’ve made it clear that NASA will never give up its presence in low Earth orbit.”
arstechnica.comu/ControlCAD — 5 days ago
▲ 1.9k r/space
Meteor 2-7, a Soviet weather satellite dead since 1984, may have broken up
orbinauts.comu/DiveLive — 5 days ago
▲ 19 r/space
5 galaxies par un téléphone sans suivi
La voie lactée bien-sur avec Andromède et ses satellites M32 et M110 ainsi que la galaxie du triangle en haut à gauche captée avec un téléphone.
Empilé avec Sequator
Traitement : Siril, GraXpert, Seti astro suite pro, Gimp et lightroom mobile pout les finitions.
Téléphone : Samsung s25 ultra
Ciel bortle 4.6
u/Dizzy_Driver9205 — 3 days ago
Our Moon, Jupiter and its moons
Taken from Fishers, IN on 2026/10/06 about 06:40AM.
This happened right after the ocultation of Jupiter by the moon.
It's a single exposure and only cropped; still working on an HDR version.
Taken with a Celestron C6, 1500mm focal length and a Canon R6 Mark ii.
u/Still-Meaning4014 — 4 days ago
▲ 33 r/space
Taurus-Perseus Region — Xiaomi 14T Pro
A wide-field astrophotography image captured with a Xiaomi 14T Pro and a Teseek 3rd-generation star tracker.
Acquisition
- Xiaomi 14T Pro — 60mm-equivalent telephoto
- 30s | ISO 1600
- 440 light frames + 50 darks + 50 biases
- 3h 40m total integration
- Teseek 3rd-generation star tracker
The field includes the Pleiades (M45), the Hyades star cluster, and the California Nebula (NGC 1499). It also captures the surrounding Milky Way star field, fainter nebulosity, and IC 417 (the Spider Nebula) in the lower-left region.
Processing
- Siril: cropping; BGE background extraction; background neutralization and color calibration; aberration correction
- Cosmic Clarity: sharpening and denoising
- StarNet++: star separation
- Siril: separate stretching of the star and starless images
- Photoshop: star recomposition and final adjustments
u/Buffur — 3 days ago
▲ 417 r/space
Superpowers Race to Put Nuclear Reactors on the Moon
- Russia aims to have a lunar reactor running by 2036 as part of a secretive partnership with China. NASA has already sped up its schedule to beat its rivals.
- Failures could cause a chain reaction with dire consequences. Falling reactor debris could scatter radioactive material, as happened in Canada in the late 1970s. An explosion or a meltdown on the moon’s surface would risk turning entire regions into no-go zones.
- Nuclear power appears to be the only core task that China has delegated to its partner in the lunar project. No country has more experience than Russia in this area. It launched more than 30 reactors into orbit, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, aboard Cold War-era satellites, and it is a leader in civilian nuclear power. Russia controls the largest supply of what is considered the safest nuclear fuel for space missions. That fuel, uranium that is not highly enriched, is in short supply in the United States.
- NASA has accelerated its timeline, fearing that a Russian-Chinese reactor could establish a de facto exclusion zone on the moon. NASA’s Lunar Reactor 1 is expected to produce 20 kilowatts of electricity (roughly the power use of 16 American homes) and work for five years with no intervention.
- “This is the moment when there is a lot of risk,” said Leopold Summerer, who leads a United Nations working group on nuclear power in outer space. “We had many launch failures, so we have a lot of data on what can go wrong.” Take, for example, a reactor splashing into an ocean. Water slows down neutrons, making them more likely to split atoms. This could cause havoc by making a reactor go critical, meaning it would enter a chain reaction of splitting atoms that releases radiation. Nuclear experts say this probably happened in Russia in 2019, when a reactor-powered cruise missile failed and plunged into the White Sea. When researchers tried to recover it, a nuclear reaction occurred, according to the U.S. Department of State. At least five workers died. (Russia denied these claims and said the missile was not powered by a reactor.)
u/stepover9 — 6 days ago
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
news.mit.eduu/holyfruits — 7 days ago