r/SpaceUnfiltered

This glowing ring is RCW 86, the remnant of an 2000 year old supernova explosion observed by multiple NASA telescopes.

NASA’s IXPE telescope recently studied a section of the remnant where scientists believe the expanding shockwave slammed into the edge of a low-density “cavity” in space, creating the reflected shock effect visible in purple.

The image combines data from:

NASA’s IXPE

Chandra X-ray Observatory

ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope

NOIRLab starfield data

Yellow shows lower-energy X-rays, while blue represents higher-energy X-rays. The result looks almost like a cosmic painting across space.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-x-ray-mission-gets-fresh-look-at-2000-year-old-supernova/

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

https://psyche.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery/time-lapse-compilation-of-mars-during-psyche-approach/

Captured by the multispectral imager instrument, this is an enhanced-color view of the large double-ring crater Huygens and the surrounding heavily cratered southern highlands near 15° south latitude.

.

Captured by the multispectral imager instrument on NASA’s Psyche mission, this is an enhanced-color view of the large double-ring crater Huygens (upper left; about 290 miles, or 470 kilometers, in diameter) and the surrounding heavily cratered southern highlands near 15 degrees south latitude. The various colors in this dramatic scene are likely due to differences in the compositional properties of dust, sand, and bedrock in this ancient terrain. The image scale is around 2,200 feet (670 meters) per pixel.

The image was acquired with Imager A on May 15, 2026, at about 1:18 p.m. PDT, shortly after closest approach with the planet. The images have been processed into an enhanced-color view (to bring out color details beyond what the human eye can see) using red, green, and blue data from imager filters.

PIA26775 Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/nasas-psyche-mission-images-mars-huygens-crater/

Image:

Raw data of a star (top) showing a sinusoidal oscillation and a gradual rise in brightness, both of which are due to detector issues. (Bottom) The same plot but detrended, making it easier to see the very small transit dips caused by a planet.​

.

​A new neural-net analysis of faint stars observed by TESS just identified another 10,090 potential planets!

When they're confirmed (and most of them probably will be), they will more than double the number of known worlds beyond Earth.

.

To date, astronomers have confirmed the existence of just under 6,300 exoplanets. New research could more than double that number, adding a potential 10,000 new planets in one fell swoop.

Yes, that’s right. A 1 with 4 zeros.

The T16 project has announced the discovery of 10,091 exoplanet candidates observed by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Since 2018, the all-sky survey has been monitoring more than 200,000 nearby stars using the transit method, which detects the faint dip in a star’s light when a planet crosses in front of it. Astronomers typically require 3 dips to be sure that what they’re seeing is actually a planet and not a one-off event such as an asteroid or comet in that distant star system.

The T16 project analyzed the light curves of more than 54 million stars observed during the first year of the TESS mission. The project’s analysis technique allowed it to search for planets around stars up to 16 times fainter than TESS typically searches, drastically increasing the field of discovery.

.

Their pipeline detected 11,554 planet candidates. Of those, 1,052 of those had been detected previously and 411 only had one transit—not enough to confirm a planet.

That leaves 10,091 potential new planets. That’s more than were detected in the entirety of NASA’s Kepler mission and its follow-on K2 and more than double the existing planet candidates from TESS that await confirmation. These discoveries will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.

All of the new planet candidates orbit their stars quickly, with orbital periods between 12 hours and 27 days. Although most of the stars that TESS observes are smaller and cooler than the Sun, those close orbits likely mean that most of those planets are far too hot to be habitable.​

.

Paper

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18579

More

https://eos.org/research-and-developments/astronomers-find-10000-potential-new-exoplanets

Image:

This view of the whole sky was constructed from 96 TESS sectors. By the end of September 2025, when the last image of this mosaic was captured, TESS had discovered 679 exoplanets (blue dots) and 5,165 candidates (orange dots). The glowing arc running through the center is the plane of the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud can be seen along the bottom edge just left of center. Black areas within the oval indicate regions TESS has not yet imaged. NASA/MIT/TESS and Veselin Kostov (University of Maryland College Park)​

.

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has released its most complete view of the starry sky to date, filling in gaps from previous observations. Nearly 6,000 colored dots scattered across the image show the locations of either confirmed or candidate exoplanets — worlds beyond our solar system — identified by the mission as of September 2025 at the end of TESS’s second extended mission.

“Over the last eight years, TESS has become a fire hose of exoplanet science,” said Rebekah Hounsell, a TESS associate project scientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s helped us find planets of all different sizes, from tiny Mercury-like ones to those larger than Jupiter. Some of them are even in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be possible on the surface, an important factor in our search for life beyond Earth.”

The TESS mission scans a wide swath of the sky, called a sector, for about a month at a time using its four cameras. These long stares allow the spacecraft to track the brightness changes of tens of thousands of stars, looking for variations in their light that might come from orbiting planets.

Researchers assembled an all-sky mosaic made of 96 sectors observed between April 2018, when TESS began its work, and September 2025.​

.

More

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/tess/nasas-planet-hunting-tess-reveals-dazzling-night-sky/

Why is the night sky dark? 🌌

Erika Hamden breaks down Olbers' Paradox, the cosmic puzzle that helped scientists first hypothesize that the universe had a beginning. In an infinite, infinitely old universe, every point in the night sky should eventually have a star behind it, making the night sky just as bright as daytime. The fact that darkness exists tells us that not enough time has passed for all that light to reach us, or that stars simply have not formed yet in those regions of space.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

Tiny sungrazer comet is visible now approaching its perihelion with Sun (bottom middle of video from CCOR-1)

Also Pleiades cluster (at the top) from SOHO (second video) 19/20.5.26

gs671-suske.ndc.nasa.gov (helioviewer)

CCOR-1 ​

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/ccor-1-coronagraph-experimental

Three crescents. Top: the Moon. Midde: Mars. Bottom: Earth. Background: the infinite black of space.

​The Moon and Earth are from Artemis II, and Mars is from the Psyche mission.

Each image was taken *in the last six weeks*

The Moon: Artemis II image ART002-E-19570 Earth: Artemis II image ART002-E-25101 Mars: Psyche Imager A

Credits:

The Moon and Earth: NASA/Artemis II Crew Mars: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Source

https://bsky.app/profile/theplanetaryguy.bsky.social/post/3mm5ou3cnhs2k

This image was taken on 12th May with Canon 6D using Sigma 28mm 1.4
Check out my Instagram for more!
Instagram ID: wongcheuklun

Rho Ophiuchi region captured from Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India under roughly Bortle 5/6 skies.

This was shot completely untracked using a Sony A7III with a 70mm lens on a cheap $20 tripod. All frames were taken at f/5.6 (widest available at 70mm on this lens), ISO 2000, with 4 second exposures for a total integration time of around 3 hours.

For processing, I first stacked everything in DeepSkyStacker and imported the final TIFF into Siril using 32-bit mode since 16-bit processing was causing noticeable banding. I then used GraXpert for background extraction/gradient removal and StarNet for star separation inside Siril, followed by an initial stretch.

After that, I exported the result to Photoshop for additional stretching, levels, saturation adjustments, noise reduction, and recomposition of the starless and star layers.

This was mainly an attempt to see how far I could push an untracked setup from light polluted skies on the Rho Ophiuchi complex. Feedback and criticism are welcome.

Dark circles around a bright disk around the center of the galaxy.

https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mm4leond3c2a

"The moon, almost spilling out of the sky, is sinking below the horizon.

I waited for one of the few chances each year to see the thin crescent moon peeking out from behind a sea cave on an island, and was lucky enough to witness this fleeting moment." 📸 KAGAYA

https://bsky.app/profile/kagaya11949.bsky.social/post/3mm2bkcm2e22d

10 frames with 30s exposures into a video.

18.5.26

📸 吉本＠彗星屋 (katsumi_comet )

https://x.com/katsumi_comet/status/2056727152410980723

A close view of Mars from orbit, showing a dusty reddish surface covered in impact craters, with thin whitish high altitude clouds stretching along the upper limb of the planet against black space.​

Full size 5k image: flic.kr/p/2sdpsHP
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

2025-07-24
South is up
HR211_0000 ND3+GR3+BL3

https://bsky.app/profile/andrealuck.bsky.social/post/3mlyl4tevls2g

Description from Lucy Yunxi Hu

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=26940560955596290&set=a.6281127298632958

​ " ​This image shows Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) crossing the Orion over four nights in May 2026 from dark-sky locations near Canberra, Australia. The sequence captures the comet gradually fading after perihelion as its ion tail becomes fainter and more diffuse over time.

The widefield background is a multi-night panorama of the Orion region, featuring Barnard’s Loop, M42, the Horsehead Nebula, and surrounding molecular clouds. Due to weather limitations, the four comet positions were captured from two locations near Canberra and later aligned to the surrounding star field to preserve the comet’s relative motion across the sky.

I spent around eight nights outside after work over the past two weeks trying to capture Comet C/2025 R3. I even met some amateurs by chance on some nights. This is, in many ways, my very first deep-sky astrophotography project after spending time learning astrophotography, and definitely not an easy one for me (lots to improve!). There were many new techniques and skills to learn, along with unstable weather on several nights. Despite all the challenges, seeing the comet gradually move through Orion over multiple nights was honestly quite magical! Clear skies!

EXIF:

Dates: May 7, 9, 11, and 12, 2026 (corresponding to the comet positions from lowest to highest in the image).

​Locations: Colinton, NSW, Australia (near South Canberra) for the two lower comet positions, and Gundaroo, NSW, Australia (near North Canberra) for the two upper comet positions.

​Gear: Benro Polaris + Canon R5 + Canon EF 135mm prime lens. RGB: f/2.0–2.2, ISO1600, multiple 30s exposures over multiple nights (plus several 5s and 2s exposures for M42 core).

​Ha: f/2.0–2.2, ISO1600–6400, multiple 30s exposures over multiple nights. Processed using PixInsight, Sequator, RegiStar, and Photoshop​ "

https://bsky.app/profile/thomasappere.bsky.social/post/3mm2jmtjwq22u

Images

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/psyche-raw-images/

Videos of the transit

Source

Day 093, orbit 1439 — Sunday morning science episode #7: static electricity

Source

https://x.com/Soph_astro/status/2055949600356184216