📸 setup by astronaut Jessica Meir Raw photos ESRS NASAEarth NASA_Johnson
ID ISS074-E-745230 to 748227 Edit by Riccardo Rossi (ISAA) 🎵Peaceful New Age Ambient by Databend
Post from Riccardo Rossi - IU4APB - AstronautiCAST co-host https://x.com/RikyUnreal/status/2071654936547353010?t=vU1qX_YErRqGqMZ0k8wS2g&s=09
You can search for raw photos here
https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of Thebe, the second largest of Jupiter’s inner moons, during a close pass on May 1, 2026. The spacecraft’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) captured this image from a distance of approximately 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) at a resolution of about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel.
Thebe resides at the outer edge of Jupiter’s faint ring system and is believed to play a role in the formation of the planet’s “gossamer” ring through the shedding of dust.
While the SRU’s primary function is to image star fields for navigation, its high sensitivity in low-light conditions makes it a powerful secondary science instrument. The SRU has previously been used to discover “shallow lightning” in Jupiter’s atmosphere and to image the planet’s ring system.
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/nasas-juno-misson-captures-jupiter-moon-thebe/
Rubin's Ocean of Stars
Dive in and explore this image peering through our home galaxy, the Milky Way. At first glance, it’s a dense scatter of light, like a glittering sea. Look closer, and the stars begin to stand out individually — notice their range of colors and brightnesses. Rubin captures stars in clear detail, revealing faint light in crowded stellar regions. This view is close to the Milky Way’s plane, the crowded disk of the galaxy.
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In this image, millions of multi-colored stars appear against a backdrop of galaxies of all shapes and sizes. The brightest stars punctuate the scene in dazzling blue, yellow, red, and white. Look very closely, and you may spot a few ghostly clouds of Galactic gas and dust muting the distant light.
We’re familiar with stars as points of light in the night sky, but they have even more to offer when we take a closer look. Stars are some of the building blocks of a galaxy, and they carry information about the galaxy’s past. Their colors and brightness tell us about their temperature, size, and age: bluer stars are usually hotter, more massive, and younger, while redder stars tend to be cooler, less massive, and older. By studying stars across the Milky Way, scientists can piece together when different parts of our galaxy formed and how it has evolved over time.
Although this image is static, it represents a much more active Universe. Many of these stars change in brightness or shift slightly in position over time. Over Rubin’s 10-year survey, scientists will watch this scene come to life, tracking changes that occur on timescales from days to years.
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https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/image-releases/ocean-of-stars
https://bsky.app/profile/vrubinobs.bsky.social/post/3mpje7yrmem2t
The drainages in this image are part of Hebrus Valles, an outflow channel system likely formed by catastrophic floods.
Hebrus Valles is located in the plains of the Northern Lowlands, just west of the Elysium volcanic region. Individual channels range from several hundred meters to several kilometers wide and form multi-threaded (anastamosing) patterns. Separating the channels are streamlined forms, whose tails point downstream and indicate that channel flow is to the north. The channels seemingly terminate in an elongated pit that is approximately 1875 meters long and 1125 meters wide. Using the shadow that the wall has cast on the floor of the pit, we can estimate that the pit is nearly 500 meters deep.
The pit, which formed after the channels, exposes a bouldery layer below the dusty surface mantle and is underlain by sediments. Boulders several meters in diameter litter the slopes down into the pit. Pits such as these are of interest as possible candidate landing sites for human exploration because they might retain subsurface water ice that could be utilized by future long-term human settlements.
ID: ESP_048036_2025
date: 25 October 2016
altitude: 286 km
https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_048036_2025
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
From Robert Parsons (not mine):
"A short animation of some Spectacular Post flare loops on the Suns western limb. Clouds rolled in after 30mins but I captured enough data to show the fantastic movement and coronal rain.
I have repeated the short capture to loop the video a few times.
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Mono and RGB versions in comments . West is up."
September 13, 2024
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196184709@N06/55372270051/in/photostream/
There is a small transequatorial negative polarity coronal hole rotating towards the central meridian (CM). It will cross it in about two days. Expecting the onset of its effects - first the SIR (Stream Interaction Region), followed by the high speed solar wind stream - on Tuesday and Wednesday. We could see G1 (minor) storm conditions.
Jure Atanackov https://x.com/JAtanackov/status/2073698487569416448?t=vghvGM8aWz5wU1-pBET\_og&s=09
The discovery may lead astronomers to revise when these stellar bars began to emerge in the history of the universe.
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Image:
Composite false-color image of M1149-BSG-z5, created with JWST imaging data taken in F090W+F115W+F150W (blue), F200W+F277W+F300M (green), and F356W+F410M+F444W (red). Credit: Wang et al., 2026.
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An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new massive barred spiral galaxy. The newfound galaxy, designated M1149-BSG-z5, was identified using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The finding was detailed in a paper published June 23 on the preprint server arXiv.
The bars are out there
For astronomers, bars are important structures in galaxies, highly related to galaxy secular evolution. Although bars are common in nearby disk galaxies, at high redshifts, the cosmic environment is drastically different from the local universe, and bar structure formation is expected to be suppressed.
One of the tools that has helped uncover many of these high-redshift barred galaxies is JWST. Observations with this space telescope have found that barred galaxies emerge as early as a redshift of about 4.0, with observed fractions of 3–7% at a redshift of 3.5.
New barred galaxy at the Epoch of Reionization Now, a group of astronomers led by Xiaohan Wang of Tsinghua University in Beijing adds a new galaxy to this list.
"M1149-BSG-z5 was identified in the NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) imaging parallel field of JWST Cycle-2 program 'Medium-band Astrophysics with the Grism of NIRCam in Frontier Fields,'" the researchers wrote in the paper.
The newfound galaxy M1149-BSG-z5 has a redshift of 5.1 and hosts a stellar bar with a length of approximately 14,700 light-years. This makes it the highest-redshift barred galaxy known to date.
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The properties of M1149-BSG-z5
According to the study, M1149-BSG-z5 has an effective radius of about 8,500 light-years, and its spiral arms extend to a radius of some 17,900 light-years. The mass of the galaxy was estimated to be 28 billion solar masses, and its star-formation rate was found to be at a level of 144 solar masses per year.
Furthermore, the study found that M1149-BSG-z5 hosts an active galactic nucleus (AGN), with a relatively low black-hole-to-stellar mass ratio of about 0.001. This is lower than those of many high-redshift AGNs and comparable to local AGNs.
The astronomers conclude that the properties of M1149-BSG-z5, together with its high metallicity (about 50% solar) and its location on the BPT (Baldwin, Phillips, and Terlevich) diagram, which is used to determine whether a galaxy's gas is being ionized by intense star formation or by an active, supermassive black hole, make it a high-redshift massive, chemically evolved galaxy.
When compared with other galaxies, M1149-BSG-z5 turns out to be larger than typical galaxies at a redshift of about 5.0 and comparable to barred galaxies with redshifts between 2.0 and 4.0. The authors of the paper note that the nearest galaxy to M1149-BSG-z5 is about 69,000 light-years away, which suggests that interaction may play a role in the bar formation of the newly detected system.
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Source
https://phys.org/news/2026-07-jwst-barred-spiral-galaxy.html?utm_source=webpush&utm_medium=push
Paper
Jure Atanackov https://x.com/JAtanackov/status/2073521266368119214?s=20
Videos Helioviewer
In celebration of the 250th birthday of the United States, NASA has unveiled four cosmic images from its Chandra X-ray Observatory rendered in red, white, and blue that represent the wonders of the universe the agency explores. The images are accompanied by a trio of new sonifications — a technique that translates astronomical data into sounds.
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The image set begins with Cassiopeia A in the top panel, where X-rays from Chandra (represented in blue and purple) have been combined with an infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red and white). Chandra’s X-ray vision reveals the blast wave that tore through the star, as well as elements in the debris field like iron, calcium, and oxygen. Webb’s infrared data also shows the expanding shell of material from the explosion and cosmic dust throughout the remnant.
In the bottom row, the first image on the left is the nebula NGC 3603, which contains a massive cluster of stars and is located in the Milky Way galaxy. This new composite image contains Chandra’s X-ray data (red and white) and shows diffuse emission near the galaxy’s center along with point-like X-ray sources throughout the middle of the image. Optical, infrared, and ultraviolet light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (red-orange, green, blue, and yellow) reveal stars in the center of the image and dust and gas toward the bottom. The combined layering of the colors makes this nebula and the stars forming within it appear primarily red, white, and blue, with X-rays showing the sparkling lights of young stars.
The middle panel of the bottom row is a new look at the galaxy NGC 4736, also known as Messier 94. In this image, X-rays of different wavelengths from Chandra (red, orange, and blue) are layered with a visible light image from astrophotographers using their telescopes on the ground (red, green, and blue). Messier 94 is a spiral galaxy with a bright inner ring around it, called a starburst ring, where new stars are forming, perhaps fueled by gas driven in the unique oval-shaped structure seen here.
The final image in this red, white, and blue quartet features ZwCl 0024+1652. This is a distant galaxy cluster in which astronomers have found evidence for dark matter by using specially processed data from Hubble (blue). Another image from Hubble reveals the individual galaxies in the cluster (appearing as yellow and white). X-ray data from Chandra shows the enormous reservoir of superheated gas that pervades this galaxy cluster (red) with much more mass than all the galaxies taken together.
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IC 443 (also known as the Jellyfish Nebula and Sharpless 248 (Sh2-248)) is a galactic supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Gemini. On the plane of the sky, it is located near the star Eta Geminorum. Its distance is roughly 5,000 light years from Earth.
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Source
And those thin, orange arcs? Yet farther galaxies, their light bent by the cluster.
This scene was acquired by JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), and spans a little under 4 arcminutes in left–right extent.
https://bsky.app/profile/theplanetaryguy.com/post/3mprjqsoszs24
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In today’s Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope we are taken on a visit to a building site of significant scale. The project is a galaxy cluster named MACS J0553.4-3342, located in the constellation Columba (the Dove).
MACS J0553.4-3342 is situated at a redshift of 0.412. Redshift is a measure of how much the cluster’s light has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe over the course of its long journey to Webb’s mirrors; this unassuming number tells us that we are seeing MACS J0553.4-3342 as it was 4.4 billion years in the past. But for a galaxy cluster, this is relatively young. In fact, observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes show a cluster still in the process of being built.
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MACS J0553.4-3342 is composed of two sub-clusters — roughly equal in mass — that are actively merging. The two subclusters have already slammed through each other and travelled over one million light-years apart, but they will eventually come back together again and again until they finally merge. The construction process is messy, and MACS J0553.4-3342 is filled with extremely hot gas that radiates powerful X-rays.
Each subcluster is anchored on an immensely bright and massive elliptical galaxy, which are easily identifiable as the two brightest points in the centre of this scene with the largest glowing halos around them. The many smaller white elliptical galaxies are bound to one of the two subclusters by gravity, and will be incorporated into the final galaxy cluster. This image also features many foreground galaxies — spirals and dusty discs that are unrelated to MACS J0553.4-3342 — and prominent bright stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, S. Fujimoto
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In this observation, within the Shalbatana Vallis outflow channel, there appears to be relict fan-shaped deposits towards the top of the channel wall. These surfaces appear perched on top of a mesa-like-feature suggesting erosion of their margins. Surrounding this feature are younger deposits and areas of chaotic terrain. This image can help to evaluate their stratigraphic relationships to the younger fans and the chaotic terrain/wider channel formation.
ID: ESP_092944_1805
date: 25 May 2026
altitude: 269 km
https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_092944_1805
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Back to back flares+CMEs which unfortunately are not Earth-directed. There could be a grazing component from the M6.7, but that remains to be seen Vincent Ledvina
https://bsky.app/profile/vincentledvina.bsky.social/post/3mprbjfcfoc2i . As AR14479 approaches the Western limb it fires off an M6.7 solar flare at 0703, 1811 UTC, it appeared to have an associated CME as well. Harlan Thomas https://x.com/theauroraguy/status/2073112434362188076 . An M6.7 solar flare is currently in progress around AR 4479 with a peak flux time at 18:11 UTC (July 3). More to follow if a coronal mass ejection (CME) is associated with this event. Image by GOES SUVI. SolarHam https://x.com/SolarHam/status/2073109470482247904 . Video from helioviewer
From Zoomable version
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2606a/zoomable/
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And those thin, orange arcs? Yet farther galaxies, their light bent by the cluster.
This scene was acquired by JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), and spans a little under 4 arcminutes in left–right extent.
https://bsky.app/profile/theplanetaryguy.com/post/3mprjqsoszs24
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In today’s Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope we are taken on a visit to a building site of significant scale. The project is a galaxy cluster named MACS J0553.4-3342, located in the constellation Columba (the Dove).
MACS J0553.4-3342 is situated at a redshift of 0.412. Redshift is a measure of how much the cluster’s light has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe over the course of its long journey to Webb’s mirrors; this unassuming number tells us that we are seeing MACS J0553.4-3342 as it was 4.4 billion years in the past. But for a galaxy cluster, this is relatively young. In fact, observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes show a cluster still in the process of being built.
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MACS J0553.4-3342 is composed of two sub-clusters — roughly equal in mass — that are actively merging. The two subclusters have already slammed through each other and travelled over one million light-years apart, but they will eventually come back together again and again until they finally merge. The construction process is messy, and MACS J0553.4-3342 is filled with extremely hot gas that radiates powerful X-rays.
Each subcluster is anchored on an immensely bright and massive elliptical galaxy, which are easily identifiable as the two brightest points in the centre of this scene with the largest glowing halos around them. The many smaller white elliptical galaxies are bound to one of the two subclusters by gravity, and will be incorporated into the final galaxy cluster. This image also features many foreground galaxies — spirals and dusty discs that are unrelated to MACS J0553.4-3342 — and prominent bright stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, S. Fujimoto
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Credit: NASA/Jessica Meir
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Cartilage repair, cardiac research, and cargo operations wrapped up the week for the Expedition 74 crew before heading into a relaxing three-day weekend. The International Space Station is also orbiting higher following a reboost maneuver on Wednesday.
NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir opened up the Kibo laboratory module’s Life Science Glovebox on Thursday and continued studying how cartilage tissues grow in microgravity. She nourished the cartilage cell samples inside the glovebox then processed them for stowage inside a research incubator. Scientists are exploring engineering cartilage tissues in space possibly leading to self-repairing implants on Earth and advanced fitness techniques for space crews.
NASA flight engineer Chris Williams began his shift with Roscosmos flight engineer Sergei Mikaev in the Columbus laboratory module for neck, shoulder, and leg vein scans using the Ultrasound 3 device that was delivered aboard Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL resupply ship on April 14. Doctors will analyze the biomedical data from the Ultrasound 3 for insights into microgravity’s effect on the human circulatory system and learn how to protect crew members from space-caused blood clots.
Next, Williams focused on cargo transfers inside Cygnus XL which is attached to the Unity module’s Earth-facing port. Meir, along with flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency), assisted Williams with the cargo work. Cygnus XL is in the middle of a six-month stay at the orbital outpost.
Juventae Chasma, just north of Valles Marineris, is notable for several reasons: it is an otherworldly size-box canyon, and shares a name with the mythological Fountain of Youth.
This image, from Juventae Chasma’s southern extent, captures the extraordinary visual softness of the sand on the bottom of the canyon. Unlike other places in Juventae Chasma where ripples and more bedrock landforms are visible, in this scene we can identify peaks arising from a base of smooth materials.
Rather than the sand being grouped in well-behaved, Star-Trek-communicator-badge-shaped barchan dunes, the sand blankets the full surface below the two peaks captured here. The source of this sand is linked to the chasma’s complex geologic history, which likely includes a combination of icy, watery, and windy processes.
ID: ESP_092391_1755
date: 12 April 2026
altitude: 269 km
https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_092391_1755
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Image:
In infrared light, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals bright protostars in star system FS Tau and a tapestry of background galaxies. FS Tau B, the orange protostar slightly right of center, is thought to be responsible for the orange outflows amid the dusty region. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
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,NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the infrared light of numerous features that previously were impossible to see beyond the thick dust of the FS Tau star system. In addition to myriad background galaxies that burst into view like fireworks for the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations, this image flickers with a number of protostars, or baby stars that are formed from dense pockets of gas and dust. These hot, clumpy, and low-mass objects eventually will become full-fledged stars capable of burning hydrogen in their cores, like our Sun. The protostars of FS Tau are about 1 to 3 million years old, which is relatively young in cosmic scales. Our Sun, by contrast, is 4.6 billion years old.
Low-mass stars emit less radiation and have less energetic stellar winds than those with larger masses, which means they disrupt their environment at a much lower level. This makes the FS Tau region incredibly useful for studying low-mass star evolution without the same level of environmental interference seen near higher-mass stars. A pair of protostars that creates the largest diffraction pattern seen slightly to the left of center in the image, called FS Tau A, is about half the mass of our Sun.
The galaxy's dark "brim" is ring of dust and cold gas encircling a vast ball of stars.
Dark Energy Camera spies the faint glowing features of Messier 104, known as the Sombrero Galaxy
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Messier 104, nicknamed the Sombrero Galaxy, is a popular target for amateur observing and astronomical research. Its recognizable extended halo, as well as a faint stellar stream, are captured in exquisite detail in this image from the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.
The Sombrero galaxy (Messier 104) is a galactic masterpiece that captivates scientists and astronomy enthusiasts alike. Its intricate system of globular star clusters lends insight into stellar populations, and astronomers are intrigued by the supermassive black hole at its center. Its distinctive visual features and relative brightness make it a favorite among amateur astronomers. The fascinating story of its discovery, involving three esteemed astronomers, has earned it a spot on one of the most important lists of deep sky objects. Today, it stands as one of the most iconic galaxies in the night sky.
Messier 104 resides approximately 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo (see finder chart). Spanning an impressive 50,000 light-years across, it is among the largest objects of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Despite its grandeur, it appears relatively dim in the night sky — just