r/SpaceUnfiltered

This is a re-image of an observation we acquired in 2016 to measure dune mobility. This is a remarkable and rare example of ice-dune interaction, which can be seen as a modern analogue of the burial of the wind-driven, ice-rich sedimentary deposit under the North Polar layered deposits of Mars.

ID: ESP_077242_2615

​date: 18 January 2023

​altitude: 319 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077242_2615

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

A green circular cloud and a more compact yellow cloud on the right. A blue outflow from a protostar, which is located between the two clouds, but also slightly above them. The clouds are surrounded by faint orange-brown emission.

Processed by Melina Thévenot
https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mtg3uvzyi225

This area is dominated by bright exposures as revealed by CaSSIS instrument data as well as Context Camera images. The Thaumasia plateau is south of the Valles Marineris canyon system and consists of high lava plains partly surrounded by rugged highlands, mostly of Noachian and Hesperian age. The name comes from Thaumas, Greek god of the clouds and celestial apparitions.

ID: ESP_077241_1455

​date: 17 January 2023

​altitude: 248 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077241_1455

​NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona​

This is an animated before-and-after view of the crater formed after a Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon’s surface on Aug. 5, 2026. These images were taken between Aug. 11 and 12 by the Narrow-Angle Camera on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are enlarged three times from the original, with north facing up, and they cover an area about a quarter of a mile wide. NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines

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Between Aug. 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the surface following its January 2025 launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.

To capture imagery of the impact, engineers tilted the spacecraft so its cameras would point toward the crater each time LRO passed about 60 miles above the Moon, traveling 1 mile per second. The orbiter circles the Moon from pole to pole every two hours, while the Moon slowly rotates underneath it. To photograph a specific spot, the spacecraft must wait until that location turns into view, which took six days in this case.

Getting the pointing right was only half the challenge; timing had to be accurate as well. If the camera snapped even 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would drift off-center by 10 miles.

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Because of the variety of viewing angles, scientists could see the crater under multiple lighting conditions that revealed unique features. In images where the crater rim stood out, scientists measured its 60‑foot width. Scientists also determined the crater is less than 10 feet deep based on the length of its shadow.

To capture these details, LRO used its Narrow-Angle Camera, which can spot features as small as 3 feet wide.​

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https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasas-lro-images-falcon-9-crater-on-moon-learns-new-details/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=NASASolarSystem&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=997071735​

https://lroc.im-ldi.com/images/1499

LKH Milky Way merger (artist’s impression)

​About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH (left) collided with a young Milky Way (right) and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this long-ago collision by studying ancient globular star clusters.​

Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

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Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy’s history 1.8 billion years farther back in time than before.

The results were published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The Milky Way today is a massive spiral galaxy home to hundreds of billions of stars. However, our galaxy wasn’t always so large; it has grown by forming new stars from its gas clouds as well as collecting stars, gas, and dark matter from other galaxies through mergers.

The most recent massive merger in our galaxy’s history took place with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, beginning over 6 billion years ago and still ongoing today. Looking back into the even more distant past, researchers learned that the Milky Way galaxy consumed another dwarf galaxy called Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus 10 billion years ago. This ancient merger greatly affected the structure of our galaxy’s disk of stars. Other, smaller mergers occurred between these two.

But our galaxy’s history doesn’t stop there. Both observations and simulations have suggested that another large merger preceded these two, though the specifics of the event have been heavily debated. Now, Hubble has uncovered definitive evidence of an earlier merger that occurred about 11.8 billion years ago, or just 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

“Our home is the Milky Way galaxy, but we do not know how our house was built,” said Davide Massari, lead author, Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna in Italy. “In this paper we discover where the first significant batch of bricks came from: a dwarf galaxy that we call LKH.”

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02931-5

https://esahubble.org/news/heic2611/?lang&fbclid=IwY2xjawTxUapwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMDBzalN3TEFhUTZPSGhwODFzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeXWDvmVy6A6Bxq9NGwxuRwzUZ0IkjtL_Ara258-iziVADh46M9OCNE9VzFhk_aem_MLWE9yOnpnxvdWTe4b3s2A​

''It shows the eclipse building, frame by frame, right up until her mount disconnected and her laptop overheated. That’s eclipse chasing for you. Things go wrong, and you keep shooting anyway.''

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcBrctKjCDw/?img_index=1

1.20 UT​

​LRGB 40/10/10/10min 16"/3.2 QHY 600

📸 Michael Jäger, Gerald Rhemann

https://www.facebook.com/groups/227002358661288/permalink/1848192076542300/?rdid=0Gky83boIlqd1zI2#​

LRGB is an astrophotography technique that combines a high-resolution monochrome Luminance (L) channel for fine detail with lower-resolution Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) channels for color. This method maximizes light collection efficiency and sharpness using monochrome cameras.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRGB

Many impact craters on Mars were filled with ice in past climates. Sometimes this ice flows or slumps down the crater walls into the center and acquires concentric wrinkles as a result. This image shows an example of this.

There are other ways that scientists know the material in the crater is icy. Surface cracks that form polygonal shapes cover the material in the crater. They are easy to see in this spring-time image because seasonal frost hides inside the cracks, outlining them in bright white. These cracks form because ice within the ground expands and contracts a lot as it warms and cools.

Scientists can see similar cracks in icy areas of the Earth and other icy locations on Mars. If you look closely, you’ll see small polygons inside larger ones. The small polygons are younger and the cracks shallower while the large ones are outlined with cracks that penetrate more deeply.

ID: ESP_047247_1150

​date: 24 August 2016

​altitude: 248 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_047247_1150

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

What exactly does impact here mean? Hit the ground? If yes, what allows small objects survive the ride through the atmosphere?

The word impact often gets debated in this context. I consider Earth's atmosphere part of Earth, so I use it. Did it survive? At ~1.5 m across, 16 km/s, and an 18° entry angle, it probably mostly burned up, but small meteorites are possible depending on composition and fragmentation height.

https://bsky.app/profile/tony873004.bsky.social/post/3mlwb7bed3k2p

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If it was so small how did it managed to survive the entry burn up?

It might not have survived. But it could have dropped meteorites.

https:// ​x. ​com/tony873004/status/2055409224713441771

Tony Dunn

https://bsky.app/profile/tony873004.bsky.social/post/3mlwcavpfsc2n

More in the thread:

​https://groups.io/g/mpml/topic/119328235

A Mars Orbiter Camera shows good exposures of varied materials at this site, but our HiRISE observation can improve on the resolution to see fine scale details in the bedding. The layers appear to have varied albedo and regions free of dust. We want to look for variations and indications of composition.

ID: ESP_077241_1790

​date: 17 January 2023

​altitude: 270 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077241_1790

​NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona​

By IgnacioA320 (a friend of him) 12.8.26

https://x.com/ignacioA320/status/2087832632499257641?s=20​

This image shows (part of ) a 6-kilometer crater located on the northern slope of Bond Crater. Pole-facing gullies have eroded the northern slope of this small crater, located just west of where Uzboi Valles emanates from Bond and continues in a northerly direction.

However, Hale Crater to the south has numerous gullies on its slopes and even on its central peak region. Researchers have analyzed both Bond and Hale Craters to try to determine why Bond has no gullies on its slopes, except for a small 7-km crater on the floor in its central area.

The gullies in this observation have eroded into bedrock layers forming tributaries in the upper slope region and distributary channels further downslope on the debris fans. Research attributes these features to fluvial processes.

ID: ESP_074246_1475

​date: 29 May 2022

​altitude: 257 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_074246_1475

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Image Credit & Copyright: Ruiyu Zhang https://www.instagram.com/duskpiper/

Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

​Explanation: On August 12th, 2026, the Moon totally eclipsed the Sun and cast its shadow across Siberia, Greenland, Iceland, Spain, and Portugal.

Today’s image features two total solar eclipses viewed from Zaragoza, Spain, one over the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar and the other reflecting in the Ebro River. For a few moments, Spain saw its first major total solar eclipse since 1905.

​Those witnessing totality may experience a chill in the air, the quieting of birds, the confused chirps of insects, and the shared awe of many. It’s the corona’s time to shine as the Sun’s bright disk is blocked by the Moon. Among other reasons to study eclipses, they help scientists understand why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the Sun’s surface.

​Enthusiastic citizens can contribute to these studies by recording how wildlife responds, imaging the corona, and monitoring air temperature and clouds.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

https:// ​x. ​com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2087615703851430188

NASA/Chris Williams

NASA astronaut Chris Williams took this photo of an orbital sunrise from the International Space Station on June 26, 2026. In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/good-morning-earth/

Image

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, depicted in this artist’s concept, has enough power to continue operating three science instruments in interstellar space longer than anticipated thanks to some clever engineering by the mission team. NASA/JPL-Caltech​

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Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have successfully freed up power on Voyager 2, extending how long the spacecraft can continue to do science.

Nicknamed the “Big Bang,” the effort involved simultaneously turning off certain powered devices and substituting them with lower-power alternatives while ensuring the spacecraft remains warm enough to operate.

The Voyagers get their power from radioisotope thermoelectric generators, devices that convert heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. Due to the plutonium supply continually depleting, both probes lose about 4 watts of power each year. After almost a half-century since launch, the spacecraft power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off non-essential devices and systems.

Since 2024, the dwindling power supply has forced the mission to turn off two science instruments on each of the Voyager spacecraft (each spacecraft has 10 instruments; others had been turned off previously because they were only used for the mission’s planetary encounters). Without the Big Bang activity, the mission would have had to turn off another instrument on Voyager 2 before the end of 2026. The savings should provide power to keep its three instruments operating for at least an extra year.

The mission team plans to perform the same swap on Voyager 1, which is farther from Earth than Voyager 2, and to complete the effort in the coming months.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager/2026/08/04/nasa-engineers-help-prolong-voyager-2s-science-mission/

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​How far is Voyager now?

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/

Image:

​Eye of the storm: Data was taken with the MOTHRA telescope, which is still under construction in Chile (Courtesy: NASA, ESA, C. R. O’Dell (Vanderbilt University) and M. Meixner, P. McCullough and G. Bacon (Space Telescope Science Institute))​

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Astronomers have created a spectacular composite image of a dying star’s remains in the act of being recycled.

Even in its unfinished state, the telescope revealed 22 faintly glowing arcs beyond the bright ring of the nebula, in a region known as its halo.

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Astronomers have created a spectacular composite image of a dying star’s remains in the act of being recycled.

The image shows the Helix Nebula, a bright ring of gas that is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

Resembling a giant human eye, its familiar ring formed from material expelled by a star near the end of its life. The remnant of that star, a white dwarf, lies at the nebula’s centre.

Astronomers trained the Modular Optical Telephoto Hyperspectral Robotic Array (MOTHRA) on the nebula while it was still being constructed at the El Sauce Observatory in Chile’s Coquimbo Region.

More

https://physicsworld.com/a/new-image-captures-glowing-shock-waves-in-the-helix-nebula/

Paper

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10724-z

Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, is one of the Moon’s most beautiful and distinctive features. Lying on the north-western edge of Mare Imbrium, this vast semicircular plain is around 250 km wide and is bordered by the rugged Montes Jura mountains.

The bay is actually the remains of an ancient impact crater whose southern rim was later buried by lava from the Imbrium basin. Near the lunar terminator, low sunlight throws the Jura mountains into dramatic relief, sometimes illuminating their peaks while the plain below remains in darkness.

This striking interplay of light and shadow makes Sinus Iridum a favourite target for lunar observers and a wonderful sight even through a modest telescope.

https://x.com/peachastro/status/2087987487734165814?t=2zkIHPTrgBE2r9_tBAbL9w&s=09​

Topocentric Libration in degrees

​l=3.625

​b=-0.220

​c=16.89

Programmed with Eclipse Chronos

Credit 📸Vinod Kumar Vijayakumar

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SolarEclipseChasers/permalink/28147068418222064/?rdid=6Z4aRak6JPTfKVgM#​

https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/solar-eclipse-in-spain/dGFnOnJldXRlcnMuY29tLDIwMjY6bmV3c21sX1JDMjZYTUFYQU5CMw?lastViewed=dGFnOnJldXRlcnMuY29tLDIwMjY6bmV3c21sX1JDMjZYTUFaNjJOMg&position=10​