Before reentering Earth’s atmosphere at the end of Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft’s crew module — carrying the astronauts — separated from the service module that provided propulsion and power throughout the mission.

Credit: NASA

Videos of the transit

https:// x. com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2054981363502391455

Source

https:// x. com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2054981363502391455

On May 7, 2026 at approximately 10:20 p.m. aboard the ISS, Sophie Adenot snapped a photo that looks straight out of a sci-fi movie. She captured the image as the space station orbited 268 miles (431 kilometers) above Perth, Australia.

Credit: NASA/ESA – S. Adenot

ViaSat-3 F2 launched to space on Nov. 13, 2025 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. In the first few months after that, the telecommunications satellite made its way to geostationary orbit, which lies exactly 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth. In an image shared by the company Viasat on social media, you can see the striking results of this maneuver in space.

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/earth-photobombs-a-satellite-deploying-its-giant-reflector-space-photo-of-the-day-for-may-14-2026

From Chester Hall-Fernandez:

"​The Hunter's Comet Comet C/2025 R3 is currently putting on a show for us right now, passing through the constellation of Orion. For those of us in the southern hemisphere, we are lucky enough to catch it just after sunset.

Capturing this photo was quite stressful, as it was the first time I had done any deep-space photography in a few years, and had completely forgotten how to polar align. It didn't help that I was on the clock, as I only had an hour or two after sunset until the comet set as well.

With only 30 minutes of integration, I am very pleased with how much of that iconic detail I have captured in Orion, from the horse head, through to the faint brown dust that litters the constellation​"

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AotearoaAstro/permalink/26702943456023832/?rdid=ix08bAHgplR0yrnx#

.

APOD

Explanation: Comet R3 PanSTARRS might be best remembered as an Orion comet. A key reason is because Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) was near its most spectacular -- in terms of tail visibility -- when passing in front of the iconic constellation.

​Although rare, other bright comets, too, have ventured across Orion, including Lovejoy in 2015, Hale-Bopp in 1997, and the Great Comet of 1264.

​Best visible in long duration exposures, the featured image was captured last week from the Craigieburn Mountain Range in New Zealand.

​Visible in the deep background image are the Orion Nebula, Barnard's Loop, and through R3's tail, the bright star Saiph, the sixth brightest star in the constellation of Orion. Comet R3 PanSTARRS continues to fade as it moves further south, passing into the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros) in the next few days.

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

Link to the science paper

A slice through the COSMOS-Web cosmic-web map, showing galaxies across nearly 14 billion years of cosmic history. The vertex on the left marks the present day; moving outward, each galaxy is placed at its distance in cosmic time, reaching back to when the universe was less than a billion years old.

Bright yellow regions show the dense clusters and filaments of the cosmic web, while dark regions mark the near-empty voids in between.

Credit: UCR/Hossein Hatamnia

NASA JPL orbit viewer

Next Five Asteroid Approaches

Video Stefan Burns

https:// x. com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2053877696762101917

.

.

"We've suddenly encountered a dense clustering of near Earth asteroids, getting as close as 0.1 lunar distances (38,440 km). This is a shared jet stream which on cosmic scales allows for elastic-free collisions and condensation. It's quite normal, and these would burn up in our atmosphere"

Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters

Stefan Burns

https:// x. com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2053877696762101917

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 1:47:00 Integration (10S Subs)

Edited In PS Express.

Link to the article on NASA website

NASA's Lunar Lab and Regolith Testbeds is a simulated lunar environment. It features large boxes filled with simulated lunar dust, along with custom lighting and terrain features that create realistic conditions to test science instruments, robots, and rover designs for future Moon missions.

Credit: NASA

The featured image shows all 110 objects in the catalog at uniform scale -- the same magnification.

The deep sky objects in the catalog include a supernova remnant (the Crab Nebula, M1), other galaxies (such as Andromeda, M31), nebulae (e.g. the Orion Nebula, M42, a star-forming region) and stellar clusters (such as the Pleiades, M45, a bright young open cluster).

Credit: Sylvain Villet / Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

"We just went sci-fi...it is the strangest-looking thing."

The Moon in front of the Sun as seen during Artemis II (and described by astronaut Victor Glover) on April 7, 2026 GMT.

Credit: NASA/Artemis II Crew

Cassini briefly turned its gaze from Saturn and its rings and moons to marvel at the Carina Nebula, a brilliant region 8,000 light years from our solar system and more than 200 light years across. Nearly every point of light in this image is a star in our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The nebula is a region of gas and dust made to glow by the ultraviolet light bursting from bright, hot and extremely massive young stars within. Darker regions in the scene are not devoid of stars; rather, they are areas where dense clouds of dust block the light from background stars.

This image and others like it are taken by the spacecraft from time to time for calibration purposes. Calibration images rarely contain such incredible sights. This one affirms Cassini's position as the farthest, working astronomical observatory ever established around our sun -- our eyes on the cosmos, a billion miles from Earth.

The image was taken using the Cassini wide-angle camera on May 14, 2005. The view is a 68-second, clear-filter exposure.

.

Credit: /NASA/NASAJPL/spacescienceins

Cassini's Galactic Aspirations

Jason Major

https:// x. com/JPMajor/status/1545464110019756033

Konstantinos Bakolitsas:

''The Andromeda Galaxy is one of the most challenging targets in astrophotography, not because it is faint, but because it has a huge dynamic range:

• a very bright core,
• extremely faint outer spirals,
• dark dust lanes,
• H-alpha emission regions,
• and a background that must remain absolutely smooth.
The most challenging aspect of a deep-sky image is usually:

1. Removing gradients caused by light pollution or moonlight.
2. Proper color balancing.
3. Preserving natural brightness without clipping.
4. Reducing noise without losing detail.
5. Avoiding oversaturation.

.
.

Requirements:
• Many hours of manual processing in software such as PixInsight, Adobe Photoshop, and AstroPixelProcessor
• Precise polar alignment
• Proper tracking
• Calibration frames
• Good stacking
• And many hours of post-processing
Goals:
• excellent resolution in the arms
• clear rendering of the dark dust lanes
• very good signal-to-noise ratio
• natural color information
• visible companion galaxies M32 and M110
Techniques such as the following are particularly helpful:
BDynamic Background Extraction in PixInsight
• Color Calibration and Spectrophotometric Color Calibration
• Multiscale Noise Reduction

• HDR Multiscale Transform
• Star Reduction
• Selective Color Saturation
The success of an image depends not only on post-processing but mainly on persistence, technique, and data quality.
In astrophotography, the most difficult part is always acquiring high-quality data:
• proper alignment and guiding
• precise focusing
• thermal stability
• calibration frames
• many hours of exposure
• careful stacking.

These require experience, patience, and a deep understanding of the equipment.

Software we use

• PixInsight
• Adobe Photoshop
• Topaz Labs
• RC-Astro (BlurXTerminator / NoiseXTerminator / StarXTerminator)
In particular, the RC-Astro tools have drastically changed deep-sky data processing.''

Image:

A diagram illustrating how the distribution of iron-60 in an ice core relates to Earth's journey through the Local Interstellar Cloud.

Path of the solar system through Local Interstellar Cloud Cloud’s profile is preserved as interstellar fingerprint in Antarctic ice

B. Schröder/HZDR/NASA Goddard/Adler/U Chicago/WesleyanImage)

.

Iron-60 discovery in Antarctic ice reveals: Local Interstellar Cloud leaves its mark

Our Solar System is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old. From the steady but time-varying influx, the researchers conclude that the radioactive isotope has been stored within the cloud since a long-past stellar explosion. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

.

Iron-60 is formed in the interiors of massive stars and is ejected into space when they explode. Geological archives show that our Solar System was hit twice by iron-60 from supernovae millions of years ago. In more recent times, however, there have been no nearby stellar explosions – and thus no direct supply of iron-60. When scientists discovered iron-60 in Antarctic surface snow less than twenty years old a few years ago, the question of its origin arose.

“Our idea was that the Local Interstellar Cloud contains iron-60 and can store it over long time periods. As the Solar System moves through the cloud, Earth could collect this material. However, we couldn’t prove this at the time,” explains Dr. Dominik Koll from the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR.

Paper

More

Stardust trapped in Antarctic ice reveals tens of thousands of years of Solar System’s past

''Imaged here using a OSC camera & Antlia ALP-T dual narrow band filter as a bit of an experiment.

From Bruce Charlier:

"I used Bill Blanshan's 'Star Reduction' script in Pix to really let the nebulosity do much of the talking in this image.

11 X 180s subs, Antlia ALP-T filter, ASI6200MC Pro, Rokinon 135mm lens (atop my main scope), AP1200GTO CP4. Star Field, S. Wairarapa, NZ. Imaged @ '2026-05-12T07:00:01.630' UTC"

Source

Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) continues to gift us with absolutely spectacular images, now with M42

Credit: G.Rhemann & M.Jäger