Layers of ice swirl around the south pole on Mars. Some observations suggest there could be liquid water at the base of the cap, but alternative explanations discount the possibility.

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin / Bill Dunford

NASA’s Space Shuttle Enterprise riding atop the modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) with the legendary Concorde soaring overhead.

This historic moment brought together three engineering marvels — the supersonic elegance of Concorde, the reusable space ambitions of the Shuttle, and the 747’s unmatched carrying power. A true celebration of human ingenuity and the golden era of aerospace innovation.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, S. Fujimoto

System around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the centre. The star –– the point source to the left –– has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). The brown dwarf has about 37 times the mass of Jupiter: too massive to be a planet, but not massive enough to have sustained nuclear fusion like stars. This brown dwarf is, in turn, orbited by a newly discovered object at least as massive as Jupiter, seen at the centre of this image.

This new object, found with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is difficult to label. It behaves like a moon in the sense that it orbits an object that orbits a star. But this ‘moon’ is massive enough to be a planet, and the object it orbits, a brown dwarf, is neither a planet nor a star.

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2610/

Our First View of the Surface of Mars

Morning of July 20, 1976, roughly 40 minutes after mission controllers received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, this photo gave us our first view from the surface of the Red Planet.​

“Touchdown, we have touchdown!” At 5:12 a.m. PDT, July 20, 1976, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as they learned that the Viking 1 lander had survived its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. Forty minutes later, the lander’s first image began to appear on their monitors, slowly forming line by line from left to right. For the first time, humans were able to see Mars’s rocky terrain from its surface.

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Dr. Thomas Mutch, leader of the Viking lander imaging team, described the moment: “I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that will signal the first few lines of the first picture. And it appeared. A sliver of electronic magic. Areas of brightness and darkness. The picture begins to fill the screen. Rocks and sand are visible and — finally at the far right — one of the spacecraft foot pads, a symbolic artifact that stamps our accomplishment with the sign of reality. Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’”

Fifty years ago today, the Viking 1 lander became NASA’s first robot to explore Mars’s surface and begin the search for signs of life in our solar system. Viking 1 was joined six weeks later by its twin lander, Viking 2, which explored a different region of Mars, while two mission orbiters that delivered the landers to the Red Planet continued to collect data from space and helped relay communications to Earth.

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https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/our-first-view-of-the-surface-of-mars/

https://bsky.app/profile/coreyspowell.bsky.social/post/3mr4ctfjww22c

About 1200 exposures, each at ISO 3200 and f/2.8 for 10 seconds, captured in New York

Source

https://www.facebook.com/groups/FireflyersInternational/permalink/27213945328302028/?rdid=ta706k5Y7Kgtn2Ju#

Image credit and processing: NASA/ISS/JSC/ESRS/University of Texas at El Paso/Jessica Meir/Kevin M. Gill

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 1:02 Video Stack.

Edited In PS Express.

At 5:57 a.m. EDT on July 21, 2011, space shuttle Atlantis landed for the final time at NASA's Kennedy Space Center after 200 orbits around Earth and a journey of 5,284,862 miles on the STS-135 mission and final flight for the Space Shuttle Program.

As the world's first reusable spacecraft, the shuttles accomplished so much over 135 missions. From building and supporting the International Space Station, to launching and servicing missions a variety of commercial and scientific satellites, such as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, to conducting groundbreaking research, it left an enduring legacy as a platform for exploration, science, and international cooperation.

Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Still learning how to process SHO so open to feedback from others! Capture deets:

• ZWO Asi2600MM Pro
• Antlia 3nm SHO filters
• 85 x H; 80 x S; 81 x O each at 300s for a total of just over 20 hours over 3 sessions
• ZWO AM5N mount
• Askar 103 APO scope
• ZWO 120mm with AsiMini for guiding

Shot from Ōtautahi Aotearoa (Christchurch New Zealand) Bortle 6 skies

Credit: Maximilian-Vlad Teodorescu

Two interacting galaxies, NGC 4438 on the left and NGC 4435 on the right nicknamed The Eyes. About 100 million light-years away from Earth but came within about 16,000 light-years of each other leaving this incredible photo.

Credit: Ken Crawford of the Rancho Del Sol Observatory in Camino, California

Carl Sagan stands in front of a Viking lander model in Death Valley, California.

Credit: NASA/JPL

Credit: Astronaut Adenot Sophie

The 570 megapixel Dark Energy Camera captured this image of the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud and its many stellar and gaseous features. The swirls of gas in the new image are reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night."

 The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud is one of the nearest star forming regions to Earth. R Coronae Australis, a variable binary system, lights up the orange cloud on the left. Dust lanes, newborn stars, and nebulae fill the frame. The globular cluster NGC 6723 is prominent in the upper right, though it's much farther away than Corona Australis.

Image Credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

The Dark Energy Camera's New Image is Reminiscent of van Gogh - Universe Today

This is a layered rock outcrop on Mars that is estimated to span about 15 meters.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS; Processing & License: Thomas Thomopoulos

After nearly a decade working on the most complex planetary mission to that date, NASA's Viking team were elated 50 years ago today. At 5:12 a.m. Pacific Time, they received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on Mars. 40 slow minutes later, the first photo from the surface of another planet begins to appear, line by line.

Viking was our pioneering first step in learning how to land on Mars, search for life in our solar system, and coordinate intricate space missions.

From these first moments on the Martian surface 50 years ago, NASA missions have continued expanding on Viking’s foundation, pushing deeper into the mysteries of Mars and laying the groundwork for Earth's first astronauts to join the landers, rovers, and helicopters on the Red Planet.

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 10:00 Video Stack.

Edited In PS Express

The glowing red shell is Sharpless 2-129, an enormous hydrogen cloud located roughly 2,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus.

At its center lies one of the strangest objects in the night sky: the Squid Nebula (OU4). Unlike the surrounding gas, OU4 shines almost entirely in doubly ionized oxygen, producing its striking blue appearance. Stretching nearly 50 light-years, it is believed to be powered by the massive stellar system HR 8119, although astronomers are still debating its exact origin.

This image combines 138.2 hours of exposure using a Takahashi FSQ-106 refractor and an SBIG STX-16803 CCD camera under the dark skies of southern Spain, revealing not only the Squid itself but also the intricate hydrogen shell and faint surrounding molecular clouds that are rarely visible in shorter integrations.

Footage of the first moon landing in July 1969 from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface, as seen from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module piloted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

The footage was filmed on the 16mm DAC Camera from Buzz Aldrin's Lunar Module window. This video plays at 10x speed.

Credit: NASA / Moonpans

 This sparkling, colorful gemstone is a spiral galaxy, NGC 300. It is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, only about 6 million light-years away. This unusual image combines the light from the stars and dust within the galaxy with the light from ionized clouds of interstellar gas shown in red (Sulphur), green (Hydrogen) and blue (Oxygen).

Combining red and green light in different proportions makes yellow or orange light, most visible in the image. Light from other ionized gases is also at work in neon signs, fluorescent tubes and street lights.

These massive clouds of ionized gas are typically created by young, massive stars that produce high-energy ultraviolet radiation capable of ionizing the gas. Massive stars are short-lived, compared with lighter stars like our sun, and explode as supernovas at the end of their lives. Some of the colorful clouds in the image could be hiding supernova remnants.

APOD: 2026 July 16 - NGC 300: A Cosmic Gemstone with Stars and Gas Clouds

Circles in the sand made by the Mars Curiosity Rover's spinning DRT brush over the weekend on Sol 4958.
July 18, 2026

MSL - Sol 4958 - MAHLI
The circles are a result of using the DRT tool, a spinning metal brush.