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What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of meteorological doom. Formally recognized as a distinct cloud type only last year, asperitas clouds can be stunning in appearance, unusual in occurrence, and are relatively unstudied. Whereas most low cloud decks are flat bottomed, asperitas clouds appear to have significant vertical structure underneath. Speculation therefore holds that asperitas clouds might be related to lenticular clouds that form near mountains, or mammatus clouds associated with thunderstorms, or perhaps a foehn—a type of dry downward wind that flows off mountains. Clouds from such a wind called the Canterbury arch stream toward the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. The featured image, taken above Hanmer Springs in Canterbury, New Zealand in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side.
Image Description: Trees and mountains line the bottom of a landscape image with blue sky visible above. The sky is otherwise dominated by a large and unusual cloud that is brown and gold and has many waves and structures.
Piercing the Skies above Paranal | European Southern Observatory
A large telescope stands in the center of the image, against a stunning backdrop of thousands of stars above Chile’s Atacama Desert. The Milky Way galaxy appears to flow behind the telescope, a river of purple and blue light just to the dome’s left. The sky itself glows slightly green towards the horizon. From the very center of the telescope, four bright orange laser beams are projected ahead into the night sky.
This picture is a majestic portrait of UT4, one of the four 8-meter telescopes of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Framed against the star-filled sky of the Paranal Observatory, this telescope is much more than a passive observer. From within its dome, it pierces the peaceful night with four laser beams.
These lasers are projected from the 4 Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF), which UT4 uses to create its own artificial stars in the sky. The lasers create these points of light by exciting sodium atoms in the atmosphere, about 90 km above the ground, causing them to glow. These “stars” then act as guides, and by studying how they are blurred by the atmosphere the telescope learns how to adjust for atmospheric turbulence—the same turbulence that makes every little star twinkle.
The adjustments are made by UT4’s adaptive optics system. This can precisely deform the telescope’s secondary mirror to cancel out atmospheric disturbances measured by the system. Using adaptive optics, a ground-based telescope can take much sharper images than the atmosphere would normally allow—it is almost as good as sending the VLT to space.
Soon, the other three 8-m telescopes of the VLT will be equipped with one laser each. This is part of a series of upgrades of the VLT Interferometer and its GRAVITY+ instrument. This can combine the light of several telescopes to create a huge “virtual” telescope. Another massive eye on the sky, ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), is nearing completion not far from Paranal, and will be equipped with at least 6 lasers, to deliver the sharpest images possible with a ground-based telescope.
Credit: ESO/A. de Burgos Sierra Release Date: April 21, 2025
Globular Star Cluster NGC 6397 in Ara | MPG/ESO Telescope
The globular cluster NGC 6397, located at a distance of approximately 7,800 light-years in the southern constellation Ara within the Milky Way galaxy. It has undergone a "core collapse" and the central area is very dense. It contains about 400,000 stars and its age (based on evolutionary models) is 13,400 ± 800 million years.
NGC 6397 (also known as Caldwell 86), resembles a treasure chest of glittering jewels. Here, the stars are jam-packed together. The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our Sun's stellar neighborhood. The stars are only a few light-weeks apart, while the nearest star to our Sun is over four light-years away. NGC 6397 was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752.
This ancient stellar jewelry box glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. The cluster’s blue stars are near the end of their lives. These stars have used up their hydrogen fuel that makes them shine. Now they are converting helium to energy in their cores. This fuses at a higher temperature and appears blue. The reddish glow is from red giant stars that have consumed their hydrogen fuel and have expanded in size. The myriad small white objects include stars like our Sun.
The photo is a composite of exposures in the B-, V- and I-bands obtained in the frame of the Pilot Stellar Survey with the Wide-Field-Imager (WFI) camera at the 2.2-m ESO/MPG telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory. It was prepared and provided by the ESO Imaging Survey team. The spikes seen at some of the brighter stars are caused by the effect of overexposure (CCD "bleeding").
Black Hole Concentration in Star Cluster NGC 6397: Artist’s Impression | Hubble
Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there. Data from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope have led to the first measurement of the extent of a collection of black holes in a core-collapsed globular cluster.
This animation is an artist’s impression created to visualize the concentration of black holes at the center of NGC 6397. In reality, the small black holes here are far too small for the direct observing capacities of any existing or planned future telescope, including Hubble. It is predicted that this core-collapsed globular cluster could be host to more than 20 black holes.
NGC 6397 sits 7,800 light-years away within the Milky Way galaxy, making it one of the closest globular clusters to Earth in the constellation Ara. This ancient stellar jewelry box glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. The stars are only a few light-weeks apart, while the nearest star to our Sun is over four light-years away. NGC 6397 was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752.
This Hubble Space Telescope view of the core of one of the nearest globular star clusters, called NGC 6397 (also known as Caldwell 86), resembles a treasure chest of glittering jewels. The cluster is located 7,800 light-years away in the constellation Ara within the Milky Way galaxy. Here, the stars are jam-packed together. The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our Sun's stellar neighborhood. The stars are only a few light-weeks apart, while the nearest star to our Sun is over four light-years away. NGC 6397 was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752.
This ancient stellar jewelry box glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. The cluster’s blue stars are near the end of their lives. These stars have used up their hydrogen fuel that makes them shine. Now they are converting helium to energy in their cores. This fuses at a higher temperature and appears blue. The reddish glow is from red giant stars that have consumed their hydrogen fuel and have expanded in size. The myriad small white objects include stars like our Sun.
Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)
A Halo above The Earth's Horizon | International Space Station
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo while orbiting over the Indian Ocean. The Earth appears black in the lower half of this image, mirroring the darkness of space above. Atmospheric layers span the image, displaying a range of hues. The troposphere generally appears orange and red, the stratosphere is mostly white, and the mesosphere is shades of blue. The Moon, with a shimmering streak-like feature below it, is visible near the top atmospheric layers.
When this photograph was captured on September 4, 2024, the Moon was in the waxing crescent phase. During this phase, only a sliver of the Moon is illuminated by reflected sunlight, visible as the extra-bright white crescent on the Moon’s lower-right edge. Camera settings such as exposure, shutter speed, and aperture increased the visibility of the Moon in this image, giving the impression of a full Moon.
At the time of this photo, the Moon was positioned behind Earth’s atmosphere relative to the space station. The atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light that passes through it and toward the astronaut’s camera, causing the Moon to appear non-uniform in shape.
Bent, or refracted, light also led to another optical phenomenon in this image. Water vapor that reaches high in the atmosphere can freeze onto tiny dust particles, generating ice crystals in the mesosphere. Light refracted by these ice crystals likely formed the arc-shaped partial lunar halo visible near the Moon.
Image Description: The bottom third of the photo is solid black. It is topped by atmospheric layers of orange, red, white, and blue. The Moon is visible near the top of the blue atmospheric, layer where it fades into the blackness of space. Cradling the Moon on its bottom-right side is an arc-shaped strip of white light. A subtle arc, formed by the bending of light through high-altitude ice crystals, cradles the Moon above the darkened Earth.
Image details: Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 200 millimeters
Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center Text Credit: Elysia N. Viengkham, Amentum-JETS II Contract at NASA-JSC Capture Date: Sept. 4, 2024 Release Date: Aug. 17, 2025
Star Tarazed and Dark Nebula "E" Complex in Aquila
Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae) is an orange star, slightly smaller than our Sun, located on the far left. At center is the dark nebula "E"—a complex of opaque nebulae cataloged, from north to south, LDN 700, LDN 964 with a dense core made up of [LM99] L694-2, and LDN 688. The "E" or "Barnard's E" Nebula (officially designated as Barnard 142 and 143) is dominated by a pair of dark nebulae in the Aquila constellation. It is a well-defined dark area of the Milky Way that also features countless stars of all magnitudes, obtaining its name from its resemblance to the letter E in the Latin alphabet. Its size is about that of the full Moon, or roughly 0.5 degrees, and its distance from Earth is estimated at 2,000 light years.
This image was created by composing data obtained from a backyard suburban sky using 250mm f/2.2 telephoto lenses.
Image Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
Text Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello, Wikipedia Capture Location: Oria, Apulia, Italy Release Date: Aug. 16, 2025
Watch 2025 Perseid Meteor Vaporize in Earth's Atmosphere
"The camera battery died about 2am local time on August 12, while shooting in the bright moonlit skies from a garden in Chastre, Brabant Wallon, Belgium, planet Earth. But not before it captured the frames used to compose this cool animated gif of a brilliant Perseid meteor and a lingering visible trail known as a persistent train. The Perseid meteor, a fast moving speck of dust from the tail of large periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle, was heated to incandescence by ram pressure and vaporized as it flashed through the upper atmosphere at 60 kilometers per second. Compared to the brief flash of the meteor, its wraith-like trail really is persistent. A characteristic of bright meteors, a smoke-like persistent train can often be followed for many minutes wafting in the winds at altitudes of 60 to 90 kilometers."
The Perseids meteor shower peaks in mid-August, and is the most popular meteor shower of the year.
Perseids: Fast Facts
Comet of Origin: 109P/Swift-Tuttle
Radiant Constellation: Perseus
Active: July 17 to Aug. 23, 2025 (Peak night: Aug. 12-13)
Observed Under Dark Skies: About 25 meteors per hour
Shenzhou-20 Astronauts Complete 3rd Spacewalk | China Space Station
During a 6.5-hour spacewalk, Shenzhou-20 astronauts completed vital inspections and installed protective equipment on China's space station, demonstrating improved efficiency in extravehicular operations and collecting crucial thermal data.
The spacewalk on Friday, August 15, 2025, represented the Shenzhou-20 crew's third series of extravehicular activities since boarding the space station.
According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), crew members Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie worked for approximately six-and-a-half hours and completed all related tasks at 22:47 Beijing time, assisted by the space station's robotic arm and a ground control team.
At around 16:00 on Friday, astronaut Chen Dong opened the airlock and stepped out of the Wentian lab module, marking his sixth extravehicular mission and making him the Chinese astronaut with the most spacewalks to date.
Chen was positioned at the end of the station's robotic arm using a newly-installed automated foot restraint, while astronaut Wang Jie remained inside and passed equipment to him. According to space engineers, the restraint made a significant impact on the operations.
"Last time we installed the automated foot restraint for the first time, and this spacewalk was the first time we used it to carry out tasks. It has clearly increased our operational efficiency," said Liang Xiaofeng, an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
With the robotic arm in motion, Chen was able to inspect external parts of the station with a camera and thermal imager.
At around 16:50, astronaut Wang Jie joined Chen Dong in space. It was Wang's first spacewalk, making him the second Chinese aerospace flight engineer to perform an extravehicular mission. Inside the Tianhe core module, Chen Zhongrui provided vital support.
On the ground, Liang emphasized that the spacewalk has played a role in advancing China's ambitious plans for future space exploration.
"The main goal of this spacewalk was to identify thermal characteristics of key external equipment and critical components. This allows us to better understand their operational conditions and collect detailed data, which also supports future spacecraft design and advancing our thermal control technologies," the space engineer said.
After completing installations of debris protection measures and auxiliary structural components, as well as inspection of external equipment and systems on the station's exterior, Chen Dong and Wang Jie safely returned to the Tianhe core module by 22:47 Beijing time.
The Shenzhou-20 astronauts entered the Tiangong space station on April 25 this year and have now completed half of their spaceflight journey.
Shenzhou-20 Crew
Chen Dong (陈冬) - Commander - Third spaceflight
Chen Zhong Rui (陈中瑞) - Operator - First spaceflight
Wang Jie (王杰) - Flight Engineer - First spaceflight
Shenzhou-20 Crew Performs Critical Work on 3rd Spacewalk | China Space Station
During a 6.5-hour spacewalk, Shenzhou-20 astronauts completed vital inspections and installed protective equipment on China's space station, demonstrating improved efficiency in extravehicular operations and collecting crucial thermal data.
The spacewalk on Friday, August 15, 2025, represented the Shenzhou-20 crew's third series of extravehicular activities since boarding the space station.
According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), crew members Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie worked for approximately six-and-a-half hours and completed all related tasks at 22:47 Beijing time, assisted by the space station's robotic arm and a ground control team.
At around 16:00 on Friday, astronaut Chen Dong opened the airlock and stepped out of the Wentian lab module, marking his sixth extravehicular mission and making him the Chinese astronaut with the most spacewalks to date.
Chen was positioned at the end of the station's robotic arm using a newly-installed automated foot restraint, while astronaut Wang Jie remained inside and passed equipment to him. According to space engineers, the restraint made a significant impact on the operations.
"Last time we installed the automated foot restraint for the first time, and this spacewalk was the first time we used it to carry out tasks. It has clearly increased our operational efficiency," said Liang Xiaofeng, an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
With the robotic arm in motion, Chen was able to inspect external parts of the station with a camera and thermal imager.
At around 16:50, astronaut Wang Jie joined Chen Dong in space. It was Wang's first spacewalk, making him the second Chinese aerospace flight engineer to perform an extravehicular mission. Inside the Tianhe core module, Chen Zhongrui provided vital support.
On the ground, Liang emphasized that the spacewalk has played a role in advancing China's ambitious plans for future space exploration.
"The main goal of this spacewalk was to identify thermal characteristics of key external equipment and critical components. This allows us to better understand their operational conditions and collect detailed data, which also supports future spacecraft design and advancing our thermal control technologies," the space engineer said.
After completing installations of debris protection measures and auxiliary structural components, as well as inspection of external equipment and systems on the station's exterior, Chen Dong and Wang Jie safely returned to the Tianhe core module by 22:47 Beijing time.
The Shenzhou-20 astronauts entered the Tiangong space station on April 25 this year and have now completed half of their spaceflight journey.
Shenzhou-20 Crew
Chen Dong (陈冬) - Commander - Third spaceflight
Chen Zhong Rui (陈中瑞) - Operator - First spaceflight
Wang Jie (王杰) - Flight Engineer - First spaceflight
Earth orbit image captured by experienced NASA astronaut and former Expedition 71/72 flight engineer, Don Pettit. NASA astronaut Don Pettit returned to Earth on April 19, 2025, concluding a seven-month science mission aboard the International Space Station. Pettit spent 220 days in space, earning him a total of 590 days in space over the course of his four spaceflights. He orbited the Earth 3,520 times, traveling 93.3 million miles in low-Earth orbit.
NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Moonrise & Earth Airglow | International Space Station
Expedition 73 flight engineer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kimiya Yui: ". . . I’d like to share a timelapse of the Moonrise I filmed the other day. I feel truly fortunate that we have such a perfectly round and bright Moon for our Earth. The thought that humanity will soon return to that place fills me with overwhelming emotion!" —Kimiya Yui 油井 亀美也
You will also notice green and yellow airglow that occurs when atoms and molecules in the Earth's upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed their excess energy. Or, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, they eject a particle of light—called a photon—in order to relax again. Unlike episodic and fleeting auroras, airglow shines constantly throughout Earth’s atmosphere, and the result is a tenuous bubble of light that closely encases our entire planet.
NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
A Tour of Spiral PlanetaryNebula NGC 5189 in Musca | Hubble
In this Hubblecast episode, Dr. Joe Liske (aka Dr. J) invites us to tour NGC 5189, a planetary nebula in our galaxy. The nebula looks like a ribbon in space with a complex structure that comes from the dying throes of a Sun-like star at its center.
NGC 5189 (Gum 47, IC 4274, nicknamed the Spiral Planetary Nebula) is located in the constellation Musca. It was discovered by James Dunlop on July 1, 1826. Seen through the telescope it seems to have an S shape. Hubble Space Telescope imaging analysis has demonstrated that this S shape structure is from two dense low-ionization regions—one moving toward the north-east and another one moving toward the south-west of the nebula. This could be a result of a recent outburst from the central star.
Credits: ESA/Hubble Visual design and editing: Martin Kornmesser Written by: Oli Usher Presented by: Dr Joe Liske (Dr J) Narrator: Sara Mendes da Costa Images: NASA, ESA,, Digitized Sky Survey 2 Directed by: Oli Usher Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen
Journey to Spiral PlanetaryNebula NGC 5189 in Musca | Hubble
Beginning with a wide view of the constellations Crux (The Southern Cross) and Musca (The Fly), this video zooms in through ground based imagery to Hubble’s view of NGC 5189, a planetary nebula with a striking ribbon-like structure.
NGC 5189 (Gum 47, IC 4274, nicknamed the Spiral Planetary Nebula) is located in the constellation Musca. It was discovered by James Dunlop on July 1, 1826. Seen through the telescope it seems to have an S shape. Hubble Space Telescope imaging analysis has demonstrated that this S shape structure is from two dense low-ionization regions—one moving toward the north-east and another one moving toward the south-west of the nebula. This could be a result of a recent outburst from the central star.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2, A. Fujii
Spiral PlanetaryNebula NGC 5189 in Musca | Hubble Space Telescope
NGC 5189 (Gum 47, IC 4274, nicknamed the Spiral Planetary Nebula) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Musca. It was discovered by James Dunlop on July 1, 1826. Seen through the telescope it seems to have an S shape. Hubble Space Telescope imaging analysis has demonstrated that this S shape structure is from two dense low-ionization regions—one moving toward the north-east and another one moving toward the south-west of the nebula. This could be a result of a recent outburst from the central star.
Credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) Release Date: Dec. 18, 2012
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