The Stars & Planet Earth: Orbital Night Activities | International Space Station

The Stars & Planet Earth: Orbital Night Activities | International Space Station

Expedition 73 flight engineer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui: "This shows the North Star setting. From the International Space Station, it rises and sets each time it passes over the equator. Please watch while using the Big Dipper's large ladle as a guide to find the North Star."

Views of Earth at night have been a curiosity for the public and a tool of fundamental research for at least 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have shaped the planet and lit up the darkness.

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov

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.

Video Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/Kimiya Yui

Duration: 56 seconds

Date: Sept. 28, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Stars #Planets #Earth #Astronauts #AstronautVideography #KimiyaYui #油井亀美也 #Japan #日本 #JAXA #宇宙航空研究開発機構 #Cosmonauts #Russia #Roscosmos #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #InternationalCooperation #Expedition73 #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Women also play key roles in global space exploration | IAC 2025

Women also play key roles in global space exploration | IAC 2025

At the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, September 29-October 3, 2025, organized by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), CGTN reporter Wu Lei had an opportunity to ask pioneers like Yi So-yeon, South Korea's first astronaut, and veteran Canadian astronaut Julie Payette about their insights on women's growing involvement in space. While Dr. Yi emphasized the urgent need for more female participation to expand critical medical data for long-duration missions, Payette encouraged young girls to build every skill and be ready when opportunity calls. Their messages capture our attention as women, like Chinese taikonauts Liu Yang, Wang Yaping and Wang Haoze, continue making history aboard China's space station—proving that space belongs to all who dare to dream.

Learn more about the International Astronautical Federation (IAF):
https://www.iafastro.org

Video Credit: CGTN
Duration: 2 minutes, 15 seconds
Release Date: Oct. 3, 2025

#NASA #Space #Planets #Earth #Moon #Mars #HumanSpaceflight #Astronauts #Taikonauts #Women #WomenInSTEM #Equity #EqualOpportunity #Leaders #Leadership #SoYeonYi #YiSoYeon #SouthKorea #대한민국 #JuliePayette #Canada #CSA #IAF #IAC #IAC76 #Sydney #Australia #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Belt of Venus | International Space Station

The Belt of Venus | International Space Station

NASA astronaut Don Pettit: "The Belt of Venus [as] seen from the International Space Station. An atmospheric phenomena where the setting sun projects light past Earth's horizon curve, layered over its shadow. Twilight observers on Earth see a pink band over the approaching dark, opposite the sun. From orbit we see it all at once. I took these images on my first mission to the ISS in 2003. They are old, but great visuals of the effect."

This image from low-Earth orbit was 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.

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov

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.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science

For more information about STEM on Station:

https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM)

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center/D. Pettit
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #SolarSystem #Sun #Starlight #Planets #Earth #Atmosphere #BeltOfVenus #Astronauts #DonPettit #AstronautPhotography #UnitedStates #Japan #JAXA #Cosmonauts #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #InternationalCooperation #Expedition6 #STEM #Education

Aurora Borealis: An October Night in Rural Saskatchewan

Aurora Borealis: An October Night in Rural Saskatchewan

On Earth, auroras are mainly created by particles originally emitted by the Sun in the form of solar wind. When this stream of electrically charged particles gets close to our planet, it interacts with the magnetic field, which acts as a gigantic shield. While it protects Earth’s environment from solar wind particles, it can also trap a small fraction of them. Particles trapped within the magnetosphere—the region of space surrounding Earth in which charged particles are affected by its magnetic field—can be energized and then follow the magnetic field lines down to the magnetic poles. There, they interact with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper layers of the atmosphere, creating the flickering, colorful lights visible in the polar regions here on Earth.

Earth auroras have different names depending on the pole they occur at. Aurora Borealis, or the northern lights, is the name given to auroras around the north pole and Aurora Australis, or the southern lights, is the name given for auroras around the south pole.

The Colors of the Aurora (U.S. National Park Service)

https://www.nps.gov/articles/-articles-aps-v8-i1-c9.htm

Image Credit: Gerry Pocha
Image Details: Sony ILCE-7M3, Viltrox 16mm F1.8 FE
Image Date: October 1, 2025

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Planets #Earth #Aurora #AuroraBorealis #NorthernLights #MagneticField #Magnetosphere #SolarWind #Sun #Star #Photography #GerryPocha #Photographer #CitizenScience #Saskatchewan #Canada #NorthAmerica #STEM #Education

'Break the Ice Winner' Tests Lunar Rover Tech in NASA Thermal Vacuum Chamber

'Break the Ice Winner' Tests Lunar Rover Tech in NASA Thermal Vacuum Chamber

One year after winning second place in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, members of the small business, Starpath, visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of their prize opportunity to test their upgraded lunar regolith excavation and transportation rover in the center’s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber.

The technology startup headquartered in Hawthorne, California, won second place overall at the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024. This competition, one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, tasked competitors to design, build, and demonstrate robotic technologies that could excavate and transport the icy, rocky dirt—otherwise known as regolith—found on the Moon.

As a future landing site for NASA’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon and prepare to send the first Americans to Mars, the South Pole region of the Moon is known to contain ice within its regolith. This was the leading inspiration behind the development of the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, as NASA will require robust technologies that can excavate and transport lunar ice for extraction, purification, and use as drinking water or rocket fuel.

Learn more about NASA Centennial Challenges: 
nasa.gov/winit

Starpath Robotics

https://www.starpath.space/

Video Credit: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)
Duration: 2 minutes, 33 seconds
Release Date: Sept. 26, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Earth #Moon #ArtemisProgram #CentennialChallenges #BreakTheIceLunarChallenge #Starpath #LunarRovers #Geology #Regolith #LunarIce #SpaceTechnology #Engineering #Robotics #MSFC #Huntsville #Alabama #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Mars Images: Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2025 | NASA's Curiosity & Perseverance Rovers

Mars Images: Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2025 | NASA's Curiosity & Perseverance Rovers

Mars 2020 - sol 1640

MSL - sol 4676

Mars 2020 - sol 1639

MSL - sol 4676

Mars 2020 - sol 1640

Mars 2020 - sol 1642

MSL - sol 4676

MSL - sol 4675

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Celebrating 13+ Years on Mars (2012-2024)

Mission Name: Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)

Rover Name: Curiosity

Main Job: To determine if Mars was ever habitable to microbial life. 

Launch: Nov. 6, 2011

Landing Date: Aug. 5, 2012, Gale Crater, Mars

Celebrating 4+ Years on Mars

Mission Name: Mars 2020

Rover Name: Perseverance

Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for return to Earth.

Launch: July 30, 2020    

Landing: Feb. 18, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars

For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit: mars.nasa.gov

Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Processing: Kevin M. Gill

Image Release Dates: Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Planets #Mars #Astrobiology #Geology #CuriosityRover #MSL #MountSharp #GaleCrater #PerseveranceRover #Mars2020 #JezeroCrater #Robotics #SpaceTechnology #SpaceEngineering #MSSS #JPL #Caltech #UnitedStates #CitizenScience #KevinGill #STEM #Education

Shape of Gemini Constellation in Three Dimensions | Space Telescope Science Institute

Shape of Gemini Constellation in Three Dimensions | Space Telescope Science Institute

This visualization reveals the stars of the Gemini constellation in three dimensions. Watch as the familiar pattern on the sky distorts into a whole new perspective.

The sequence begins with a night sky view, and the constellations Orion and Taurus just above the horizon. As the camera pans up, the constellation Gemini (The Twins) takes center stage with its brightest stars, Castor and Pollux, at the top. The constellation Auriga can be found in the lower right with its bright stars forming a pentagon shape. Above and a bit left of Gemini, the Beehive Cluster, in the constellation Cancer, is an open star cluster containing over 1,000 stars.

As the view begins to orbit, and the constellation distorts into 3D space, Castor and Pollux reveal themselves as the closest stars. Approaching a sideways view,  multiple star clusters pass below the right side of the constellation, including the Hyades cluster and the Pleiades (both in Taurus). The dark cloud of dust in that region is the Taurus Molecular Cloud, a star-forming region 430 light years from the Sun. The two most distant stars in the Gemini constellation are Mekbuda and Mebsuta, at 1,200 light years and 900 light years from the Sun, respectively. Note that the Beehive Cluster remains visible above the constellation during the entire spin.

This visualization features over 11 million stars down to a magnitude of 13.5 across the sky. The positions, colors, and luminosities are based on the Gaia and Hipparcos star catalogs, complemented by the HYG Database. This includes data from the Yale and Gliese catalogs. Interstellar dust is visualized using data from the Edenhofer et al map out to a distance of 1.25 kiloparsecs (~4,000 ly) from the Sun and from the Lallement et al data out to 3 kiloparsecs (~9,800 ly). The rest of the Milky Way plane is recreated using simulated spiral galaxy data for stars and dust from the Horizon GalMer database.

Credits: Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Visualization: Christian Nieves, Frank Summers (STScI)
Motion Graphics: Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Duration: 1 minute, 54 seconds

Release Date: Oct. 1, 2025

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Hubble #Stars #GeminiConstellation #Scorpius #Constellations #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Europe #STEM #Education #Visualization #3D #HD #Video

Lunar Electric Rover Field Testing in Arizona | NASA Artemis Moon Program

Lunar Electric Rover Field Testing in Arizona | NASA Artemis Moon Program

A front view of the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) prototype during the Desert Research and Technology Studies (RATS) remote field test at Black Point Lava Flow, Arizona in 2008.

A back view of the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) prototype during the Desert Research and Technology Studies (RATS) remote field test at Black Point Lava Flow, Arizona in 2008. Two Mark III spacesuits are visibly mounted on the LER suit port.

As astronauts explore the South Pole region of the Moon during Artemis missions, they will be able to go farther and conduct more science than ever before thanks to new lunar terrain vehicles.

Human mobility on the lunar surface is crucial for enhancing scientific discovery on each mission and preparing for planetary mobility on Mars. Instead of owning the vehicle, NASA plans to contract it as a service from industry. The LTV will be the ultimate lunar surface terrain vehicle with advanced power management, autonomous driving, state of the art communications and navigation systems, along with other extreme environment technologies that will provide the ability to collect and conduct science while keeping astronauts and the vehicle safe and ready for its next mission.

Learn more about NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicle Program:

https://www.nasa.gov/suits-and-rovers/lunar-terrain-vehicle/

Image Credit: NASA/Regan Geeseman

Image Date: Oct. 24, 2008

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Earth #Moon #ArtemisProgram #LunarElectricRover #LER #Prototype #ResearchandTechnologyStudies #RATS #CommercialSpace #Robotics #SpaceTechnology #Engineering #SpaceExploration #SolarSystem #Desert #BlackPointLavaFlow #Arizona #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon: View from New Mexico

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon: View from New Mexico

Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. Besides Comet SWAN25B and Comet ATLAS, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with binoculars and on long camera exposures. Comet Lemmon was discovered early this year and is still headed into the inner Solar System. The comet will round the Sun on November 8, but first it will pass its nearest to the Earth—at about half the Earth-Sun distance—on October 21. 

Although the brightnesses of comets are notoriously hard to predict, optimistic estimates have Comet Lemmon then becoming visible to the unaided eye. The comet should be best seen in predawn skies until mid-October, when it also becomes visible in evening skies.

New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also borders the state of Texas to the east and southeast, Oklahoma to the northeast, and shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora to the south.

Image Credit: Rolando Ligustri

Rolando's website: 

https://www.facebook.com/astrottica

Image Details: NW 300/1140 ccd ASI 2600MM RGB=3x60s L=20x60s
Location: Astrottica Observatory, New Mexico, USA 
Image Date: Oct. 2, 2025

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Comets #CometC2025A6Lemmon #Coma #CometaryTails #SolarSystem #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Astrophotography #RolandoLigustri #Astrophotographers #NewMexico #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

Close-up: Galaxy NGC 2775—Spiral, elliptical or neither? | Hubble

Close-up: Galaxy NGC 2775—Spiral, elliptical or neither? | Hubble

This NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture features a galaxy that is challenging to categorize. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775. It lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (The Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless center that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy. 

Is it spiral or elliptical—or neither?

Since we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it is difficult to say for certain. Researchers have classified NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy because of its feathery ring of stars and dust and as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to spiral and elliptical galaxies.

It is not yet known exactly how lenticular galaxies come to be. They can form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies might be spiral galaxies that have merged with other galaxies, or that have mostly run out of star-forming gas and lost their prominent spiral arms. They also might have started out more similar to elliptical galaxies, then collected gas into a disk around them.

Evidence suggests that NGC 2775 has merged with other galaxies in the past. Invisible in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that stretches almost 100,000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail could be the remnant of one or more galaxies that wandered too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched apart and absorbed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, it could explain the galaxy’s strange appearance today.

A Hubble image of NGC 2775 was previously released in 2020. The new version adds observations of a specific wavelength of red light that is emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive young stars.

Image Description: A galaxy seen face-on with a slightly elliptical disc that appears to have a hole in the center like a doughnut. In the hole, the core is a brightly glowing point that shines light out beyond the edge of the disc. Around the hole is an inner ring of dust, and at the galaxy’s edge is a thicker outer ring of dust, with a swirling web of dust strands in between. Blue stars and red nebulae are visible behind the dust.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: Sept. 22, 2025

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Hubble #Stars #Galaxies #NGC2775 #SpiralGalaxies #EllipticalGalaxies #LenticularGalaxies #Cancer #Constellations #Cosmos #Universe #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Close-up: Spiral Galaxy NGC 6000 in Scorpius | Hubble

Close-up: Spiral Galaxy NGC 6000 in Scorpius | Hubble

Stars of all ages are on display in this NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture. This sparkling spiral galaxy is called NGC 6000 and it is located 102 million light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. 

This galaxy has a glowing yellow center and glittering blue outskirts. The colors reflect the average ages, masses and temperatures of the galaxy’s stars. In the heart of the galaxy, the stars tend to be older and smaller. Less massive stars are cooler than more massive stars, and somewhat counterintuitively, cooler stars are redder, while hotter stars are bluer. Farther out along NGC 6000’s spiral arms, brilliant star clusters host young, massive stars that appear distinctly blue.

Hubble collected the data for this image while surveying the sites of recent supernova explosions in nearby galaxies. NGC 6000 has hosted two recent supernovae: SN 2007ch in 2007 and SN 2010as in 2010. Using Hubble’s sensitive detectors, researchers are able to discern the faint glow of supernovae years after the initial explosion. These observations help to constrain the masses of supernova progenitor stars and can indicate if they had any stellar companions. 

By zooming in to the right side of the galaxy’s disc in this image, you may see something else yellow and blue: a set of four thin lines. These are an asteroid in our Solar System. It was drifting across Hubble’s field of view as it gazed at NGC 6000. The four streaks are due to exposures that were recorded one after another with slight pauses in between. These were combined to create this final image. The colors appear this way because each exposure used a filter to collect only specific wavelengths of light, in this case around red and blue. Having these separate exposures is important to study and compare stars by their colors—but it also makes asteroid interlopers very obvious!

Image Description: An oval-shaped spiral galaxy where only the center and lower half is in frame. Its center is mainly golden in color with a white glowing core. Its thick spiral arms are mostly blue, particularly at the outskirts; the colors merge in between. Dark lanes of dust swirl through the center, blocking some of its light. Stars and distant galaxies can be seen around the edges on a black background.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko
Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: Sept. 29, 2025

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Hubble #Stars #Galaxies #NGC6000 #SpiralGalaxies #Scorpius #Constellations #Cosmos #Universe #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

'Waves' of Earth Aurora | International Space Station

'Waves' of Earth Aurora | International Space Station

Expedition 73 flight engineer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui: "Recently, the aurora has been beautiful, so I tried filming a time-lapse video in between my workouts. Please enjoy the footage of the aurora surging in like waves, and then feeling like you're sailing through a sea of aurora. While drawing power from the Earth, let's keep pushing forward together this October, too!"

Auroras happen when charged particles from the Sun interact with Earth's magnetic field, creating dazzling light shows in the sky. Auroras occurs in an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere.

Follow Expedition 73:
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov

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.

Image Credit: Kimiya Yui/JAXA

Duration: 36 seconds
Release Date: Sept. 30, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Stars #Sun #SolarSystem #SolarWind #Planets #Earth #Aurora #Astronauts #KimiyaYui #AstronautPhotography #UnitedStates #Japan #日本 #JAXA #Cosmonauts #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #InternationalCooperation #Expedition73 #STEM #HD #Video

Xanthe Terra Region of Planet Mars: Simulated Fly Over | ESA Mars Express

Xanthe Terra Region of Planet Mars: Simulated Fly Over | ESA Mars Express

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft takes us on a flight over curving channels carved by water, islands that have resisted erosion, and a maze of hilly terrain. Central to the tour is a 1300 km-long outflow channel called Shalbatana Vallis. It cascades down from the highland region of Xanthe Terra to the smoother lowlands of Chryse Planitia.

Billions of years ago, water surged through this channel, creating many of the features we see today. The tour culminates in a spectacular view of a 100 km-wide impact crater, smashed out of Mars’s surface when it collided with a space rock.

Xanthe Terra is a large area on Mars, centered just north of the Martian equator. Its coordinates are 3°N 312°E and its diameter is 1867.65 km. Its name means "golden-yellow land." It is in the Lunae Palus quadrangle, the Coprates quadrangle, the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle, and the Oxia Palus quadrangle.

Ravi Vallis, Aromatum Chaos, Ophir, Ganges Chasma, Nanedi Valles, Shalbatana Vallis, Orson Welles Crater, Mutch Crater, and Da Vinci Crater are examples of major features in Xanthe Terra.

Over twenty years of observations from Mars Express have solidified our picture of Mars as a once-habitable planet with warmer and wetter epochs that may have been oases for ancient life. 

Processing notes:

This video was created using the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC30) data, an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the mission’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image, centred at 5°N/320°E, is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape.

For every second of the movie, 50 separate frames are rendered following a predefined camera path in the scene. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is three-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze, have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 250 km.

The HRSC camera on Mars Express is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The systematic processing of the camera data took place at the DLR Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The working group of Planetary Science and Remote Sensing at Freie Universität Berlin used the data to create the film.

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin & NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Duration: 3 minutes, 23 seconds
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2025

#NASA #ESA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Planet #Mars #Geology #XantheTerra #ShalbatanaVallis  #MarsExpress #MarsExpressSpacecraft #HRSC #Europe #DLR #FUBerlin #Berlin #Germany #Deutschland #STEM #Education #Animation #HD #Video

The Area around Rogue Planet Cha 1107-7626—Visible Light & Infrared Views

The Area around Rogue Planet Cha 1107-7626—Visible Light & Infrared Views

This visible-light image, part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the position in the sky of the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626. The planet (not visible here) is located exactly at the center of the frame.

This infrared image, taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) shows the position in the sky of the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626. The planet is a small dot located exactly at the center of the frame.

Location in the sky of the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626 in visible light and infrared. Astronomers have found an intense ‘growth spurt’ in this planet that does not orbit a star. Observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second, the strongest ever found for a planet of any kind.

The newly studied object, with a mass five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, is located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. Officially named Cha 1107-7626, this rogue planet is still forming and is fed by a surrounding disc of gas and dust. This material constantly falls onto the free-floating planet, a process known as accretion. However, the team led by Almendros-Abad has now found that the rate at which the young planet is accreting is not steady.

Credit: European Southern Observatory / Digitized Sky Survey 2/Meingast et al.
Release Date: October 2, 2025

#NASA #ESO #Space #Astronomy #Science #Stars #Planets #Exoplanets #Cha11077626 #Accretion #Chamaeleon #Constellations #Astrophysics #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #VLT #ParanalObservatory #Chile #SouthAmerica #UnitedStates #STEM #Education 

Journey to Rogue Planet Cha 1107-7626 in Chamaeleon | ESO

Journey to Rogue Planet Cha 1107-7626 in Chamaeleon | ESO

This video zooms in on Cha 1107-7626, located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. This rogue planet is 5-10 times more massive than Jupiter and doesn’t orbit a star. 

The video combines images taken with telescopes at unique times and wavelengths. It begins with a wide view of the night sky in visible light. As we zoom in, we switch to an infrared view taken with European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). Finally, we show an artist’s animation of the planet, which is eating up gas and dust from a disc around it. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found this is now happening at a rate of about 6 billion tonnes per second. 

Credit: European Southern Observatory/L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Meingast et al
Duration: 1 minute
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2025

#NASA #ESO #Space #Astronomy #Science #Stars #Planets #Exoplanets #Cha11077626 #Accretion #Chamaeleon #Constellations #Astrophysics #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #VLT #ParanalObservatory #Chile #SouthAmerica #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Rogue Planet Found Growing at Record Rate | European Southern Observatory

Rogue Planet Found Growing at Record Rate | European Southern Observatory

Astronomers have found an intense ‘growth spurt’ in a rogue planet––a planet that does not orbit a star. Observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second, the strongest ever found for a planet of any kind. This video summarizes the discovery.  

The newly studied object, with a mass five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, is located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. Officially named Cha 1107-7626, this rogue planet is still forming and is fed by a surrounding disc of gas and dust. This material constantly falls onto the free-floating planet, a process known as accretion. However, the team led by Almendros-Abad has now found that the rate at which the young planet is accreting is not steady.

By August 2025, the planet was accreting about eight times faster than just a few months before, at a rate of six billion tonnes per second! “This is the strongest accretion episode ever recorded for a planetary-mass object,” says Almendros-Abad. The discovery, published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was made with the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO’s VLT, located in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The team also used data from the James Webb Space Telescope, operated by the US, European and Canadian space agencies, and archival data from the SINFONI spectrograph on ESO's VLT.

"The origin of rogue planets remains an open question: are they the lowest-mass objects formed like stars, or giant planets ejected from their birth systems?” asks co-author Aleks Scholz, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom. The findings indicate that rogue planets may share a similar formation path to stars since similar bursts of accretion have been spotted in young stars before. As co-author Belinda Damian, also an astronomer at the University of St Andrews, explains: “This discovery blurs the line between stars and planets and gives us a sneak peek into the earliest formation periods of rogue planets.”

Credit: ESO
Directed by: Angelos Tsaousis and Martin Wallner
Editing: Angelos Tsaousis
Written by: Malika Nora Duffek
Footage and photos: ESO, Luis Calçada, Martin Kornmesser, Angelos Tsaousis, Christoph Malin, Digitized Sky Survey 2, Meingast et al.
Scientific consultant: Paola Amico, Mariya Lyubenova
Based on research by: V. Almendros-Abad et al., ApJL
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2025

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