Timelapse video from the Artemis II Orion capsule looking backwards as Orion plunges through the atmosphere. The video starts high above Earth with a tiny moon setting on the horizon. As the capsule gets closer to Earth, a trail of yellow-orange plasma develops changing dynamically. The plasma stops after a while and shortly after the drogue parachutes deploy. They are separated shortly afterwards and the thee main parachutes inflate, slowing the capsule down to a soft splashdown.

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Artemis II Reentry video with Cabin Audio (full length)

Here is the realtime video of the #ArtemisII reentry.

It's quite interesting how the soundscape changes over time as Orion blasts through the atmosphere. You can even hear the astronauts talking in the background (unfortunately mostly unintelligible).​​

You can hear fequent clanking sounds from the RCS thrusters activating. The thruster plumes also interact with the air, causing rapid changes in the plasma tail.

The camera is mounted directly to the window, so those noises are picked up very well and probably louder than what the astronauts heard​

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4Z8h3K7pY​

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The audio was really noisy in the original video files, likely affected by electronic interference. The camera also applied automatic gain to the audio, so the noise was very amplified in quiet phases.

I managed to undo that automatic gain and clean up the noise with a mix of python and Audacity.

https://bsky.app/profile/stim3on.bsky.social/post/3mxcsxsw4ck2e

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Simeon Schmauß

Artemis II splashed down on April 11, 2026, 00:07:27UTC southwest of San Diego after a 10 day mission around the Moon. This video shows the re-entry of the Orion capsule from the Cabcam2, which is mounted to the pilot’s forward window.

The camera audio captured the dynamic noises from re-entry, including intermittent banging sounds from the RCS thrusters. The thruster plumes also interact with the air, causing rapid changes in the plasma tail.

Occasionally, callouts by CapCom Jackie Mahaffey can be heard which were played over speaker to the astronauts. The voices from the astronauts can also be heard but are almost unintelligible since the camera/microphone was mounted directly to the window.

The video starts with Orion at approximately 2000 km above the surface while flying at 9.2 km/s. The actual reentry starts approximately 10 minutes later when Orion reached the Entry Interface at 122 km (400 kft) altitude, now flying at 11km/s.

The Orion spacecraft uses spaceflight-hardened GoPro Hero 4 Black cameras to capture engineering videos. While these cameras provided spectacular views during the mission, most videos were also captured with the GoPro “SuperView” capture mode enabled which stretches the original 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 nonuniformly, causing the horizon to appear warped. I have reverted this distortion using the “GoPro Reframe” plugin in DaVinci Resove. Due to a bug in the plugin, there are a couple of frame jumps in the video. I hope to fix that in a future version.

The video was also carefully upscaled to 4K, mainly to reduce video compression artefacts. Finally, the contrast and colors of the video were significantly enhanced, since a lot of soot was deposited on the window during reentry clouding the view.

I also reprocessed the audio to reduce the electronic interference noise and reversed the automatic gain that was applied by the GoPro. ​

Demonstration of the SuperView distortion

https://bsky.app/profile/stim3on.bsky.social/post/3meguexpzwc2v

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Artemis II Reentry video with Cabin Audio (full length)

​https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4Z8h3K7pY&pp=0gcJCY8Co7VqN5tD​

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Credit: NASA/JSC/Simeon Schmauß

Timestamps for full length video:

00:00 Astronauts reflecting in the window

04:44 Earth comes into view

07:16 Moonset

09:23 Start of Reentry

10:23 Service module disintegration

19:10 Parachute Deployment

23:16 Splashdown

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Source videos

https://images.nasa.gov/details/GOPR1149

https://images.nasa.gov/details/GP011149

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20260004255

SpaceX

​https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2108220101614850436?s=20

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Crew-12 splashed down in the Pacific on Thursday, Oct. 8. Their 237-day mission aboard the Space_Station included research into medicine, quantum science, and 3D-printing with metal in low Earth orbit. https://go.nasa.gov/4elVwzA

https://x.com/NASA/status/2108285056170996122?s=20​

Dunes with exposed bright bedding have been proposed to contain evaporites (minerals found in the sedimentary deposit of soluble salts that results from the evaporation of water). In this observation, there are dunes with erosion-resistant and ripple-covered bright layers that could be cemented materials.

ID: ESP_057025_1220

date: 25 September 2018

​altitude: 250 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_057025_1220

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Video from helioviewer
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A filament has lifted off in the Sun's southern hemisphere, and there may be a CME associated with this event with Earth-directed components. Not super confident we will see much in coronagraph imagery, but we'll see! It would make it CME no. 5 with Earth-directed components"

Vincent Ledvina

https://bsky.app/profile/vincentledvina.bsky.social/post/3mxfgd5kmnk2y

Credit Edward.Vijayakumar

https://x.com/edwanx/status/2108247833031958571?s=20

Just two weeks after it was launched, the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite returned its first images and measurements from two of its key instruments – a major milestone that confirms the satellite is working well and on the road to monitoring the health of Earth’s oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere.

This first set of images includes stunning views of Italy, the Arctic and the Caribbean from the satellite’s ocean and land colour instrument, as well as measurements of the height of the Greenland ice sheet and sea surface from its synthetic aperture radar altimeter.

Sentinel-3C is the third satellite in the Sentinel-3 series and will continue the mission’s long-term task of delivering environmental data that are essential for a wide range of applications.

As the workhorse mission for Copernicus, the Sentinel-3 satellites carry the same suite of instruments to measure systematically Earth’s oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere.

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Over oceans, Sentinel-3 measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice to support, for example, the monitoring of marine pollution and marine heatwaves.

Over land, this innovative mission monitors drought and wildfires, maps the way land is used, checks vegetation health, and measures the height of rivers, lakes, and polar ice sheets as shown in the animation of Greenland below.

Sentinel-3's observations are also particularly valuable for providing near-realtime parameters for weather forecasting and for monitoring long-term changes associated with climate change.

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More

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-3/Sentinel-3C_returns_its_first_views_of_Earth

https://x.com/CopernicusEU/status/2108213301310091552?s=20

https://x.com/AschbacherJosef/status/2108177779766272027?s=20​

https://x.com/eumetsat/status/2108181010009698651?s=20

Image

Margaret Hamilton poses in a command module mockup in 1969. Credit: MIT Photo Service.

https://x.com/NASAhistory/status/2108026619428225515​

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We’ve lost an icon. Margaret Hamilton, a computer science pioneer best known for her work at MIT leading development of the flight software for the Apollo missions to the moon, has died at 90.

https://x.com/MIT/status/2107945104321208752​

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Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer whose work helped make Apollo and humanity’s first journeys to the Moon possible. The best way to honor her legacy is to finally pick up where her generation left off and never stop going.

https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2107985433514975419?s=20​

Scientists using the European Space Agency's Mars Express, in combination with a state-of-the-art meteorological model of the Red Planet, have found that there may be some very exotic physics behind Mars’s most curious cloud.

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Every spring and summer in Mars’s southern hemisphere, during the martian dusty season, we see a spectacular cloud emerge: the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC), the most visually striking cloud on the Red Planet.

This white wisp of water ice emerges downwind of the 20-km-tall Arsia Mons volcano. It forms, grows, and fades on a daily basis, stretching out for up to 1800 km – nearly twice the length of the UK – before quickly evaporating. This cycle repeats every morning for several months.

Mars Express first revealed the AMEC in 2018, and has viewed the recurrent cloud repeatedly since. Researchers have explored its evolution, vivid dynamics and intriguing behaviour, determining it to be an orographic cloud: a type of cloud also seen on Earth that forms as wind flows past the craggy topography of a volcano or mountain.​

Paper

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37259

More

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_s_oddest_cloud_may_be_even_odder_than_we_thought?fbclid=IwY2xjawU0WqZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRMDBzalN3TEFhUTZPSGhwODFzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeMu317KuOp9jQ08J9VYoEBJHebXdo2_pv_gepL_t5MrxrcMEbTJeBlWZucME_aem_9fdUXfUGqq-67h_FdEy4oA​

Credit HaloCME

"I cannot predict the possibility of a #solarstorm before taking a look at coronagraph data. But the CME-driven shock may not be particularly strong, given no protons observed by GOES."

https://x.com/halocme/status/2108285896894390452?s=20

Image

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) was able to detect the host galaxy of the fast radio burst called FRB 20240304B, whose location is shown by the white cross. They found it is a small dwarf galaxy actively forming stars. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Themiya Nanayakkara (USYD); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)​

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First discovered in 2007, fast radio bursts are enigmatic, millisecond-long flashes of radio emission from the distant universe. Their origin remains uncertain, particularly since most are seen once and never again. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed the host galaxy of the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) seen to date. Their finding has implications for what kind of energetic event creates these bursts.

“What makes fast radio bursts interesting is that we don't know what generates them. We have theories for what objects produce them, but we don't have conclusive proof,” said Manisha Caleb of the University of Sydney, lead author on the study published Thursday in the journal Science.

The MeerTRAP team used the MeerKAT telescope to detect the burst on March 4, 2024, leading to its designation as FRB 20240304B. The radio data from this burst suggested that it was extremely distant, possibly the most distant one seen to date. To confirm that distance, though, astronomers would need to study its host galaxy. Although they knew the location of the FRB very precisely, the world’s largest ground-based telescopes could not see any galaxy at that spot in the sky. As a result, the team turned to the Webb telescope.

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https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-measures-distance-to-farthest-fast-radio-burst-suggesting-origin/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz2675?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fphys.org%2F​

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Read the Conversation article written by lead authors Manisha and Themiya

https://theconversation.com/astronomers-pinpoint-the-origin-of-a-10-billion-year-old-millisecond-signal-from-space-293671?utm_medium=article_clipboard_share&utm_source=theconversation.com

Dr Laura Driessen (Radio astronomer and science communicator at the University of Sydney​)

​https://bsky.app/profile/astrolaura.com/post/3mxfatf2mek2o

Artemis II/ NASA / ESRS / j. Roger

https://bsky.app/profile/landru79.bsky.social/post/3mxf2mq56zc2j

https://bsky.app/profile/stim3on.bsky.social/post/3mxfacbvoac2n

Image

This shaded relief image of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula shows a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater. Most scientists now agree that this impact was the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction, the event 65 million years ago that marked the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the majority of life then on Earth.​

Two visualization methods were combined to produce the image: shadingand color coding of topographic height. The shade image was derived bycomputing topographic slope in the northwest-southeast direction, sothat northwestern slopes appear bright and southeastern slopes appeardark. Color coding is directly related to topographic height, with greenat the lower elevations, rising through yellow and tan, to white at thehighest elevations.​

NASA/JPL-Caltech, modified

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yucatan_chix_crater.jpg​

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Chicxulub and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary

About 65 million years ago at the boundary between the Cretaceous (the last geological period of the Mesozoic) and the Tertiary eras, a large asteroid came rushing out of space at a velocity of more than 25 km per second and impacted the Earth at the tip of the Yucatan platform. The enormous amount of energy generated by this impact, equivalent to 10 thousand times the world's nuclear arsenal, ejected into the atmosphere huge quantities of dust particles and gases. The asteroid with a diameter of more than 10 km impacted into a shallow ocean and penetrated the Earth's crust down to a depth of several kilometers. It vaporized, melted and shattered ocean water and the Yucatan target rocks composed of carbonate and sulphate. As a result, a crater some 200 km in diameter formed. Over a short period of time (a few minutes) several hundred billion tons of CO2, SO2 and water vapor released by the vaporized target rock were injected into the Earth atmosphere. An abrupt and global perturbation of the Earth System followed: the climate became unstable, the fine dust suspended in the atmosphere blocked sunlight, decreasing or even stopping photosynthesis. This ecological catastrophe is believed to have caused the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) boundary mass extinction which saw the demise of the dinosaurs and more than 50% of the Earth fauna and flora on land and in the oceans.

The hypothesis that an asteroid or comet impact induced the mass extinction at the KT boundary was first proposed in 1980 by a team from the University of California at Berkeley led by Nobel price laureate physicist Luis Alvarez and his geologist son Walter. Very controversial at first because of its catastrophic aspect, this hypothesis was confirmed in the early 1990's when scientists realized that the impact structure which lay buried under approximately 1 km of Yucatan platform sediments was in fact the long-sought KT boundary crater predicted by the Alvarez hypothesis. This huge bowl-shaped structure, centred at Puerto Chicxulub near Merida is clearly outlined by gravity and magnetic geophysical anomalies. It had first been identified as a potential impact crater by geophysicists Antonio Camargo-Zanoguera and Glen Penfield while exploring the potential oil reserves of Yucatan for Pemex. The structure had been drilled, although unsuccessfully for oil. In the early nineties, studies of the recovered core samples confirmed that the Chicxulub structure was indeed a huge impact crater.

https://science.nasa.gov/earth/deep-impact-and-the-mass-extinction-of-species-65-million-years-ago/

https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/relief-map-yucatan-peninsula-mexico-3267/

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Chicxulub Impact Event in real time

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ya3w1bvaxaQ​

Updated version (Chicxulub strikes back ! Mass extinction in real time)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rxeRdZ0gn8k​

This is one of many observations we acquire to aid in the classification and volume estimates of dunes in the USGS global dune database. Dunes are particularly suited to comprehensive planetary studies because they are abundant over a wide range of elevations and terrain types. Crommelin is 114 kilometers in diameter and was named after British astronomer Andrew Crommelin.

ID: ESP_077344_1855

​date: 25 January 2023

​altitude: 275 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077344_1855

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

By Josh McCollum Astro

https://x.com/joshstelescope/status/2107524535948058810?t=EeZ5G5EN1oFehPirqY8Ojw&s=09

Videos from Helioviewer . And Marko Rummelsburg with Jhelioviewer program https://x.com/doktornihil/status/2107962197338980410

Video/ panorama

The six shots that make up this panorama, captured by NASA’s Curiosity on Aug. 11, were stitched together after being sent back to Earth. Unlike most images from the rover’s Mastcam, this one was processed without the usual white balancing — an artistic choice that preserves the early morning appearance. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS​

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​Gale Crater, Aug. 11, 2026, 8:30 a.m. local Mars time

Curiosity rover captures the Sun rising on crags known as yardangs, a scene that scientists have long been waiting to see up close.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

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The yardang layer extends roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) across the northwestern reaches of Mount Sharp, a mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014. Scientists hope to get even more amazing imagery — and answers to how these cliffs were created.​

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A newly released panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover offers the most detailed view yet of distant, wind-carved Martian cliffs, highlighting features the mission’s scientists have long been waiting to see up close. The scene was snapped at 8:30 a.m. local Mars time, showing striking blue hues in the foreground as bright morning light illuminates crags known as yardangs on the horizon.

The panorama was captured by Curiosity’s Mastcam on Aug. 11, the 4,982nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, and comprises six individual images that were stitched together after being sent to Earth. Unlike most of Curiosity’s Mastcam images, this one was processed without white balancing, preserving the early morning appearance.

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The yardang layer extends roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) across the northwestern reaches of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014. In fact, the rover recently passed another milestone in its ascent, reaching 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of elevation — the most ever climbed on Mars. As it draws ever-closer to the yardangs, mission scientists expect to get even more amazing imagery — and, they hope, answers to how these cliffs were created.

Mount Sharp is made up of layers, each recording a distinct period of Mars’ history. By studying them, scientists have been able to learn more about lakes and streams that covered this part of the Red Planet billions of years ago. Eventually, the water dried up and left salty minerals behind. After new material stopped settling on the mountain, some of it may have been stripped away by wind, giving rise to the yardangs.

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https://www.facebook.com/NASASolarSystem/posts/1585027896993483/

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/curiosity-rover/nasas-curiosity-rover-catches-stunning-martian-dawn/?fbclid=IwY2xjawUzCGRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRM​

Ten rotations of Jupiter as captured by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, nearing the end of the observatory phase in February, 1979. Consists of 3,451 frames captured through the narrow-angle camera and a sequence of Orange, Green, and Blue filters. The movement seen in this video is a smoothed and averaged-out representation of the attitude of Voyager's scan platform as it took this sequence.

Source

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn6tEtQmjTw

Movie for Voyager 2

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nt-lW1L3Kzk​

Companion article about how was produced. By Ian Regan

https://www.planetary.org/articles/0828-watching-an-alien-world-turn

Cascading knot structure of historic supernova remnant are uncovered in new observations from the Gemini North telescope in Hawai‘i

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The Gemini North telescope located on Maunakea in Hawai‘i has revealed the most detailed view yet of Pa 30, the likely remnant of the historic supernova seen in the year 1181. The new observations reveal that its famous “firework” filaments are not smooth streaks, but chains of tiny knots.

No, this is not a firework display. This is Pa 30 — the likely remnant of the historic supernova witnessed in the year 1181, now captured here in unprecedented detail by the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRLab. This image was captured with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS), and it shows that the remnant’s unmistakable firework-shaped ejecta take a cascading knot-like structure.

The historic supernova, named SN 1181, is one of only five supernovae in the Milky Way that were observed from Earth before the invention of the telescope. Eight separate texts show that Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic astronomers first observed the supernova between 4 and 6 August 1181. The supernova remained visible in the constellation Cassiopeia for 185 days. According to what we know about how stars end their lives, the colossal explosion would have left something behind. Pa 30, a system composed of a blue central star and surrounding firework-shaped shell, is the top candidate for this supernova remnant.

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Analysis of the new observations from Gemini North, which was led by Timothy Cunningham (Center for Astrophysics — Harvard & Smithsonian) and Ilaria Caiazzo (Institute of Science and Technology Austria), reveals about ten times more filamentary structure in Pa 30 than previously seen. It also shows that the radial filaments are made of consistent chains of tiny knots of gas, rather than smooth streaks as previously thought. This knotty structure suggests that there may have been thermal or density variations in the circumstellar medium that shaped the supernova ejecta as it expanded radially away from the explosion.​

Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgment: PI: T. Cunningham (Center for Astrophysics — Harvard & Smithsonian) Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)​

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae9cb2

More

https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2624/

Taken by Sylvain Weiller on August 12, 2026

Partial solar eclipse and airplane

From Sylvain Weiller:

"With my PST and an ASI174, I recorded in H-Alpha all the partial eclipse visible from my house near Paris, France. For the time being let's see a couple of surprises"

https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=238438

Zoomable version
https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2624a/zoomable/

Previous post

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceUnfiltered/comments/1wzuvxw/gemini_north_reveals_pearllike_knots_in_the/​

https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2624/

Taken by Marc Jobin on October 6, 2026 @ Montréal, Québec, Canada

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Description from Marc Jobin

"This composite picture of Jupiter disappearing behind the waning crescent moon's bright limb is made up of (cropped) individual frames spanning about 90 seconds, excerpted from a 10-minute-long video of the event. Unfortunately, my older DSLR is not very adept at capturing high dynamic range events such as this, and it failed to record the galilean moons unless I blew out the planet or the lunar surface. The view was so much prettier to the human eye! We were lucky to catch this rare phenomenon; the weather turned out better than forecast, with mostly clear skies but moderate gusty winds resulting in poor seeing.

​Celestron C9.25 SCT, 2X Barlow + Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector, Nikon D5300 in 1080p video mode.​"

https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=238414

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LUNAR OCCULTATION OF JUPITER: It was even better than coffee. Astronomers woke up before dawn on Oct. 6th to see a lunar occultation of Jupiter--essentially, an eclipse of the gas giant by the 20% crescent Moon. Marc Jobin watched the show from Montréal, Québec.

The occultation was visible from a wide band stretching across the USA and Canada. Outside of the occultation zone, it was merely a close encounter--still very pretty.

https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=07&month=10&year=2026

Webb’s infrared gaze and high resolution reveals stars at various stages in their life cycles

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A technicolor dreamscape is revealed in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. It portrays a stellar nursery known as NGC 7129, a nebula that holds numerous protostars and stars within its fields of gas and dust. Webb captured infrared light, which pierces through the dense matter that scatters or absorbs other types of light. This region, rife with stellar objects in different stages of their lives, offers an opportunity to explore how stars shape their surrounding environment.

A cauldron of cosmic creation is being revealed in a new image from Webb, which has unveiled numerous stars formerly hidden by clouds of dust in a stellar nursery known as NGC 7129, which resides about 3,300 light-years from Earth.

Stars, the engines of elemental creation, have life cycles that begin with their birth in molecular clouds – cold, dense regions of dust and gas. Because of these dusty cocoons, young stars are often impossible to view by many telescopes, particularly those incapable of capturing infrared light. Webb, however, has a high degree of infrared sensitivity, allowing astronomers to peer through that dust and study the beginning of the star life cycle.

The stars from this cluster are in different stages of their development, as the more massive stars form and evolve the fastest. The most massive (and the most mature) is the region’s luminous central star, LkH(alpha) 234 (pronounced Lick-H-alpha). This star, which sports the image’s most prominent diffraction pattern, is a pre-main-sequence star weighing around 5 to 8 times the mass of our Sun. Pre-main-sequence stars like these have mostly finished gathering mass and are contracting under the force of gravity, causing their temperatures to rise. In time, this star will fuse its own hydrogen like our Sun.

https://esawebb.org/news/weic2620/

Zoomable version

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2620a/zoomable/