Daniel Machacek

Airborne view of Long March 6A Y30 rocket plume is surreal: from deep sunset crimson and amber along the lower contrail up to the electric-blue "space jellyfish" expanding in the mesosphere, the transition reveals Earth's shadow line in real time

Our Hera spacecraft can now see Didymos and Dimorphos as two separate asteroids! 👀 Coming closer, it will study the effects of NASA's 2022 DART impact and help advance asteroid deflection as a planetary defence technique. The first detailed images of Dimorphos are expected on 25 November.

Meet our Solar System's newest dwarf planet candidate: 2026 ED138! Orbiting past Pluto, scientists found it in NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory data from earlier this year. Early analysis suggests it's ~600–1500 km across, one of the largest found past Neptune!🔭🧪 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-f...

On this day in 1975, Venera 9 returned the first images from another planet. Humanity saw the surface of Venus for the first time.

Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss... the abyss stares back.

I have been working on visualizing the appearance of proposed space mirrors on the night skies. As the beam approaches it appears as a column of light emerging from the darkness. At the beam center of a 600 km high 54 m. mirror the reflection gives a light similar to that of 38 Full Moons, 9.5 Lux.

A very oblique view of the eye of typhoon Koguma when it was southeast of Japan on 10 October 2026. Image taken with an external camera on space station #ISS. Original eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos... @daveatcogs.bsky.social NB This is a reskeet of a previous post which had the typhoon mis-IDed.

H3 rocket with the MMX spacecraft - a mission to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos - from Tokyo!

NGC 7129 with #JWST NIRCam (F335M, F444W, F470N) program: www.stsci.edu/jwst-program...

Saturn's north polar region in natural color and near-infrared false color. Processed using images taken by Cassini on November 15, 2008. flic.kr/p/2sGeEK3 flic.kr/p/2sG9jKz

#ROSETTA INTERNATIONAL MISSION Target: #EARTH 13 nov 2007 Distance to Target: 80 904 km OSIWAC Red Green UV375 rosetta-osiris.eu/image/WAC_20... ESA/Rosetta/OSIRIS/j. Roger

I have been working on NGC 2392 (Lion Nebula) bit by bit over the past couple of weeks. Pretty happy with it! As always, high quality image and perhaps overly verbose information is available at my Flickr gallery: flic.kr/p/2swHfCQ

Perseverance has set a new off-world record! 🏅 On Oct. 11, the rover's odometer hit 28.1 miles (45.22 km), eclipsing the distance record set by NASA's Opportunity rover. Longer drives are putting more geological diversity within reach faster science.nasa.gov/blogs/persev... youtu.be/XaxuV6tsIb4?...

1/2🧵 🔭🧪 Brown dwarfs in the NGC 602 cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud #JWST (30% resolution) PI: Peter Zeidler NIRCam: F140M, F182M, F150W2-F162M, F277W, F444W, F360M Credit: #NASA/ #ESA/ #CSA/ STScI/ Jackie Branc #SMC #NGC-602

New Horizons LORRI image colorized using MVIC CH4/blue filter data, processed to roughly approximate natural color. Taken on March 1, 2007. Distance: 2.3 million km Credit: NASA / JHU / APL / Gordan Ugarković live.staticflickr.com/6003/6008547...

Phobos (including Saturn and Deimos) in the latest release of @esa.int Mars Express Can you spot Saturn? Full size & more info: flic.kr/p/2sFoFaS 🔭🧪 Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY ESA Mars Express Release September 15, 2026 Note: Saturn has been enlarged by 300%

High clouds on Mars again 😆 #NASA's #Mars rover #Curiosity 2026-10-07 Sol 5037: Right Navigation Camera mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1... NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/j. Roger

From NASA 📍Gale Crater, Aug. 11, 2026, 8:30 a.m. local Mars time. The Curiosity rover captures the Sun rising on crags known as yardangs, a scene that scientists have long been waiting to see up close.

Six months have passed since the #ArtemisII mission and NASA has just released the reentry video from the Orion capsule! Here is a timelapse of the reentry, but be sure to check out the realtime version linked below! 🔭🧪

Snippets from a 171-images, 360° Mastcam panorama captured two days ago by Curiosity #Mars Oct. 2, 2026 - Sol 5032🧪🔭 Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk

Astonishing image of JUPITER'S MOON Io and Ganymede during Occultation (October 3 2026) Alt 30 (Low) at 5:24AM Southern CA USA Credit Brian Martin x.com/BackdoorAstr... www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=... instagram.com/p/DeDf-RzlJio

Gravitational lens WISE J220544.23-372701.4 with #JWST NIRCam (F200W, F356W). program: www.stsci.edu/jwst-program... The galaxy in the center lenses a quasar (quasi stellar object), which is the bright black hole in the center of a galaxy. This creates the four identical point sources.

Messier 27 by Andrew McCarthy Description from Andrew McCarthy "​I pointed my telescope at a dying star for 30 hours to capture this: a detailed look at the expanding planetary nebula. A similar fate awaits our sun." x.com/AJamesMcCart...

This will never stop blowing my mind. A 12-year sequence of real telescope images of a star 133 lightyears away. And around it, four planets slowly orbiting. Four real exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, imaged as they move around their host star.

Remnant of the #supernova SN 1987A with #JWST NIRCam (F150W, F200W) program: www.stsci.edu/jwst-program... 🔭

I hinted that there would be more images from the Juice flyby, so here is the timelapse of the full event! It's always amazing to get these views of our fragile Blue Marble from the spacecraft we send out to explore the solar system! 🔭🧪 #planetsci

NGC-6302 | #Hubble (wide view) Instrument: WFC3/UVIS Proposal ID: 11504 (archive.stsci.edu/proposal_sea...) Principal Investigator: Noll, Keith S. Date observation: 2009-07-27. Filters: F656N F658N F502N.

Great day here at ESOC, staying in the control room with the team while the images came down and processing the JMC images. Earth proved to be a real stunner with Africa and Madagascar in full view. #planetsci 🔭🧪

A successful Earth flyby improves Juice’s course to Jupiter Earlier today, Juice flew just 8640 km above the Indian Ocean and snapped these images with its onboard monitoring cameras. 1️⃣Africa, by Juice monitoring camera 2️⃣Madagascar, by Juice NavCam 3️⃣Moon, by Juice NavCam 🔭 🧪 #planetsci

The Sunset of September 27, 2026 was an epic spectacle whose intensity and beauty were memorable. The cloud ceiling had a wide opening toward the West that admitted Sunlight which underwent progressive color changes as it briefly in turn illuminated layers of otherwise invisible cloud textures.

These are what the clouds on Jupiter look up close. The small patches of white are cloud tops, soaring above the main, colourful cloud layer. Image from NASA's Juno spacecraft during its 38th close approach to Jupiter on 29 November 2021, processed by Kevin Gill (@kevinmgill.bsky.social)

This is the Dragonfly spacecraft, ultimately destined for Titan, photographed in July during early construction at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The mission PI, Zibi Turtle, shared this image at the OPAG meeting today. Credit: NASA/JHU APL/Zibi Turtle

Neptune from a backyard 9.25" telescope Credit: ◀️: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team. ▶️: Aiken Ji app.astrobin.com/u/aikenji?i=... www.instagram.com/p/DdOg91hIK_O/

Perseverance Mastcam-Z 360° Panorama #55: Groloy (and Viking Lander Commemoration), Sol 1932 (July 27, 2026) ☑️ all panoramas mastcamz.asu.edu/mastcam-zs-3... ☑️ 360° VR view maps.planet.fu-berlin.de/jezero/360/55 #Mars 🔭🧪

China’s Tiangong Space Station crosses in front of Jupiter in this remarkable astrophotography shot. Just hundreds of kilometres above Earth, Tiangong appears in front of Jupiter, a world hundreds of millions of kilometres away. Captured by 沈老思347

What if we could 'see' beneath the desert sands? 🏜️ Designed primarily to study forests, @esa.int’s Biomass mission is also helping scientists investigate ancient river systems hidden beneath the Sahara, thanks to its unique P-band radar. Read the full story🔗 earth.esa.int/eogateway/su...

BepiColombo společná mise kosmických agentur ESA a JAXA se blíží k závěru své osmileté cesty, a tak si osvěžme, jak vypadá Merkur, který bude BepiColombo zkoumat. Mapky jsou zhotoveny z celoplanetárních mozaik snímků pořízených sondou MESSENGER, kterou vypustila NASA.

Southern Hemisphere Milky Way galaxy view from ISS. This 3s exposure series captured 2 views, particularly dense Milky Way galaxy as seen from S Hemisphere,& the bright, colorful lights of squid fishing boats (here,bright blue & green lights off the coast of China,Thailand & India) 📸Jessica Meir

F-16 and cloud iridescence on NATO Days in Ostrava 2026.

From NASA The Moon’s got a big new crater! 🕳️ Spotted by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the McGetchin crater formed when a rock as big as a six-story building crashed into the Moon. It’s 141 feet deep and wider than the length of two football fields. 🪨💥🌕 go.nasa.gov/3TzHqUf

SNH0pe-Repeat-TARGET | NIRCAM. #JWST Proposal ID: 4744 (www.stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-...) PI: Frye, Brenda Louise. Observed: 2025-05-20. Filters: B: [F090W F150W] G: [F200W F277W] R: [F356W F444W] Title: SN H0pe: Doubling the Time Delay Precision of a z=1.78 Multiply-imaged Type Ia Supernova

Something good is out there somewhere One last shot from last week of NASA's McDonald Geodetic Observatory, part of a network that measures the Earth's shape and movements down an accuracy measured in millimeters.

Proper Motion of stars in the galactic center with #JWST NIRCam F182M. programs: 1306, 4515 www.stsci.edu/jwst-program...

🟠 MSL 5000 ML © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NeV-T Q-VIEW - live.staticflickr.com/65535/555260... Gigapan - gigapan.com/gigapans/239... GIGAmacro - viewer.gigamacro.com/view/xtZtVrR... Gigapan Website - www.nev-t-gigamacros.com #Mars #science #NASA

G339.88-1.26 | NIRCAM. #JWST Proposal ID: 3907 (www.stsci.edu/jwst-program...) PI: Zhang, Yichen. Observed: 2024-04-15. Filters: F115W F162M F182M F212N F360M F405N F470N F480M Title: Unveiling the Early Stages of Massive Binary Formation with JWST.

Here is a fun little animation showing how the shadows on Phobos change over the course of its short (7h 39m) day. The other image was actually taken two weeks ago, but since Phobos is tidally locked to Mars, it doesn't really matter. 🔭🧪

Sometimes I get caught up in complicated compositions with lots of elements. This was going to be one of them, but I was completely stuck—not realizing that the solution was a simple render with three heads, a piece of meat, a pretty sky, a bunch of flies, and some editing

Light show. McDonald Observatory, Texas

I have a new paper out! Over the weekend I'll do a thread on what the Solar System can tell us about rocky exoplanets— but for now, enjoy this to-scale set of cross sections I made of the rocky worlds in *this* system! (They're all different, but still all variations on a theme...)