Paul Byrne

A day late, but this is one of the first images taken of Earth from space. Ever. It was acquired from an altitude of 105 km (five times higher than the previous record) eighty years ago, on 24 October 1946, with a 35 mm camera mounted on a V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range.

And this is a photo of Earth taken from space by the GOES-19 satellite about... a half hour before I posted this. Credit: NOAA/CIRA/RAMMB SLIDER

A day late, but this is one of the first images taken of Earth from space. Ever. It was acquired from an altitude of 105 km (five times higher than the previous record) eighty years ago, on 24 October 1946, with a 35 mm camera mounted on a V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range.

Rocks on Mars, photographed today.

This scene is a composite of two NASA Perseverance rover Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) images, taken Saturday, 24 October 2026 at a local Jezero Crater time of 1:20 pm. Colour and white balance adjusted to better match human vision.

The Andromeda Galaxy, low in the sky over New South Wales, Australia.

Credit & Copyright: Lucy Yunxi Hu (www.astrolucyhu.com)

The Andromeda Galaxy, low in the sky over New South Wales, Australia.

These changes are causing quite a bit of stir in the space science community, and many of us have a *lot* of questions. However, the biggest issue with NASA's missions isn't a lack of industry involvement or length of review. It's that NASA lacks the money to fly missions regularly.

As envisioned, New Frontiers was originally supposed to be competed twice a decade, and Discovery was to see a launch every two years. We're now at nine years for NF (with the next competition expected in 2027, 10 years after the last). And at seven for Discovery, and counting.

These changes are causing quite a bit of stir in the space science community, and many of us have a *lot* of questions. However, the biggest issue with NASA's missions isn't a lack of industry involvement or length of review. It's that NASA lacks the money to fly missions regularly.

This is stellar nursery N159, a region of star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud, by JWST. Its colours are seasonally appropriate, as is the fact that with so many stars forming here, and thus so many planets, *one* of them is bound to develop some sort of cosmic horror on it.

This image spans about 230 lightyears across. N159 (also known as LHA 120-N 159) is around 161,000 lightyears away. There are fewer building blocks for stars and planets here (they are less "metal" rich), and the region is only about 3 million years old. Read more: esawebb.org/images/potm2...

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

lol this isn't really the head of a giant Celestial silly, do you think we'd admit it if it were?! This is Arp-Madore 2026-42, a relatively rare galactic collision, where two similarly sized galaxies interacted and are in the process of fully merging. Read more: science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble...

Take a moment to think about what this image shows. That's a glint of sunlight, reflecting off a lake of liquid ethane and methane, on a moon that's larger than Mercury where the average surface temperature is –180°C, orbiting a giant ringed planet 1.4 billion kilometres away.

Taken by a spacecraft launched in 1997 that flew past Venus on its way to Saturn, which operated until 2017 when it burned up in Saturn's atmosphere. This is NASA Photojournal image PIA12481, taken by Cassini on 8 July 2009 from a distance of 200,000 km from Titan during the spacecraft's 59th flyby.

Reminder: The *average* bolide impact velocity at Earth is 20 km/s. That's five seconds from the Kármán line to the ground. There's no slow movement of an asteroid through the sky, giving you enough time to say goodbye to your loved ones. One moment you're alive, the next you're on fire.

To be clear, I don't spend any time worrying about something smashing into us. (There's lots of other things to be worried about.) I just don't want you to think that we'd have any time to watch the thing enter the atmosphere, because we wouldn't.

Reminder: The *average* bolide impact velocity at Earth is 20 km/s. That's five seconds from the Kármán line to the ground. There's no slow movement of an asteroid through the sky, giving you enough time to say goodbye to your loved ones. One moment you're alive, the next you're on fire.

Aw shit, here we go again

Kīlauea is doing its thing again. Watch live: www.youtube.com/live/gXKuUyK... Also, right now (11:22 am Central) there's a lot of thumping noises as scoria fragments are raining down and smashing into the camera housing. You most definitely would not want to be where that camera is right now.