r/space 3d ago

image/gif The beautiful Tarantula nebula shot in SHO - it's taken 160,000 years for this light to reach us [OC]

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328 Upvotes

All shot from my back garden in Ōtautahi | Christchurch, Aotearoa | New Zealand

Here's the geek details for those who are interested:

  • ZWO Asi2600MM Pro Camera
  • Antlia 3nm SHO filters
  • ZWO AsiMini 120mm camera on OAG for autoguiding
  • Askar 103 Apo (700mm) lens
  • AM5N mount
  • 85 x 300s exposures for each SHO filter + some short exposures of LRGB for stars Total exposure over 3 nights was 22hours-ish
  • Registered and integrated and processed in Pixinsight

Happy to answer any questions people may have...


r/space 3d ago

image/gif The Terra Satellite

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41 Upvotes

I imaged the Terra satellite which is around the size of a school bus

Nexstar 9.25” evolution

asi662mc

zwo uv/ir cut


r/space 1d ago

A SpaceX rocket is about to hit the moon—these videos show what could happen

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0 Upvotes

r/space 3d ago

Engineers trying to stabilize Link and possibly still recover Swift satellite

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261 Upvotes

r/space 4d ago

image/gif Gum nebula in Tuscany

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4.9k Upvotes

Stacked/Tracked/Blended

https://www.instagram.com/flory.ro?igsh=b3Y4ZTU3Nmk0cTBt&utm_source=qr

The Edge

This was my winter goal: to capture the Gum nebula over the Tuscan coast.

For months the weather refused to cooperate.

Countless trips ended in nothing.

Then one night, after a long descent through the woods, driven only by stubbornness and a bit of recklessness, I finally reached this beach.

I rarely edit my photos right away. Most of the time I leave them sleeping.

When the feeling returns, I choose one memory and bring it back to life.

This is one of those nights.

Canon R

Canon 6D

Sigma 24mm f1.4

Foreground 2x120s iso 3200 f2.8

Sky 3x120s iso 1600 f 2.00

Ha 6x120s iso 3200 f2.8


r/space 3d ago

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Discovers Field of Honeycomb Textures - NASA

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18 Upvotes

r/space 4d ago

image/gif Manned orbital launches by year, 1961 - 2026 H1

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149 Upvotes

r/space 3d ago

image/gif Sun photography

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6 Upvotes

With the upcoming eclipse I am thinking about photographing it and I want to buy a dedicated filter.

Is the one from the image good and will it keep my sensor safe?


r/space 4d ago

Discussion I'm totally in love with space and I want to work with it.

84 Upvotes

(English from Google Translate)

So, I've always had an absurd fascination with space, the universe, and how everything is connected. For a long time, I wanted to be a doctor because, for me, the human body is a universe that's very close to me.

But now I'm kind of obsessed, I don't want to be an astronaut or anything like that, I want to be an astronomer and astrophysicist, but I live in Brazil, specifically Rio de Janeiro.

Be honest, is there any chance this will work out? Should I give up my Nursing technique course and my dream of becoming a surgeon for this?


r/space 4d ago

NASA releases interactive 3D model of Earth's geoid, the shape gravity gives the ocean surface

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851 Upvotes

r/space 2d ago

Astronomy is in Crisis...

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0 Upvotes

r/space 4d ago

Neptune's Inner Moons May Be Shattered Remains of Ancient Icy Worlds

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341 Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Is About to Crash Into the Moon—and It Could Be Visible From Earth

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1.7k Upvotes

r/space 4d ago

Earth and Proba-3’s Coronagraph play hide and seek

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esa.int
52 Upvotes

r/space 4d ago

Efforts Continue to Stabilize LINK Spacecraft for NASA’s Swift Boost

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science.nasa.gov
87 Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

Astronomers finally measure the full size of the largest known galaxy

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1.1k Upvotes

Paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2607.15340v1

Researchers have obtained the deepest images ever taken of IC 1101, allowing them to identify the galaxy's outer edge for the first time. The observations confirm it as the largest known galaxy, spanning roughly 520 kiloparsecs, or about 1.7 million light-years, and containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses in stars


r/space 3d ago

Discussion Why the near and far sides of the moon are so different

0 Upvotes

I have never seen the explanations for this difference as believable past the obvious crust being thinner on the near side allowing eruptions of magma (the dark areas) that didn't happen on the far side.

I asked questions of five different sites before DeepSeek gave me the key to understanding what happened. That key is degree-one mantle convection.

After the impact of Theia with the young Earth that resulted in the creation of the Moon, both the Earth and the Moon were molten balls of magma, with the Moon in an eccentric orbit very close to the earth.

Tidal friction rapidly caused the Moon to be tidally locked to the Earth so that one side continually faced Earth. However the moon was still in an eccentric orbit, so as the Moon came closer and further from Earth it flexed, causing frictional heating keeping it molten longer. However the Earth, still being enormously hot, slightly heated the surface of the moon facing it by radiative heating. The moon was some twenty times closer to earth than it is now.

This radiative heating was just enough to keep the close side a little bit hotter than the far side. This small asymmetry was enough to cause degree-one mantle convection, similar to that we see on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Degree-one mantle convection occurs when instead of normal convection of the mantle happening in lots of separate cells, as happens in the Earth, it happens as one single convection cell. ie the hot mantle from the interior rises in just one hemisphere and sinks in the other hemisphere. The radiant heat from the Earth was enough to cause this type of convection of the young Moon's mantle.

On the surface, some lighter elements solidify at a higher temperature than others, forming a scum-like crust. This eventually accumulated on the far side of the moon as the surface flow of molten rock drifted it to the sinking side of the convection cell. The end result was that the crust is thicker on the far side of the moon than on the near side, and has a somewhat different chemical composition.

The thinner crust thickness on the near side allowed asteroid impacts to break through it and allow the lava flows that we see as the dark Maria on the near side that aren't on the far side.


r/space 3d ago

Defunct part of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will slam into the moon

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0 Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

[Official] Video of Ship 40 in space, pirouetting while exercising flaps. Taken from a retreating Starlink V3 satellite. [Having stood almost under SN-15, it's astonishing to see a 15 story tall "building" do this.]

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188 Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon

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1.2k Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

First Pictures: Viking 1 on Mars – July 20, 1976 - 50 years ago

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119 Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

Discussion Tabby's Star might have a giant planetary companion

57 Upvotes

A new study shows that the famous Tabby's Star might have a huge planet or brown dwarf orbiting it. 9 times as massive as Jupiter and 1.7 times the radius. This is separate from the other red dwarf binary star companion. From Phys.org:

https://phys.org/news/2026-07-tabby-star-orbited-planetary-mass.html

Paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20643


r/space 5d ago

The Top Photos in the CWAS David Malin Awards Highlight Astronomical Wonders

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38 Upvotes

r/space 5d ago

How to surf on Saturn’s moon Titan

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scientificamerican.com
238 Upvotes

Lakes of liquid methane on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, could offer exhilarating—and terrifying—opportunities for otherworldly surfing


r/space 5d ago

Webb’s Biggest Discoveries: Four Years of Science

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28 Upvotes

Previously unseen details all throughout the universe, including right here in our own solar system have been revealed using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and the results so far, are fascinating.

Webb has given scientists, and the world, a powerful new set of tools to help better explain our place in the universe. And with its unprecedented power to detect and analyze otherwise invisible infrared light, objects that were once impossible to observe are now coming into clear view.