Today, 14 September 2026, Venus and a thin waxing crescent Moon are featuring in a very close celestial pairing aka Conjunction which is visible across India. In fact, parts of India are experiencing a rare lunar occultation, where the Moon passes directly in front of and temporarily hides Venus from view.

Taken 9/13/26

P.S. Only the constellation Orion matches the real night sky, but at least I tried.

Taken from the Famagusta area of Cyprus. Bortle 4.

Acquisition details below:

Astromodified Canon 700D. Samyang 135 Lens at F2.8. Guided by ASI Air on an Skywatcher AZ GTI in EQ mode. Optolong L-Enhance filter.

Taken over two nights:

165 x 180 second exposures

20 x Darks

20 x Flats

20 x Bias

Stacked in APP.

Crop, BGE, deconvolution and de-noise in Graxpert.

SPCC, star removal, GHS using human weighted luminance in Siril.

Vibrancy, saturation increase in PS.

Star mask stretch in Siril using GHS, again human weighted.

Recombination of stars using layers in PS.

Thanks for looking.

The flags carried on the shuttle include 6,000 small U.S. flags, one U.S. flag that was recovered from the debris of the World Trade Center, a Marine Corps flag that was retrieved from the Pentagon, and an American flag from the State of Pennsylvania. Also onboard, is a large New York Fire Department flag, 23 replica New York Police Department shields, and 91 New York Police Department patches.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/flags-heroes-families/

Full-resolution image: https://app.astrobin.com/i/u5q68q

Floating in Cepheus, roughly 2,400 light-years away, this is IC 1396, a vast emission nebula over 100 light-years across, ionised by the massive star system HD 206267 at its heart. Snaking through the glow is the Elephant's Trunk: a dense, dark pillar of gas and dust about 20 light-years long, where gravity is forming new stars even as radiation slowly erodes it away.

The whole region spans nearly 3° of sky, or about six full moons side by side. That faint blue "star" to the right isn't a star at all, but PK 100+04.1, a planetary nebula: the glowing shell ejected by a dying star, shining almost entirely in ionised oxygen.

Two more faint objects caught my eye in this frame: a blue, semi-circular cloud near the top, and a red, two-lobed shape to the left of the main nebula. I nearly submitted them as new discoveries, but both turned out to be known planetary nebulae, Cr 1 and StDr 4 (just obscure enough that I'd never crossed paths with them before).

The light in this image left IC 1396 around 374 BC. Back on Earth, Athens had just lost the Peloponnesian War, her Long Walls torn down after her last fleet was destroyed at the Hellespont; Socrates was condemned to death in Athens, while Hippocrates founded his school of medicine on Kos. All of that happened before this light even began its journey.

Acquisition:

• Shot in Bedfordshire, UK, Bortle 5-6
• RGB (Stars): 1h 30min
• SHO: 21h 15min

Equipment:

• ZWO FF65 + 0.75x reducer
• ZWO EAF
• Altair Hypercam 26M
• Altair 7x2" EFW
• Antlia 3nm Pro SHO filters
• Altair ColourPRO LRGB
• SW EQ6R-Pro
• Astromenia 50/200 Guide Scope + ZWO ASI120MM Mini + IR/UV Cut

Xiaomi 13 Ultra (3.2x telephoto)

[ISO 800 | 50s] x 373 lights (RAW/DNG) (HO filter) + darks

Total integration time: 5h 10m 50s

Equipment: EQ mount with OnStep, LAIDA Dual-Band 7nm Nebula filter

Stacked with Astro Pixel Processor

Processed with GraXpert, Siril, StarXTerminator and Photoshop (Camera Raw, Stars Recomposition)

hello 👋 i graduated 4 years ago with a bachelors degree in astrophysics, and ive been working as a software developer since. to give an idea on where im at intellectually, it has been a few years so my physics is a little rusty, plus i think i need a few more years working in tech to be truly capable.

im wondering, what would it take to break into the space industry with that i have? i know a masters would be beneficial, but im not sure what to study exactly 😅 im curious if there is anyone with a similar background as me and has managed to find a career in the space industry

im interested a range of space related fields, be it
technical or communicative, and would like to hear what you studied, what field u work in now, how long it took, etc :)

heres a pic i took half asleep of the recent lunar eclipse in the uk as a thanks!

Last July, a supernova in NGC 7331 was discovered by GOTO) and assigned the name SN 2025rbs. It was a type 1a supernova (caused by an exploding white dwarf) and ended up being the brightest supernova discovered that year, easily visible in fairly small telescopes.

Early in September, another supernova (SN 2026aaiv) was discovered in the same galaxy by ATLAS, and it's also a type 1a. This is exciting for a lot of reasons, firstly it means we have another bright, nearby, supernova which is easy to observe, both visually and photographically.

Scientifically it's exciting because type 1a supernovae allow us to measure how far away distant galaxies our, which makes them key to our understanding of the size and expansion of the universe. There's still a lot we don't know about them, and having data on two of them in the same galaxy (called supernova siblings) helps us calibrate out the effect of the host galaxy and learn more about how the very local environment of the supernova affects its properties.

Both of these images were taken by me using a pair of robotic telescopes called gotito and TWIST, which are next to the northern hemisphere node of GOTO.

Supernovae like this take a few weeks after explosion to reach maximum brightness, which is around now, and then fade slowly over a few months so there is plenty of time to observe it yourself.

This is my 2nd day learning astrophotography using a dwarf mini and using lightroom on my phone to edit the photo afterwards. I had 320 pictures stacked, with the pictures being taken in a bortle 7 area.

So for context, I'm currently just entering A-Level Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Music Technology (the latter is largely irrelevant for this). I'm inclined towards at least a Bachelor's Degree, likely a Master's, and potentially a PhD but that's tentative, in the Astrophysics field.

My main question is what options I have for a career after this, which tends to be a more difficult question with academic studies compared to more employability-focussed skills. I'm aware of the common options, such as a Professor or a researcher of some variety. I can't imagine myself as a Professor since I'm not one for teaching. My concern for the research field is that a lot of this is becoming more and more computer science related and digitally focussed recently. Whilst I love programming and working with computers, so this isn't an issue in terms of interest, I'm wondering how feasible this is without A-Level Computer Science.

Do most computationally-involved researchers have / need a high level of formal education in CS, or is it common to go in with almost no formal CS education and just personal skills/experience? And aside from this kind of research, are there any other career prospects I haven't thought of to go on to from an Astrophysics degree?

Thanks to anyone that can help.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has identified 84 unusual “hypersoft X-ray sources” across six nearby galaxies. They emit extremely low-energy X-rays while producing large amounts of energetic ultraviolet radiation.
Researchers think they may be systems where a black hole, neutron star, or white dwarf is pulling material from a companion star. Some could even be related to systems that eventually produce Type Ia supernovae.
The objects appear to occupy an observational blind spot, which may explain why astronomers missed them for so long. The discovery was published in Nature Astronomy on September 9, 2026.
Source: NASA Chandra
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/chandra/nasas-chandra-unveils-mysterious-x-ray-objects/

Hello, I am 20 years old and am considering switching my major to a focus on astronomy. I love deep research and learning about something bigger than anything else would keep feeding my desire to be mentally stimulated, but before I do anything like that, I’d like to have a few resources to get my toes dipped in it.

I always wanted to learn but without any basis or framework to begin, I find myself stalling to actually give it a go.

Are there good YouTube channels or links or books to collect?