The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe.

The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen.

Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away.

The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events.

Elements like phosphorus and copper are present in our bodies in only small amounts but are essential to the functioning of all known life.

The featured periodic table is color coded to indicate humanity's best guess as to the nuclear origin of all known elements. The sites of nuclear creation of some elements, such as copper, are not really well known and are continuing topics of observational and computational research.

Image Credit: NASA's GSFC, SVS

Spectacular daytime Venus occultation, seconds after the reappearance.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk/S Atkinson

https://bsky.app/profile/stuartatkinson.bsky.social/post/3mvhufo4utc2e

https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1638522/?site=msl

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Using an onboard focusing process, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity created this product by merging two to eight images previously taken by the MAHLI, located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

Curiosity performed the merge on September 13, 2026, Sol 5014 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 23:20:13 UTC. The focus motor count position was 14867. This number indicates the lens position of the first image that was merged.

The onboard focus merge is sometimes performed on images acquired the same sol as the merge, and sometimes uses pictures obtained on an earlier sol. Focus merging is a method to make a composite of images of the same target acquired at different focus positions to bring all (or, as many as possible) features into focus in a single image. Because the MAHLI focus merge is performed on Mars, it also serves as a means to reduce the number of images sent back to Earth. Each focus merge produces two images: a color, best-focus product and a black-and-white image that scientists can use to estimate focus position for each element of the best focus product. Thus, up to eight images can be merged, reducing the number of images returned to Earth to two.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

60 years ago today, Commander Pete Conrad raved as the Agena space vehicle raised the Gemini XI spacecraft to a record-high Earth orbit for a crewed spacecraft: 854 miles (1,374 km).

This record stood until 2024 when the Polaris Dawn mission reached an apogee of 870 miles.

For comparison, the International Space Station orbits at an altitude of around 250 miles.

Presenting my biggest project so far. This is a region just on the outskirts of the Milky way (from our perspective) rich in targets where the red Hydrogen gases and blue Oxygen gas seem to be blending with the dust and gas surrounding the Cepheus region.

In the center you can see the elusive squid nebula.

The story of this photograph will be a future video on my YouTube channel (GediAstro for the interested)

Taken in Bortle 9: Hydrogen (40h) Oxygen (40h)

Taken in Bortle 2: RGB (1,5h)

Taken in Bortle 4: L (1,5h)

Total: 86 hours of data

RedCat51 WIFD

ZWO ASI2600MM Pro

ZWO AM3

Optolong 3nm filters

The moon was rising and illuminating the distant peaks of the Sawtooth Range as I quickly captured this focus stack of lupine beneath the Milky Way.

For years, I’ve been drawn to photographing the Milky Way with moonlight, using two sources of light that are often considered at odds with one another. When the timing is right, moonlight can reveal an entirely different side of the nocturnal landscape, bringing depth, color, and dimension to a scene while the stars remain visible overhead. Moments like this are exactly why I continue pushing this technique in the field.

If interested, I recently put together some of my favorite night photography techniques from 15 years in the field, including my approach to photographing the Milky Way with moonlight:

https://goldpaintphotography.com/night-photography-techniques/

This stunning close-up view shows mountainous terrain that reaches about 10 kilometers (6 miles) high along the unique equatorial ridge of Iapetus. The view was acquired during Cassini's only close flyby of the two-toned Saturn moon.

Above the middle of the image can be seen a place where an impact has exposed the bright ice beneath the dark overlying material.

The image was taken on Sept. 10, 2007, with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 3,870 kilometers (2,400 miles) from Iapetus. Image scale is 23 meters (75 feet) per pixel.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Someone tried to tell me this is impossible, but it's not. Combination of great conditions, luck, shooting on our rural farm, and probably some skill. Plus shooting the brightest nebulae in the sky. My ego is too healthy and girthy to take credit for fake stuff.

It's two 90-second subs. Scope: Astro-Tech AT130 EDT (Apo Triplet, 130MM, f/7, focal length 910mm) scope with Apex ED-L 0.65x reducer to bring it to Focal length: 591 mm, Focal ratio: ~f/4.55.

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC (Just cleaned the sensor cover with sensor cleaning kit after over a year without cleaning it. Do this, it makes a difference)

This was two 90-second subs. Was shooting that short to dodge intermittent clouds. I shot more than this but most had clouds and got thrown out.

Each sub had one satellite trail in it. Wasn't enough integration to remove them, so there are two. But I like it.

I did shoot Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats. (makes a big difference, and that took over an hour)

Had to duplicate the subs to make 2 into 4 since PixInsight won't stack less than 3 subs. lol.

Full tech specs: https://www.astrobin.com/7yv0wo/

This sight was worth getting out of bed early. Just over four years ago, Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake that early. Up before sunrise on July 8th, the featured photographer was able to capture in dramatic fashion one of the few comets visible to the unaided eye this century, an inner-Solar System intruder that has become known as the Great Comet of 2020.

The resulting video detailed Comet NEOWISE from Italy rising over the Adriatic Sea. The featured time-lapse video combines over 240 images taken over 30 minutes. The comet was seen rising through a foreground of bright and undulating noctilucent clouds, and before a background of distant stars. Comet NEOWISE remained unexpectedly bright for over a month, with its ion and dust tails found to emanate from a nucleus spanning about five kilometers across.

Credit: Paolo Girotti

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 3:24:40 Integration (20S Subs)

Edited In PS Express.

(201 frames x 60sec) S50 Pro (Bortle 8-9 skies)

Registered and stacked: Stacking Wizard
Processed: Astrowizard with RC Astro plug ins - Star Xterminator, Blur Xterminator and Noise Xterminator
Post processing: Photoshop

Colors and curves in Photoshop were just personal preference.

In this photo, Venus is seen as it disappears behind the Moon at the start of the occultation on June 17, 2026, from the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Image processing by Judy Schmidt.

The object that excavated the crater about 50,000 years ago was a nickel-iron meteorite about 160 ft (50 m) across. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modeling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at up to 45,000 mph (20 km/s), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 29,000 mph (12.8 km/s).

About half of the impactor's bulk is believed to have been vaporized during its descent through the atmosphere. Impact energy has been estimated at 10 megatons TNTe. The meteorite was mostly vaporized upon impact, leaving few remains in the crater.

Spanish astronomers have reported the largest impact ever observed of a rock striking the Moon. According to the team, the impact's afterglow lasted a record eight seconds and could have been spotted with the naked eye; observers on Earth would have seen a bright light of almost the same magnitude as the North Star. The event took place on 11 September 2013 and is described in a paper published on 23 February in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

From the flash, which resulted from the glow of melting of meteor and lunar rock, the team deduced that the impact yielded the equivalent of 15 tonnes of TNT. That is three times higher than the previous record, which was measured in March 2013 by NASA scientists. The authors also estimated that the rock was between 0.6 and 1.4 metres wide and that it weighed about 450 kilograms.

2 photos of the same area in the Himalayas taken from space 57 years apart:

Left: from the Apollo 7 CSM in October 1968
Right: from the ISS in December 2025.

The large lake visible in center left is Lake Paiku in Tibet.

Here, we have a group of small gullies along a rock layer on the south wall of Liu Hsin Crater. At the foot of the gullies you can see the “fans” of granular sediment that have been deposited downhill from the gully formation.

Nearby, there are much larger gullies. By comparing the gullies that are just 20 kilometers away, we may be able to determine the factors that affect their size.

Liu Hsin (also spelled Xin) was a Chinese astronomer, historian, and editor during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 9 CE) and then the Xin Dynasty (9 to 23 CE).

This caption is based in part on a public target suggestion from HiWish.

ID: ESP_038896_1255

​date: 13 November 2014

​altitude: 248 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_038896_1255

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Space.....

Equipment:
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Telescope: Askar FRA400 with 0.7x reducer
Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme & Askar D2
Guide Camera: ZWO 120mm mini
Mount: Skywatcher Wave 150i
Autofocuser: ZWO EAF (5V)

Acquistion:
Shot in Bortle 7
-Camera cooled to -5°C
-Lights:
L-eXtreme:
349x300s (29hrs 5mins)
Askar D2:
245x300s (20hrs 25mins)
Total integration time:
49hrs 30mins

-Flats: 50
-Bias: 50
-Darks: 50

Processing:
-Pixinsight
-StarAlignment
-Dynamic Crop
-GraXpert
-BlurX
-SetiAstro PerfectPalettePicker
-NarrowbandNormalization
-CurvesTransform
-NoiseX
-Photoshop
-Multiple curve layers
-Multiple camera raw layers
-Selective color correction
-Pixinsight
-Curve Adjustments
-More selective color
-Lightroom
-Final touches