June brought us not only the solstice but also the first look at just what the NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory will be able to image over the next ten years. Martian orbiters continue to send home incredible images. Plus, astrophotographers are still out there working with their own smaller telescopes, and by combining the work of many different instruments both on the ground and in space, NASA released a gorgeous composite photo of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy.
Credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Monday, 23 June 2025
In a gorgeous sneak peek of what will come, the Vera Rubin Observatory shared several pictures ahead of their live reveal today at 8 am Pacific (1500 UTC). The first image revealed the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae in stunning detail, a cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes.
Credit: Paul Naquet
Tuesday, 24 June 2025
In the vastness of space, 15,000 light-years away, a cosmic warrior’s crown, the Thor’s Helmet Nebula (NGC 2359), floats. This glowing cloud of gas and dust, shaped like the Norse god’s battle helmet, is a bubble blown by powerful winds from a giant star nearing the end of its life. Bright blues and glowing edges give it a fierce, mystical look, a celestial storm frozen in time. A reminder that even stars wear armor in the universe’s eternal dance.
(The telescope used is an ASA 1000, and the camera is an FLI PL 16803 with Astrodon SHO 3mm filters. The images were taken under Bortle 1 skies, and processing was done in the HSO palette using Pixinsight.)
Credit: NASA
Wednesday, 25 June 2025
This full-disk image from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite was captured at 7:45 a.m. EDT (11:45 UTC) and shows the Americas on June 21, 2012, the start of astronomical summer – in the Northern Hemisphere – that year.
June 20 was the first day of summer in 2025 and the longest day of the year. In the Southern Hemisphere, it was the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter.
Earth orbits at an angle, so the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun for half of the year — this is summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The other half of the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, creating winter in the north and summer in the south. Solstices happen twice yearly, at the points in Earth’s orbit where this tilt is most pronounced.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
Thursday, 26 June 2025
This spectacular view into a crater near Mars's south pole illustrates the layered terrain that typifies this region. The crater's walls are striped with alternating layers of water ice and fine sediments. These ‘polar layered deposits’ are also exposed in exquisite detail in the rusty red ridge that passes through the scene.
The High-Resolution Stereo Imaging camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express captured this frosty scene in the Ultimi Scopuli region near the south pole of Mars on 19 May 2022. At this time, it was spring in the southern hemisphere, and ice was starting to retreat. Dark dunes began to peak through the frost, and elevated terrain appeared ice-free.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/UMass/Z. Li & Q.D. Wang, ESA/XMM-Newton; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE, Spitzer, NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Gordon (U. Az), ESA/Herschel, ESA/Planck, NASA/IRAS, NASA/COBE; Radio: NSF/GBT/WSRT/IRAM/C. Clark (STScI); Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GALEX; Optical: Andromeda, Unexpected © Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, Yann Sainty & J. Sahner, T. Kottary. Composite image processing: L. Frattare, K. Arcand, J.Major
Friday, 27 June 2025
The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), is a glittering beacon in this image released on June 25, 2025, in tribute to the groundbreaking legacy of astronomer Dr. Vera Rubin, whose observations transformed our understanding of the universe. In the 1960s, Rubin and her colleagues studied M31 and determined that some unseen matter in the galaxy was affecting how the galaxy and its spiral arms rotated. This unknown material was named “dark matter.”
M31 is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way at a distance of about 2.5 million light-years. Astronomers use Andromeda to understand the structure and evolution of our own spiral, which is much harder to do since Earth is embedded inside the Milky Way.
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