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What's happening in the sky above Stonehenge? A meteor shower: specifically, the Perseid meteor shower. A few nights ago, after the sky darkened, many images of meteors from this year's Perseids were captured separately and merged into a single frame. Although the meteors all traveled on straight paths, these paths appear slightly curved by the wide-angle lens of the capturing camera. The meteor streaks can all be traced back to a single point on the sky called the radiant, here just off the top of the frame in the constellation of Perseus. The same camera took a deep image of the background sky that brought up the central band of our Milky Way galaxy running nearly vertical through the image center. The featured image was taken from Wiltshire, England, being careful to include, at the bottom, the famous astronomical monument of Stonehenge. Although the Perseids peaked last night, some Perseid meteors should still be visible for a few more nights. Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury

What's happening above Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site, Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat surroundings. Composed of sandstone, Uluru has slowly formed over the past 300 million years as softer rock eroded away. The Uluru region has been a home to humans for over 22,000 years. Recorded last month, the starry sky above Uluru includes the central band of our Milky Way galaxy, complete with complex dark filaments of dust, bright red emission nebulas, and billions of stars. Image Credit & Copyright: Max Inwood

A visitor to the inner solar system every 70 years or so Comet 13P/Olbers reached its most recent perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on June 30 2024. Now on a return voyage to the distant Oort cloud the Halley-type comet is recorded here sweeping through northern summer night skies over historic Kunetice Castle, Czech Republic. Along with a broad dust tail, and brighter coma, this comet's long ion tail buffeted by storms and winds from the Sun, is revealed in the composite of tracked exposures for comet and sky, and fixed exposures for foreground landscape recorded on July 28. The comet is about 16 light-minutes beyond the castle and seen against faint background stars below the northern constellation Ursa Major. The hilltop castle dates to the 15th century, while Heinrich Olbers discovered the comet in 1815. Captured here low in northwestern skies just after sunset Comet Olbers, for now, offers skywatchers on planet Earth rewarding telescopic and binocular views. Comet 13P/Olbers next perihelion passage will be in 2094. Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava

This well-composed composite panoramic view looks due south from Banks Peninsula near Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island. The base of a tower-like rocky sea stack is awash in the foreground, with stars of the Southern Cross at the top of the frame and planet Earth's south celestial pole near center. Still, captured on May 11, vibrant aurora australis dominate the starry southern sea and skyscape. The shimmering southern lights were part of extensive auroral displays that entertained skywatchers in northern and southern hemispheres around planet Earth, caused by intense geomagnetic storms. The extreme spaceweather was triggered by the impact of coronal mass ejections launched from powerful solar active region AR 3664. Image Credit & Copyright: Kavan Chay

A familiar sight from Georgia, USA, the Moon sets near the western horizon in this rural night skyscape. Captured on May 10 before local midnight, the image overexposes the Moon's bright waxing crescent at left in the frame. A long irrigation rig stretches across farmland about 15 miles north of the city of Bainbridge. Shimmering curtains of aurora shine across the starry sky, definitely an unfamiliar sight for southern Georgia nights. Last weekend, extreme geomagnetic storms triggered by the recent intense activity from solar active region AR 3664 brought epic displays of aurora, usually seen closer to the poles, to southern Georgia and even lower latitudes on planet Earth. As solar activity ramps up, more storms are possible. Image Credit & Copyright: Wright Dobbs

NASA's Europa Clipper is now headed toward an ocean world beyond Earth. The large spacecraft is tucked into the payload fairing atop the Falcon Heavy rocket in this photo, taken at Kennedy Space Center the day before the mission's successful October 14 launch. Europa Clipper's interplanetary voyage will first take it to Mars, then back to Earth, and then on to Jupiter on gravity assist trajectories that will allow it to enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Once orbiting Jupiter, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times, exploring a Jovian moon with a global subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. Posing in the background next to the floodlit rocket is Comet Tsuchinsan-ATLAS, about a day after the comet's closest approach to Earth. A current darling of evening skies, the naked-eye comet is a visitor from the distant Oort cloud. Image Credit & Copyright: Ben Cooper (Launch Photography)

On October 14 it was hard to capture a full view of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Taken after the comet's closest approach to our fair planet, this evening skyview almost does though. With two telephoto frames combined, the image stretches about 26 degrees across the sky from top to bottom, looking west from Gates Pass, Tucson, Arizona. Comet watchers that night could even identify globular star cluster M5 and the faint apparition of periodic comet 13P Olbers near the long the path of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS's whitish dust tail above the bright comet's coma. Due to perspective as the Earth is crossing the comet's orbital plane, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS also has a pronounced antitail. The antitail is composed of dust previously released and fanning out away from the Sun along the comet's orbit, visible as a needle-like extension below the bright coma toward the rugged western horizon. Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block

The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was captured near peak impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The globular star cluster M5 can be seen on the right, far in the distance. As it approached, it was unclear if this crumbling iceberg would disintegrate completely as it warmed in the bright sunlight. In reality, the comet survived to become brighter than any star in the night (magnitude -4.9), but unfortunately was then so nearly in front of the Sun that it was hard for many casual observers to locate. Whether Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas becomes known as the Great Comet of 2024 now depends, in part, on how impressive incoming comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) becomes over the next two weeks. Credit & Copyright: Brian Fulda

What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars. Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller (NASA's GSFC)

Messier 4 can be found west of bright red-giant star Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius. M4 itself is only just visible from dark sky locations, even though the globular cluster of 100,000 stars or so is a mere 5,500 light-years away. Still, its proximity to prying telescopic eyes makes it a prime target for astronomical explorations. Recent studies have included Hubble observations of M4's pulsating cepheid variable stars, cooling white dwarf stars, and ancient, pulsar orbiting exoplanet PSR B1620-26 b. This sharp image was captured with a small telescope on planet Earth. At M4's estimated distance it spans about 50 light-years across the core of the globular star cluster. Image Credit & Copyright: Steve Crouch

Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. The detailed telescopic view features the bright swept-back ridges and pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas that abound in the region. But the dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This rendition spans a 1 degree wide field of view though, about the angular size of 2 full moons. Image Credit: Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgio Ferrari

What if a rocket could return to its launch tower -- and be caught? This happened for the first time 10 days ago, after a SpaceX Starship rocket blasted off from its pad in Boca Chica, Texas, USA. Starship then split, as planned, with its upper stage landing in the Pacific Ocean. The big difference was the lower stage, Super Heavy Booster 12, was caught by its launch tower about 7 minutes later. Catching a rocket for reuse is a new and innovative way to help reduce the cost of rocket flight by making rockets more easily reusable. Starship rockets may be used by NASA in the future to send spacecraft to Earth orbit, the Moon, and even other planets.

The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found at the center of this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 206 spans about 4,000 light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image Credit & Copyright: Roberto Marinoni

It is the largest satellite galaxy of our home Milky Way Galaxy. If you live in the south, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is quite noticeable, spanning about 10 degrees across the night sky, which is 20 times larger than the full moon towards the southern constellation of the dolphinfish (Dorado). Being only about 160,000 light years away, many details of the LMC's structure can be seen, such as its central bar and its single spiral arm. The LMC harbors numerous stellar nurseries where new stars are being born, which appear in pink in the featured image. It is home to the Tarantula Nebula, the currently most active star forming region in the entire Local Group, a small collection of nearby galaxies dominated by the massive Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. Studies of the LMC and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) by Henrietta Swan Leavitt led to the discovery of the period-luminosity relationship of Cepheid variable stars that are used to measure distances across the nearby universe. Image Credit & Copyright: Ireneusz Nowak; Text: Natalia Lewandowska (SUNY Oswego)

What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The featured striking view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here above and right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a mass 10 to 20 times that of the Sun, has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. Credit & Copyright: Chad Leader

Is this really the famous Pleiades star cluster? Known for its iconic blue stars, the Pleiades is shown here in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars. Here, three infrared colors have been mapped into visual colors (R=24, G=12, B=4.6 microns). The base images were taken by NASA's orbiting Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. Cataloged as M45 and nicknamed the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades star cluster is by chance situated in a passing dust cloud. The light and winds from the massive Pleiades stars preferentially repel smaller dust particles, causing the dust to become stratified into filaments, as seen. The featured image spans about 20 light years at the distance of the Pleiades, which lies about 450 light years distant toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing & Copyright : Francesco Antonucci

What's happening in the sky above Stonehenge? A meteor shower: specifically, the Perseid meteor shower. A few nights ago, after the sky darkened, many images of meteors from this year's Perseids were captured separately and merged into a single frame. Although the meteors all traveled on straight paths, these paths appear slightly curved by the wide-angle lens of the capturing camera. The meteor streaks can all be traced back to a single point on the sky called the radiant, here just off the top of the frame in the constellation of Perseus. The same camera took a deep image of the background sky that brought up the central band of our Milky Way galaxy running nearly vertical through the image center. The featured image was taken from Wiltshire, England, being careful to include, at the bottom, the famous astronomical monument of Stonehenge. Although the Perseids peaked last night, some Perseid meteors should still be visible for a few more nights. Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury

What's happening above Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site, Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat surroundings. Composed of sandstone, Uluru has slowly formed over the past 300 million years as softer rock eroded away. The Uluru region has been a home to humans for over 22,000 years. Recorded last month, the starry sky above Uluru includes the central band of our Milky Way galaxy, complete with complex dark filaments of dust, bright red emission nebulas, and billions of stars. Image Credit & Copyright: Max Inwood

A visitor to the inner solar system every 70 years or so Comet 13P/Olbers reached its most recent perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on June 30 2024. Now on a return voyage to the distant Oort cloud the Halley-type comet is recorded here sweeping through northern summer night skies over historic Kunetice Castle, Czech Republic. Along with a broad dust tail, and brighter coma, this comet's long ion tail buffeted by storms and winds from the Sun, is revealed in the composite of tracked exposures for comet and sky, and fixed exposures for foreground landscape recorded on July 28. The comet is about 16 light-minutes beyond the castle and seen against faint background stars below the northern constellation Ursa Major. The hilltop castle dates to the 15th century, while Heinrich Olbers discovered the comet in 1815. Captured here low in northwestern skies just after sunset Comet Olbers, for now, offers skywatchers on planet Earth rewarding telescopic and binocular views. Comet 13P/Olbers next perihelion passage will be in 2094. Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava

What if a rocket could return to its launch tower -- and be caught? This happened for the first time 10 days ago, after a SpaceX Starship rocket blasted off from its pad in Boca Chica, Texas, USA. Starship then split, as planned, with its upper stage landing in the Pacific Ocean. The big difference was the lower stage, Super Heavy Booster 12, was caught by its launch tower about 7 minutes later. Catching a rocket for reuse is a new and innovative way to help reduce the cost of rocket flight by making rockets more easily reusable. Starship rockets may be used by NASA in the future to send spacecraft to Earth orbit, the Moon, and even other planets.

This well-composed composite panoramic view looks due south from Banks Peninsula near Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island. The base of a tower-like rocky sea stack is awash in the foreground, with stars of the Southern Cross at the top of the frame and planet Earth's south celestial pole near center. Still, captured on May 11, vibrant aurora australis dominate the starry southern sea and skyscape. The shimmering southern lights were part of extensive auroral displays that entertained skywatchers in northern and southern hemispheres around planet Earth, caused by intense geomagnetic storms. The extreme spaceweather was triggered by the impact of coronal mass ejections launched from powerful solar active region AR 3664. Image Credit & Copyright: Kavan Chay

A familiar sight from Georgia, USA, the Moon sets near the western horizon in this rural night skyscape. Captured on May 10 before local midnight, the image overexposes the Moon's bright waxing crescent at left in the frame. A long irrigation rig stretches across farmland about 15 miles north of the city of Bainbridge. Shimmering curtains of aurora shine across the starry sky, definitely an unfamiliar sight for southern Georgia nights. Last weekend, extreme geomagnetic storms triggered by the recent intense activity from solar active region AR 3664 brought epic displays of aurora, usually seen closer to the poles, to southern Georgia and even lower latitudes on planet Earth. As solar activity ramps up, more storms are possible. Image Credit & Copyright: Wright Dobbs

NASA's Europa Clipper is now headed toward an ocean world beyond Earth. The large spacecraft is tucked into the payload fairing atop the Falcon Heavy rocket in this photo, taken at Kennedy Space Center the day before the mission's successful October 14 launch. Europa Clipper's interplanetary voyage will first take it to Mars, then back to Earth, and then on to Jupiter on gravity assist trajectories that will allow it to enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Once orbiting Jupiter, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times, exploring a Jovian moon with a global subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. Posing in the background next to the floodlit rocket is Comet Tsuchinsan-ATLAS, about a day after the comet's closest approach to Earth. A current darling of evening skies, the naked-eye comet is a visitor from the distant Oort cloud. Image Credit & Copyright: Ben Cooper (Launch Photography)

What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars. Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller (NASA's GSFC)

What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The featured striking view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here above and right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a mass 10 to 20 times that of the Sun, has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. Credit & Copyright: Chad Leader

Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium Space Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer simulation, complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are strewn about the universe like spider webs, while the relatively rare clumps of familiar baryonic matter are colored orange. These simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations. In what is perhaps a scarier turn of events, dark matter -- although quite strange and in an unknown form -- is no longer thought to be the strangest source of gravity in the universe. That honor now falls to dark energy, a more uniform source of repulsive gravity that seems to now dominate the expansion of the entire universe. Illustration Credit & Copyright: Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPAC, SLAC), AMNH

Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. The detailed telescopic view features the bright swept-back ridges and pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas that abound in the region. But the dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This rendition spans a 1 degree wide field of view though, about the angular size of 2 full moons. Image Credit: Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgio Ferrari

As Mars wanders through Earth's night, it passes about 5 degrees south of the Pleiades star cluster in this composite astrophoto. The skyview was constructed from a series of images captured over a run of 16 consecutive clear nights beginning on July 12. Mars' march across the field of view begins at the far right, the planet's ruddy hue showing a nice contrast with the blue Pleiades stars. Moving much faster across the sky against the distant stars, the fourth planet from the Sun easily passes seventh planet Uranus. Red planet Mars and the ice giant world were in close conjunction, about 1/2 degree apart, on July 16. Continuing its rapid eastward trek, Mars has now left the sister stars and outer planet behind though, passing north of red giant star Aldebaran. Mars will come within about 1/3 degree of Jupiter in planet Earth's sky on August 14. Image Credit & Copyright: Tunc Tezel (TWAN)

Messier 4 can be found west of bright red-giant star Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius. M4 itself is only just visible from dark sky locations, even though the globular cluster of 100,000 stars or so is a mere 5,500 light-years away. Still, its proximity to prying telescopic eyes makes it a prime target for astronomical explorations. Recent studies have included Hubble observations of M4's pulsating cepheid variable stars, cooling white dwarf stars, and ancient, pulsar orbiting exoplanet PSR B1620-26 b. This sharp image was captured with a small telescope on planet Earth. At M4's estimated distance it spans about 50 light-years across the core of the globular star cluster. Image Credit & Copyright: Steve Crouch

The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was captured near peak impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The globular star cluster M5 can be seen on the right, far in the distance. As it approached, it was unclear if this crumbling iceberg would disintegrate completely as it warmed in the bright sunlight. In reality, the comet survived to become brighter than any star in the night (magnitude -4.9), but unfortunately was then so nearly in front of the Sun that it was hard for many casual observers to locate. Whether Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas becomes known as the Great Comet of 2024 now depends, in part, on how impressive incoming comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) becomes over the next two weeks. Credit & Copyright: Brian Fulda

Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. Details of how STEVEs work remain a topic of research, but recent evidence holds that their glow results from a fast-moving river of hot ions flowing over a hundred kilometers up in the Earth's atmosphere: the ionosphere. The more expansive dull red glow might be related to the flowing STEVE, but alternatively might be a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc, a more general heat-related glow. The featured picture, taken earlier this month in Côte d'Opale, France, is a wide-angle digital composite made as the STEVE arc formed nearly overhead. Although the apparition lasted only a few minutes, this was long enough for the quick-thinking astrophotographer to get in the picture -- can you find him? Credit & Copyright: Louis LEROUX-GÉRÉ

The stars are destroying the pillars. More specifically, some of the newly formed stars in the image center are emitting light so energetic that is evaporating the gas and dust in the surrounding pillars. Simultaneously, the pillars themselves are still trying to form new stars. The whole setting is the star cluster NGC 602, and this new vista was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in multiple infrared colors. In comparison, a roll-over image shows the same star cluster in visible light, taken previously by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 602 is located near the perimeter of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a small satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy. At the estimated distance of the SMC, the featured picture spans about 200 light-years. A tantalizing assortment of background galaxies are also visible -- mostly around the edges -- that are at least hundreds of millions of light-years beyond. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)