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Observing, The Sun

Astronomy readers see a wonderful Spanish eclipse

World’s largest solar telescope reveals the Sun’s hidden texture

An ESA artist's illustration showing the JUICE spacecraft performing a gravitational slingshot maneuver around Earth. The spacecraft, with its distinctive cross-shaped solar panels, is shown close to Earth with a bright green line tracing its curved orbital trajectory looping around the planet. Earth is shown from space with North and South America visible beneath cloud cover.

Space Exploration

How do slingshot maneuvers work to propel spacecraft?

AI outgrows Earth

Picture of the Day

A black circle sits at the center of the frame, ringed by a bright white glow with wispy, feathery rays streaming outward in every direction like a spiky halo. Tiny specks of pink peek out along the edge of the dark circle. The background sky shifts from deep blue on the left to a warm brownish-orange on the right, with a few faint stars scattered here and there.

The corona from Spain

Alessandro Carrozzi, taken near Palencia, Spain

The Sun’s corona glows in all its glory in this high-dynamic range image taken during totality on Aug. 12. Bright prominences are visible at the Sun’s limb, as well as faint outer structures formed by the solar wind streaming out along magnetic field lines. Earthshine is also apparent, dimly lighting the Moon’s night side — an effect only visible via photography.

In the Sky

A telescopic photograph of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a large planetary nebula appearing as a circular ring of glowing teal-green gas surrounded by a diffuse red outer halo, set against a black sky scattered with orange and white foreground stars.

The Sky Today on Wednesday, August 19: The Helix Nebula

What’s Launching This Week

What’s Launching This Week

More Starlink satellites and two big launches for China

Today in the History of Astronomy

An vintage, wide black-and-white map depicts coastal regions from East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula across India and Southeast Asia on light beige paper. A light blue, curved band sweeps horizontally across the center, marking a path across the landmasses and bodies of water. The map is overlaid with French labels, grid lines, and black line drawings of geographical features, lit evenly across the page.

Today in the History of Astronomy

Aug. 18, 1868: Helium is discovered

More News

Astrophotography

Hubble captures a corner of M20

World’s largest solar telescope reveals the Sun’s hidden texture

A sky chart showing the eastern sky on August 15, 2026, 40 minutes before sunrise. Mercury and Jupiter are shown in very close conjunction near the horizon, appearing as a tight pair of bright points just above the dark treeline silhouette in a warm golden-orange pre-dawn sky. Castor and Pollux are labeled in the upper center, and Procyon is visible to the right.

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from August 14 to 21: Mercury and Jupiter meet

Total solar eclipse 2026: As it happened from Iceland

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