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Astronomy readers see a wonderful Spanish eclipse

$A Hubble Space Telescope image of Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky, appearing as an intensely bright white-blue point of light with four prominent diffraction spikes extending diagonally across the dark blue background. Sirius B, its much fainter white dwarf companion, is visible as a small distinct point of light in the lower left of the frame.$

Observing, Science, Stars

Which naked-eye star is richest in metals?

Science

AI outgrows Earth

A photograph of a total solar eclipse capturing the diamond ring effect, where a single brilliant point of sunlight blazes on the right side of the Moon's silhouette just as totality ends, surrounded by the softly glowing white corona. Several pink solar prominences are visible along the Moon's edge, and a warm golden glow fans out around the right side of the disc against a black sky.

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How to see the August 12 total solar eclipse

Picture of the Day

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A dark, dust-laced cloud glows red and orange against a dense starfield, with pale blue light seeping through gaps near its center and top. Near the bottom, a small, distinct blue-and-white oval nebula glows within the surrounding dust.

The dragons’ lair

Erly Alexandrino da Silva Neto from Vitória, Brazil

NGC 6188 gets its nickname — The Fighting Dragons of Ara — for the ridges of dust that appear at the center of this frame, arched against a blue backdrop of gas and dust lit by the hot young stars of open cluster NGC 6193. Below it lies the Dragon’s Egg Nebula (NGC 6164/5), a bipolar shell of gas ejected by the massive, magnetic binary star HD 148937. The imager combined 8⅔ hours of exposure taken with a 1.2-inch f/4.5 astrograph taken with Hα/OIII and OIII/SII dual-band filters and processed in the Hubble palette.

In the Sky

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A nighttime landscape photograph of Mount Shuksan in Washington State, its glaciated rocky peak and surrounding evergreen trees perfectly reflected in the still waters of Picture Lake below. A Perseid meteor streaks diagonally across the deep blue starry sky above the summit. The scene is bathed in cool blue moonlight, with stars trailing slightly due to the long exposure.

Observing

The Sky Today on Thursday, August 13: Catch streaming shooting stars

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What’s Launching This Week

A Long March 7A failure opens a week of Starlink launches

Today in the History of Astronomy

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An orbital photograph shows the curved, cloud-covered surface of Earth stretching diagonally across the lower half of the frame under a pitch-black sky. A thin, glowing green band outlines Earth's horizon, while a bright streak of light flashes over the atmosphere near the center. In the upper right and lower left corners, metallic spacecraft structures and solar panel arrays extend into the frame, lit brightly against the dark expanse of space.

Today in the History of Astronomy

Aug. 13, 2011: Perseids from space

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Observing

Total solar eclipse 2026: As it happened from Iceland

$A Hubble Space Telescope image of Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky, appearing as an intensely bright white-blue point of light with four prominent diffraction spikes extending diagonally across the dark blue background. Sirius B, its much fainter white dwarf companion, is visible as a small distinct point of light in the lower left of the frame.$

Observing, Science, Stars