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A large radio antenna dish dominates the left side of the frame, pointing upward against a deep purple night sky dense with stars. A brilliant blue-white star flares brightly in the upper right, surrounded by a soft purple nebular glow. The horizon is dark and flat beneath the antenna.

Alien Life, Uncategorized

The real disclosure day: The protocols for announcing extraterrestrial intelligence

Astrophotography

Astronomy magazine launches 2026 astrophotography contest presented by Celestron

Four astronauts in bright orange Orion spacesuits pose for an official crew portrait against a muted blue-gray background. Two stand at the back and two sit in front; all hold or rest their hands near their white helmets.

Human Spaceflight

Meet the astronauts flying on Artemis 3

A screenshot of the July 2026 issue landing page. The hero image features a bright deep-space scene with a glowing blue core of a nebula, wrapped in thick, textured clouds of amber and brown gas and dust. Sharp white stars fill the outer regions of the frame, with a few brighter stars showing cross-shaped spikes.

How to read the July digital issue of Astronomy magazine

Picture of the Day

A wide, long-exposure view of the night sky shows the Milky Way stretching in a hazy, mottled band across the lower half of the frame, with creamy star clouds broken by dark dust lanes. A single bright meteor streaks diagonally from upper left to lower right as a sharp blue-white line that is brightest near its middle and fades at both ends. The background is filled with countless small stars of varying brightness, along with a few larger bluish stars that glow more strongly near the top and bottom of the image.

A June Epsilon Cygnid

Gaetan Thibault from Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier, Quebec, Canada

A meteor slices across the Summer Triangle — glowing hot blue as it reaches peak brightness in the center of its trail. This wide-field view combines 21 minutes of total exposure taken with a Canon astrophography DSLR and 20mm lens at f/3.2 (one meteor frame and 20 additional 60-second subexposures with a fog filter). The imager traced the meteor to the June Epsilon Cygnids, a weak meteor shower with a relatively high entry velocity.

In the Sky

A simulated twilight sky looking west on June 15, 2026, 30 minutes after sunset. Venus shines brilliantly in the upper left, with Jupiter below it and Mercury visible in the center of the frame. A thin crescent Moon sits low on the horizon to the lower right, and the twin stars Pollux and Castor are visible in the upper right against the warm orange glow of the sunset sky.

The Sky Today on Monday, June 15: Mercury at greatest eastern elongation

What’s Launching This Week

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rises from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, surrounded by a billowing cloud of white exhaust and a bright orange flame at the base. The rocket climbs vertically against a hazy blue-gray sky, flanked by four lightning rod towers. Launch infrastructure, including a yellow crane arm and concrete support structures, is visible at the bottom of the frame.

What’s Launching This Week

SpaceX and Rocket Lab set for liftoff this week

Today in the History of Astronomy

A color photograph captures a chimpanzee wearing a white vest and diaper while sitting upright inside a silver, oval-shaped container. Three men—two in blue-green medical scrubs and one in a white laboratory coat—stand closely around the container, looking down at the animal inside a metallic, dimly lit room. The chimpanzee's feet are secured at the bottom of the seat with brown leather laces and bright red tape.

Human Spaceflight, Today in the History of Astronomy

June 14, 1949: The first mammal in space

More News

A daytime photograph of a crescent Moon visible against a clear blue sky. A bright point of light — a planet being occulted — is caught just above the Moon's illuminated limb moments before disappearing behind it, with the ghostly outline of the Moon's full disk faintly visible through earthshine.

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from June 12 to 19: A daytime occultation of Venus

A dense web of thin blue-purple filaments spans the entire frame, threading through deep red and maroon voids to converge on a blazing central cluster of orange, yellow, and white gas. Scattered across the field, smaller orange and gold clumps glow at the intersections of the filaments. The overall effect resembles a three-dimensional cosmic spiderweb

Cosmology, Features

Untangling the cosmic web

An artist's illustration of the MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars, with the spacecraft positioned in the upper left and the rust-colored Martian surface filling the right side of the frame. The spacecraft features a large circular dish, two pairs of extended solar panels, and a long boom extending toward the planet. A star-scattered deep-space background fills the upper left corner.

NASA fails to reestablish contact, decommissions MAVEN

Telescopes and Equipment

Kickstart summer with these new astronomy products

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