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Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from September 11 to 18: Catch the zodiacal light

A promotional graphic on a dark blue starfield background. On the left in gold and white text: "Starmus VIII, The Search for Truth," "First Time in Spain, Artemis II Astronauts," the names Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen, and "October 2026, Tenerife, Canary Islands." On the right, three astronauts in orange spacesuits with helmets removed stand close together, smiling toward the camera, with a NASA patch and name tag visible on the center suit. A row of small sponsor and institutional logos runs along the bottom.

Science

Artemis 2 crew lands at Starmus VII — 15 years after Armstrong, Aldrin, and Leonov launched its lengacy

An artist's illustration of 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object detected passing through the solar system, depicted as a long, thin, reddish-brown elongated rock tumbling through space near a bright glowing sun. A diffuse dust or gas trail streams behind it, and the starry black background of deep space surrounds the scene.

Exoplanets

September 2026: What’s in the sky this month? Neptune reaches opposition with Saturn nearby, and Venus shines after sunset

Human Spaceflight

Cast your vote to name Virgin Galactic’s next spaceplane

A panoramic twilight photograph taken along the rocky shore of the Salish Sea, looking west across calm water that mirrors the vivid sunset colors. Venus and Spica are visible as two close points of light in the deep blue sky above the center of the scene. The horizon glows in brilliant bands of orange and yellow, fading upward through purple to deep blue, with silhouetted clouds stretched across the middle sky. A silhouetted house is visible on the left, dark rocky outcroppings frame the foreground, and a distant mountain range is outlined against the orange glow on the right.

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from August 28 to September 4: Venus and Spica meet

Science

STARMUS Festival cofounders Sir Brian May and Garik Israelian presented Sir Ridley Scott with the 2026 Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication

A detailed telescopic photograph of a total lunar eclipse, showing the Moon glowing in rich shades of deep red, orange, and brown — a blood moon. The Moon's surface features are clearly visible, including craters, ray systems, and dark maria regions. A sliver of brighter white-gray light is visible along the upper edge, indicating the Moon is partially outside Earth's umbral shadow.

Observing, The Moon, Upcoming Events

How to see Thursday’s lunar eclipse

Science

JWST shows astronomers how to make a comet

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This artist’s conception illustrates one of the most primitive supermassive black holes known (central black dot) at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have uncovered two of these early objects, dating back to about 13 billion years ago. The monstrous black holes are among the most distant known, and appear to be in the very earliest stages of formation, earlier than any observed so far. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Science

Explore the science of space, from the astrophysics of stars to the ultimate fate of the universe.

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Observing

Learn about upcoming observing events such as eclipses, meteor showers, comets, conjunctions, and more.

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This 2016 Curiosity rover selfie shows the vehicle at the “Okoruso” drilling site on Mount Sharp’s Naukluft Plateau. The Martian scene is a mosaic of images taken with the arm-mounted Mars Hands Lens Imager (MAHLI). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Space Exploration

Human and robotic missions are helping humanity explore our solar system and beyond.

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September 2026

How Artemis 2 brought back Moon joy
Why we need in-orbit refueling to return to the Moon
Artemis’ technology and medicine innovations
How massive star clusters shape their galaxies

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Sky This Week

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Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from September 11 to 18: Catch the zodiacal light

Sky This Month

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Observing

September 2026: What’s in the sky this month? Neptune reaches opposition with Saturn nearby, and Venus shines after sunset

Picture of the Day

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A rounded, richly textured cloud of orange and gold gas fills the left side of the frame, its lower edge tapering to a bright point like a torch flame. Blue-tinted dust and haze spread across the right side, with faint dark filaments threading through a dense star field on a black background.

The Hidden Nebula’s glowing edge

Patrick Cosgrove from Honeoye Falls, New York

Sharpless 2–140 is sometimes called the Hidden Nebula for the way it appears to be partially swallowed by the neighboring dark cloud LDN 1204, adjacent to the bright shock front of ionized gas. It glows about 3,000 light-years away in Cepheus. The imager took just over 12 hours of exposure with a 5.2-inch f/5.6 refractor in the Hubble palette, plus RGB data for the stars.