A new era dawns for astronomy | Astronomy Magazine

$A large, glowing orange-tan disk — the Sun — fills most of the frame against a black sky. A thin, dark, needle-like silhouette crosses near its left edge, trailing a bright, feathery plume that distorts and refracts the image of the disk, extending below it. A faint dark smudge of clouds sits near the center of the disk, as well as small dark specks of sunspots.s$

Pascal Fouquet, taken from Titusville, Florida

The Falcon Heavy booster carrying NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aloft transits a rising Sun just after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. The photographer captured the moment with a Nikon DSLR and zoom lens at 500mm equipped with a 16.6-stop neutral-density solar filter. The exposure was 1/1250-seconds at f/8 and ISO 320.