Nearly 49 years after it launched into space aboard a Titan III rocket, NASA's Voyager 2 space probe received yet another software update, this time reaching the speeding probe from nearly 13.3 billion miles (almost 21.4 billion kilometers) away.
Scientists have used a pair of NSF NOIRLab telescopes for 13 years to create the new DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys map. It is the largest 2D map ever of the Universe and covers three-quarters of the sky. The catalog has nearly four billion objects.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured beautiful new photos of the Lion Nebula, NGC 2392, demonstrating its imaging prowess compared to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope.
The first photos of the impact crater left on the Moon after an out-of-control SpaceX spacecraft crashed into its surface last week have emerged.
The newest NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month delivers a spectacularly colorful look at a cosmic "Treasure Chest," a neat feature of the nearby Carina Nebula, located just 7,500 light-years away.
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z instrument to photograph Earth as it passed behind the Martian moon, Phobos.
Astronaut Don Pettit takes photos so good that people have a hard time believing they are real. Case in point, a stunning image of the Milky Way Galaxy as the Earth zooms below Pettit's International Space Station vantage point.
A NASA satellite has captured a striking image of a fractured Antarctic landscape that appears to resemble a hummingbird.
In March, the Einstein Probe, a satellite made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in partnership with the European Space Agency, detected a very brief flash of "soft X-rays" emitted by a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. Within an hour, ground-based telescopes, including several at National Science Foundation (NSF) NOIRLab facilities, began investigating the region, getting a front-row seat to bombastic and very special star death.
Astronaut Anil Menon has only been in space for less than one month, but he has already captured a mind-boggling photo showing a super typhoon brooding above the Pacific Ocean.
Trundling around on an alien planet some 140 million miles from Earth is the solar system's most intrepid landscape photographer, snapping awe-inspiring shots as it scrambles up a mountain that's inside a crater.
A new image from the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 3200-megapixel LSST camera features hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies across its many pixels, delivering a spectacular view of one of the most observed patches of the Universe.
While NASA's Curiosity Mars rover routinely finds interesting-looking rocks, including ones that looked like dragon scales just a few months ago, its latest discovery in "Valle Grande" shows honeycomb-like rocks at a never-before-seen scale.
While the news flew under my radar a bit, Vaonis recently unveiled its next generation of smart telescopes for astrophotographers: the Vespera 3 and the Vespera Pro 2. Each smart telescope promises exciting upgrades for astronomy enthusiasts and improved imaging capabilities.
An astronomer claims that existing proposals for 1.7 million satellites, including incredibly bright ones, will have "devastating consequences" for humanity's view of the Universe.
Photographer AJ Smadi has captured the second-ever photograph of the International Space Station (ISS) and Venus in the same frame -- he also captured the first one.
This week marked the 50th anniversary of the NASA Viking 1 spacecraft landing safely on Mars, spearheading a new era of space exploration. Just minutes after Viking 1 landed on the Red Planet, it captured a photo, the first ever taken on the surface of Mars and the first time any human had ever seen a photo from another planet.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered a giant planet, hiding in plain sight just outside the solar system.
Throughout May, NASA's Psyche spacecraft approached and flew away from Mars, coming within just 2,864 miles (4,609 kilometers) of the Red Planet during its closest approach. A brand-new timelapse video released by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) features thousands of images that Psyche captured during its mission.
Picture this: you're photographing in the middle of the night, it's dark, and you desperately need light. So, you whip out your phone, open an app, pay some money, and boom, night becomes day thanks to a satellite in the sky that is now reflecting sunlight to your location like a bright full Moon.
When Joël Lapointe was planning an epic camping trip through the Côte-Nord region of Quebec on Google Maps, an area gave him pause for thought: it looked like a giant meteor crater.
The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) pointed its 570-megapixel CCD image sensor, housed inside the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, at the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud, one of the nearest star-forming regions to Earth.
NASA photographer Jim Ross recently flew over Washington, D.C. while seated in an F-18 aircraft and took photos of the capital on America's 250th birthday.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is celebrating its fourth birthday today, and like PetaPixel did two years ago, it's the perfect opportunity to look at the 25 best space photos Webb has captured thus far.
I have loved LEGO since I was a child, just coming to grips with fine motor control. I have loved space nearly as long. So imagine my delight when LEGO unveiled a Hubble Space Telescope set today.
To celebrate the James Webb Space Telescope's fourth anniversary of scientific operations, NASA, ESA, and CSA have unveiled new photos of a familiar galaxy that illustrate just how special Webb's imaging systems are. The new images showcase Webb's exceptional ability to peer through cosmic dust and unravel the mysteries of the Universe.
The Japanese space agency has captured a remarkable image of a double-headed asteroid some 62 million miles (100 million kilometers) from Earth.
While NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers continue to do incredible work on Mars, NASA is in advanced testing of its next rover, ERNEST.
A filmmaker has created a beautiful timelapse from photos taken by astronauts onboard the International Space Station.
In celebration of the United States of America's 250th birthday, NASA has unveiled four new images from its Chandra X-ray Observatory that show the wonders of the Universe in resplendent red, white, and blue.
Researchers at Tokyo City University just published a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters based on photos the Artemis II astronauts captured in space during their lunar flyby using the Nikon Z9. The researchers analyzed the solar corona images captured by the Artemis II astronauts, yielding new insights into the Sun's coronal structure and demonstrating the value of taking cameras into space.
ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot (@soph_astro) was recently treated to incredible, dazzling aurora displays in space while aboard the International Space Station (ISS). While Adenot and the ESA shared photos last month, Adenot just shared an incredible video of auroras from space on social media today.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the shortlist for its annual ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. This year's edition received nearly 4,000 entries from dedicated amateur and professional photographers from 66 different countries.
The monumental Legacy Survey of Space and Time at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially begun, launching a 10-year mission that marks a new era in astronomy.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is still going strong and delivering unbelievably beautiful deep-space images. The latest Hubble image shows globular cluster NGC 6723, sometimes called the Chandelier Cluster. This name is well-earned, as it is an extremely dense stellar cluster, each star looking a little light on a giant cosmic chandelier.
A Game Boy enthusiast recently took his classic 1998 console to Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles and attached it to an enormous 60-inch telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently spent 65 hours, or nearly three days, observing the famous spiral galaxy, Messier 82 (M82), also known as the Cigar galaxy. The resulting 223-megapixel image contains 16.5 million stars and brand-new details never seen before.
Humans on Earth may have just run a marathon in under two hours for the first time, but it has taken the Mars Perseverance Rover 1,890 Martian sols -- or five years and four months in Earth time -- to travel 26.2 miles on the Red Planet.
For just over a single day, the European Space Agency's (ESA) cutting-edge Euclid Space Telescope pointed its lens toward the relatively close and extremely bright inner region of the Milky Way galaxy, known as the galactic bulge. The space telescope made good use of its time, capturing the largest and most detailed photo ever of the Milky Way's galactic center.
Many photographers love photographing the Milky Way, but few enjoy all the hassle that comes with it. Unpredictable seeing conditions, bad timing, and a pesky Moon are common friction points that prevent astrophotographers, especially novices, from succeeding. A new app, Milky Way Tonight for iOS and Android, is designed to streamline the entire process and take the guesswork out of Milky Way photography.
Chengdu Qiongjie Yingchuang Culture and Entertainment is a Chinese immersive imaging company. It recently captured a rocket launch on the Gobi Desert using Blackmagic Design's extremely impressive Ursa Cine Immersive camera, capable of capturing greater than 8K resolution video across two lenses, one for each eye in an Apple Vision Pro headset.
NOIRLab and the National Science Foundation's Gemini North telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai'i, captured a mesmerizing photo of NGC 1514, nicknamed the Crystal Ball Nebula. It looks a lot different than the photo the James Webb Space Telescope captured last year, and frankly, unlike nearly any other space photo.
Researchers in Australia have created the largest map of cosmic magnetic fields ever assembled, revealing the invisible forces that shape galaxies across the Universe.
NASA has announced the death of one of its Mars imaging probes, MAVEN, after losing contact with the spacecraft at the end of last year.
A photographer captured shockwaves rippling through the air and the smoke as the gigantic SpaceX Starship blasted off during a test run last week.
The ArcBlue C42 is the world's first smart full-frame astrophotography system. It is coming soon to Kickstarter and features specs and features sure to excite enthusiastic astrophotographers.
A green fireball that came from space was captured on camera, briefly illuminating an erupting volcano in the Philippines -- making for spectacular footage.
Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy had to wait for six days and 1.7 million photos before nailing his latest masterpiece: a Boeing 737 transiting the Sun.
A photography student sent a 5x4 color negative into space on April 19 and exposed it to cosmic radiation, capturing a beautiful, abstract portrait of space unlike anything done before.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has released a new mosaic that offers its most complete view of the night sky yet. Captured over eight years, the all-sky mosaic includes 679 confirmed, newly discovered exoplanets and nearly 5,200 candidate exoplanets.
