Image Credit: NASA ; ESA , JPL , Cassini Imaging Team , SSI ; Color Composite: Gordan Ugarkovic

A view of the Solar System showing the orbital pathway of newly discovered dwarf planet candidate 2026 ED138 (ED138). ED138 was discovered in observational data from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory spanning 4 March–11 July 2026. The candidate is shown here at its location on 8 May 2026.

ED138 was found by Rubin Operations team member and in-Kind contributor Matthew Holman (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), who contributes to improving Rubin's algorithms that search for distant moving objects in our Solar System. Its distance from the Sun places it beyond the orbit of Pluto, and initial analysis indicates that it may be among the largest and brightest bodies scientists have discovered in this region of the Solar System.

Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/R. Proctor Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) Orbit data provided by the IAU Minor Planet Center (MPCorb catalog), funded by NASA PDCO and the Tamkin Foundation. Star map: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Gaia DR2: ESA/Gaia/DPAC.

Jupiter is one of the least lonely planets in the Solar System, at least when it comes to natural satellites. 115 moons have been discovered orbiting Jupiter so far! (Saturn has the most with 293, but who’s counting.)

Ganymede and Io, two of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, met in the sky on October 20th, 2026. Today’s video captures the meeting, with Ganymede briefly blocking Io from view. This event, when an astronomical object passes in front of another and either completely or partially blocks it, is called a mutual occultation.

The mutual occultations of Galilean moons are rare to witness because they require Earth’s edge-on view of their orbits. This occurs once every 6 years when Jupiter reaches its equinox and appears less “tilted”. Ganymede is also casting its shadow on Jupiter’s right side. Any fictional Jovian species within the shadow would experience a solar eclipse!

Credit: Michael Wong

Took a bracket of bursts of today's moon against the Pleiades (i missed the actual occultation due to cloud cover 🙁), as it moved away from them.

Total of ~20s integration time for stars and like 2 for moon, stars deconvolved to be round, and the stars near the moon are kinda lost to the glare I couldn't bring them out.

Taken over multiple evenings using my Astromodified Canon 700d and Sky Watcher 72 ED DS Pro on an EQ Mount.

Credit 📸 Khisamutdinov Maksim

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👉 Description from Khisamutdinov Maksim

With clear skies scarce and the solar processing pipeline largely automated, I decided to turn my attention to refining MolotilkaFFT for ISS animation processing.

This capture was taken through atmospheric haze with mediocre seeing (rated 2/5 to 3/5 at best moments on one of the rolls), at an altitude of approximately 60°, on September 21, 2026 at 17:00 UT.

A key improvement in this session was the implementation of sub-pixel channel alignment. The ADC was disabled during the flyby (set to 50–60° and turned off), as vibrations and the significant mount movement cause the motors to jitter during tracking.

Equipment:

Mount: LX200 MadMAX (custom controller)

Telescope: Meade ACF 16" f/10 with automated focuser myFP2 + Chroma IR-cut filter

Camera: Player One IMX585

Direct focus + automated eADC

Acquisition parameters:

190 fps, 640×640, 16-bit raw

Exposure ~1.0 ms, Gain 200–300 [30, 0, 785]

Histogram fill: 30–70%

Processing: The SER roll was split into 60 chunks of 280 frames each and fed into MolotilkaFFT_V61 — my custom FFT-based multi-point stacker. Stacking was performed with 1.5× drizzle and inter-frame morphing at 100% quality.

Final pixel scale after 1.5× drizzle: ~0.098"/px​

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​Source

https://app.astrobin.com/i/psw5fg?r=B

From the city with a RASA 8” f/2 telescope

Video

The first video is the original from Michael Wong, the second one is cropped and slowed down, an the third cropped with *original* speed from post by Michael Wong.​

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​This animation captures a rare mutual event of Jupiter’s Galilean satellites: the largest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede, occulting Io. Viewed from Earth, mutual occultations and eclipses occur during Jupiter's equinox period when Earth cross through the orbital planes of the Jovian satellites.

The main view shows the dynamic cloud belts of Jupiter, the Great Red Spot, and a moon transit shadow across the Jovian disk. The picture-in-picture (PIP) box displays a 3× zoom of the occultation event at 20:40.0 UT, distinctly revealing the contrast in size and surface albedo between the two Galilean worlds.

Acquisition and Processing: 30-second video captures taken consecutively from 20:40 to 20:52 UT, processed into the final animation sequence. The Jovian globe was derotated using WinJUPOS for enhanced surface resolution and clarity. However, the shadow of Ganymede on the disk was blended from the original, un-derotated stacks to prevent WinJUPOS shadow modeling artifacts and preserve the authentic shadow shape and position.

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Description from APOD

The Mutual Occultation of Ganymede and Io

Explanation: Jupiter is one of the least lonely planets in the Solar System, at least when it comes to natural satellites. 115 moons have been discovered orbiting Jupiter so far! (Saturn has the most with 293, but who’s counting.)

​Ganymede and Io, two of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, met in the sky on October 20th, 2026. Today’s video captures the meeting, with Ganymede briefly blocking Io from view. This event, when an astronomical object passes in front of another and either completely or partially blocks it, is called a mutual occultation.

​The mutual occultations of Galilean moons are rare to witness because they require Earth’s edge-on view of their orbits. This occurs once every 6 years when Jupiter reaches its equinox and appears less “tilted”. Ganymede is also casting its shadow on Jupiter’s right side. Any fictional Jovian species within the shadow would experience a solar eclipse!​

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Source​

https://app.astrobin.com/u/lgwong?i=ciffa0

APOD

https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/apod-2026-october-28-the-mutual-occultation-of-ganymede-and-io/

✨ Target: Sh2-103 (Cygnus Loop)

🔭 Mount: Star Adventurer 2i

📷 Camera: ASI 294 MC Pro Color

🔎 Scope: Askar FMA180 Pro

🕶️ Filter: Dualband Svbony SV220

🎯 Guide Camera: ASI 120mm Mini Mono

🦮 Guide Scope: Svbony SV165

🔬 Sampling: 5.32"/px

❄️ Cooling: -10°C

🔴 Acquisition: Gain 120

⏰ Integration: 110x120s (3h 40min)

📊 Calibration: 40 dark, 40 flat, 40 dark-flat

💻 Processing: PixInsight, RawTherapee

📍 Location: Saint-Barthélemy (Italy)

📅 Date: Sept. 11, 2026

🌌 Sky: Bortle 3

The airborne view of this rocket plume is surreal: from deep sunset crimson and amber along the lower contrail up to the electric-blue "space jellyfish" expanding in the mesosphere, the transition reveals Earth's shadow line in real time

Rocket: Long March 6A Y30
Date-Time: October 23, 2026 10:15 (UTC)

Credit: CNSPACE

This image was acquired on Oct. 26, 2026 (Sol 2020) at the local mean solar time of 11:59:21.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Credit: NASA/SOHO

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured this image of two circumstellar disks, in which two young stars are growing. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Alves et al.

Note: the video (duration 2s) is repeated four times here

​Processed by Yuval Harpaz

https://bsky.app/profile/yuvharpaz.bsky.social/post/3mytt35s5ok27

The Shuttle Enterprise (Orbiter Vehicle 101) rolls out of the Palmdale manufacturing facilities with Star Trek television cast members. From left to right they are: Dr. James D. Fletcher, NASA Administrator, DeForest Kelley (Dr. "Bones" McCoy), George Takei (Mr. Sulu), James Doohan (Mr. Scott), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), Leonard Nimoy (the indefatigable Mr. Spock), Gene Roddenberry(The Great Bird of the Galaxy), and Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov).

More information at:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-unveils-enterprise-the-first-space-shuttle/

Edit: also U.S. Rep. Don Fuqua (D.-Fla) next to Walter Koenig

Fix Roddenberry Spelling

Image

The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence has resolved its two target asteroids separately for the very first time, revealing the binary nature of the Didymos system, currently some 197 million km away from Earth. Hera imaged Didymos and Dimorphos with its monochromatic Asteroid Framing Camera on the evening of Friday 18 October, from a distance of 1280 km away from the asteroid pair.

CREDIT ESA

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The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence has resolved its two target asteroids separately for the very first time, revealing the binary nature of the Didymos system, currently some 197 million km away from Earth.

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Hera imaged Didymos and Dimorphos with its monochromatic Asteroid Framing Camera on the evening of Friday 18 October, at a distance of 1280 km away from the asteroid pair.

“With this image the smaller Dimorphos asteroid becomes visible for the first time,” explains Michael Kueppers. “Before this acquisition the spacecraft was still resolving the Didymos system as a single dot. But now, even though Dimorphos is made up of only around one pixel in this initial image, it is clearly well separated from its parent body.”​

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This first image came following the success of Hera’s braking manoeuvres earlier this month. A pair of thruster firings a week apart slowed the spacecraft to just 20 m/s relative to its two target asteroids, allowing it to come gradually closer on a fine-tuned basis.

At 151 m across Dimorphos is about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, while the 780-m diameter Didymos asteroid is a little smaller than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the tallest building in the world. The pair orbit an average 1.15 km apart from each other, with Dimorphos orbiting its parent at about 18 cm/s.

https:// x. ​com/esa/status/2115086429067850212

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More

https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/First_light_Hera_resolves_two_asteroids_instead_of_one

Credit: Andrew McCarthy

Shot by me at 2-3 AM with CANON EOS t5i REBEL

I used a 6" apochromatic refractor, precision mount, and a narrowband filter that only allows light from the 656.3 nm Hydrogen-alpha bandpass to enter an astronomy camera, cooled to -10C to capture 3hrs and 20minutes worth of exposure time to create this image. The image itself is monochrome and the color was added in processing. The light in the 656 band would appear as red, approaching deep red

Video

Black and white image of the expanding clouds.

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Expansion of the remnant on the upper right. Moving knots on the lower left. Fast changing regions are the light echo from the light of the explosion. #JWST NIRCam F444W images.

There not only an expansion of the bright material, but also new bright material appearing (center in the upper left). Maybe an astronomer can explain this. Material that only now gets shocked?

Video

Material moving towards the lower right with new material seemingly appearing at the upper left rim.

https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3myrorm4tr22l

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processed by Melina Thévenot

Taken On Seestar Using 10 Individual 30s Video Composites Stacked Together In Astroshader.

Credit: Chris Fukuda

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is one of the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the featured deep image in assigned colors highlighted by emission in hydrogen, wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly evident.

The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries.

These nurseries contain much hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.

CREDIT: Daniel Ernesto Espitia 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/201735739305383/?multi_permalinks=1122360960576185&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

Full resolution: https://app.astrobin.com/i/8zqnq4