The supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 as seen by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope
ESO/P. Das et al. Background stars (Hubble): K. Noll et al.
This two-toned sphere is evidence of a rare double-detonating supernova, captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Astronomers at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, think the spectacular ball of gas and dust formed when a white dwarf star – which may have once been like our sun but ran out of nuclear fuel long ago – exploded after it siphoned helium from another star. The initial explosion happened around 300 years ago, and could have been one of the brightest objects in the southern hemisphere’s night sky if the sun hadn’t blocked the view from Earth.
Starship explosion
James Temple Photography
It has been a mixed year for SpaceX’s Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, which the firm’s CEO Elon Musk hopes will eventually ferry astronauts to Mars. While the rocket had a successful orbital test flight in August, the previous three launch attempts were failures, ending in fiery explosions (or “rapid unscheduled disassemblies”, as SpaceX refers to them). James Temple, a chef working on a yacht near the Turks and Caicos Islands, caught the kaleidoscopic streaks of Starship’s seventh failed flight test as it burnt up across the sky in January.
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, on 18 March
NASA/Keegan Barber
Aside from Starship, SpaceX has had a successful year in other domains, continuing to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station in the absence of a suitable NASA rocket. This picture caught the moment when a SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down near a dolphin pod. The craft was carrying two NASA astronauts who had been “stuck” on the ISS for nine months after Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was deemed unsafe to return them as planned.
A photo taken by the Blue Ghost lander on the surface of the moon
Firefly Aerospace
In March, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander became only the second commercial spacecraft to land on the moon, and the first to do so upright, after a previous attempt toppled over on touchdown. After a 45-day journey, it landed in a smooth volcanic basin called Mare Crisium, where it snapped this selfie of its own shadow against the light of the sun, with Earth a small dot in the sky above.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s view of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae
NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
The Vera C. Rubin observatory, one of the world’s most powerful telescopes, began operations this year and is set to scan the night sky daily for the next decade. One of its first images showed the Trifid Nebula, a star-forming region of the Milky Way around 5000 light years away, here seen as a pink-and-blue cloud towards the upper right corner. The pink swirl below it is the Lagoon Nebula, another stellar nursery 4000 light years away. This image was created from 678 different pictures taken over 7 hours by Rubin.
A composite shot of the lunar eclipse in the sky over Tokyo in September
Kyodo News via Getty Images
Astronomers keenly awaited the lunar eclipse in September, when the moon passed through Earth’s shadow. This gave it a distinctive red colour for reasons similar to why sunsets appear red, due to the diffraction of light passing through Earth’s atmosphere and shining onto the moon. This composite photo shows the moon’s successive appearance as it moved through the night sky above Tokyo.
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