Since its inception in 1958, NASA has arguably played the most important role in furthering our knowledge of Earth, the universe and natural phenomena.

Through its mesmerizing photos captured by spacecraft imaging devices and pioneering astronauts with handheld cameras, the agency has compiled the premier portfolio of pictures that have helped us, as visual creatures, understand our place in the cosmos.

This World Photography Day, take a look at some of the most iconic of these images, delving into why they helped shape our perception of our very existence.

Man on the Moon (1969)

Just 11 years after its founding, NASA achieved what many would say was its biggest triumph: putting a man on the Moon. On July 20 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface, immortalizing the moment with his famous words about taking what was a small step, but a “giant leap for mankind".

And while the very act of a human setting foot on a celestial body that wasn’t Earth lit the fires of possibility that we could, one day, venture further into space, it was the images captured during these moments that truly opened our eyes to the realities of this ambition.

When Neil Armstrong took the shot of Buzz Aldrin meandering across the crater-ridden surface using a modified 70mm Hasselblad 500EL camera, he not only captured the glory of Apollo 11, but a frightening realization of how hostile the universe truly is.

The vast pitch-blackness of deep space behind Aldrin was a stark reminder that, despite the triumphant Moon landing, any journey to more distant destinations would be fraught with peril, regardless of how advanced our technology may ever become.

Blue Marble (1972)

By 1972 NASA was sending its sixth crewed mission, Apollo 17, to the lunar surface. Roughly five hours into the journey of astronauts Eugene A Cernan (commander), Harrison H Schmitt (lunar module pilot) and Ronald E Evans (command module pilot), someone clicked the shutter.

While NASA has always credited the Blue Marble shot to all three crew members, over the years Schmitt has maintained that he was the man behind the camera, using it to document weather patterns.

Whether or not Schmitt did, in fact, capture the frame, the image certainly served the purpose for which he claims it was taken. At a distance of some 18,300 miles from Earth, it clearly displayed Africa, the oceans and the Antarctic ice cap, in what was the first time an Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap.

The image served as one of the early fully-illuminated color views of global cloud systems and continental interactions, helping to inspire holistic, planetary-scale climate models rather than localized weather forecasting.

Pale Blue Dot (1990)

While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin proved to us the dangers of space, the Voyager 1 spacecraft imaged its vastness. In 1990, 23 years after launching, and at an unfathomable distance of 3.7 billion miles from home, the vessel pointed its narrow-angle camera toward the inner Solar System.

At the request of the famous physicist Carl Sagan, who wanted one final photograph of our home world from afar before the onboard imaging system powered down forever, mission control – which initially worried that directly facing the Sun could destroy the camera optics – agreed.

In the frame, Earth appears as nothing more than a speck of light, much like a distant star appears to us from the planet. But the message of the image carried much greater weight than its composition. The scene redefined our perspective of the Solar System, putting before our eyes the absolute vastness of space surrounding our grain of sand in the universe.

Since then, Voyager 1 has continued its journey at a speed of roughly 37,800 miles per hour, becoming the first human-made object to cross the heliosphere and enter interstellar space, now at a distance of nearly 16 billion miles away.

Pillars of Creation (1995/2014)

A little closer to home, and in more recent history, the Hubble Space Telescope captured arguably NASA’s most iconic image: the Pillars of Creation. The famous 1995 frame depicts a trio of giant columns of cool hydrogen gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, some 6,500 to 7,000 light-years from Earth.

These stellar nurseries are composed of dense pockets of gas collapsing under gravity, which ignites nuclear fusion and births new stars. While NASA already had a rigorous understanding of these processes by 1995, the image visualized, in mesmerizing color and clarity, how the cosmic bodies responsible for generating light are born.

Just shy of two decades later, NASA’s newer telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), re-imaged the Pillars of Creation in even higher definition. JWST’s infrared instruments were able to peer through opaque dust that blocked Hubble’s vision, more accurately revealing newly formed stars.

Hubble Extreme Deep Field (2012)

NASA has also used space telescopes to observe newly formed galaxies and, in 2012, looked further back in time than ever before, capturing the Extreme Deep Field (XDF) image with Hubble.

The space agency pointed the telescope at a tiny section of the cosmos within the constellation Fornax, shooting more than 2,000 separate exposures over a period of 10 years.

The final composite image, which comprised roughly 23 days of total exposure time, revealed around 5,500 galaxies, capturing ancient light that traveled over 13 billion years to reach us.

Through Hubble XDF, we got to witness early galaxy assembly taking place when the universe was less than 5% of its current age, shortly after the Big Bang. The composite scene opened a window onto cosmic evolution, helping scientists better trace the timeline of celestial structures like our own Milky Way.

The future of our existential understading

Later this month, NASA will launch Nancy Grace Roman (NGRST), the latest of its space telescopes. Scientists will use its wide-area panoramic surveys as a scout, efficiently finding interesting patches of the universe to feed to Hubble and JWST’s deeper, narrower-field focus for detailed follow-up surveys.

The NGRST represents the next step in NASA’s mission to continue shaping our knowledge of the universe and our understanding of what it is to exist in this mind-boggling expanse. And, by the next World Photography Day, I’m sure the agency will be sharing new iconic images, adding to this ongoing visual lesson.

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The 2026 total solar eclipse may have passed but, thanks to NASA photographers updating the space agency’s eclipse gallery with some of their shots from yesterday, we can relive the solar experience with some stunning shots.

While a host of photographers at the agency have shared their frames, for me, the standouts were taken by Bill Ingalls, senior photographer for NASA Headquarters, and Joel Kowsky, who also shoots for the headquarters.

Unfortunately NASA has stripped these frames of EXIF data, so we can’t see what camera and settings were used, but we can still marvel at the fantastic shots themselves.

Ingalls captured this first piece which, for me, is the pick of the bunch, near San Millán de los Caballeros – a tiny hamlet in the northern Spanish countryside.

Unlike other parts of Europe, such as the UK and France, which experienced a tantalizingly near-total eclipse, Spain experienced the full shebang – the first time in over a century.

While the different stages of the eclipse are rendered brilliantly in this composite image, it’s the sunflowers in the foreground that make it a standout in my view.

Very often, we see eclipse photos where the eclipsed Sun fills the frame. But here Ingalls took a more creative approach, incorporating landscape photography, creating an overall beautiful scene.

At first glance this next shot, from Joel Kowsky, doesn’t strike you like Ingalls’ does. However, that speck in the middle of the Sun? That’s the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA calls the ISS passing directly between the Earth and the Sun a solar transit. The event happens in a fraction of a second – usually between 0.5 and 1 second – as the station travels at roughly 5 miles / 7.5 kilometers per second.

Kowsky shot the image near Hodgdon, Maine in the northeastern US, timing the click of the shutter impeccably, to which I doff my hat. I’d love to know what shutter speed he used…

My final pick from NASA’s eclipse photos is another from Bill Ingalls. This frame is much more like the eclipse compositions you typically see, but look closer and the details reveal themselves.

Practically the whole way around the edge of the silhouetted Moon, you can see solar flares shooting out from the Sun’s corona into the vast blackness of space, culminating in a huge flare on the left-hand side.

For me, these little details transform what would otherwise be a pretty standard eclipse photo into a really spectacular one. It goes to show that Ingalls knows how to make the most of what’s in front of his lens.

These are some great shots from Ingalls and Kowsky, and I can’t wait to see what NASA photographers will share with us after the next total eclipse on August 02 2027. There will be an extraordinary 6 minutes and 22 seconds of totality, which is already being described as the “eclipse of the century”.

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“Hurry, quick!” snapped William 'Bill' Anders, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot, as the spacecraft window he was looking out of rotated away from Earth. Just moments before, the planet had come into view, majestically rising above the barren, crater-ridden lunar landscape.

The Apollo 8 crew, which also included commander Frank Borman and command module pilot Jim Lovell, was completing their fourth orbit of the celestial body, but had yet to see the now-famous Earthrise.

However, on this rotation, everything, from the module’s orientation to the crew members’ positions, had aligned perfectly. “Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders had gasped. “There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!”

Having just captured the first Earthrise photo with black-and-white film using a Hasselblad 500 EL and Zeiss Sonnar f/5.6 250mm lens, Anders wanted to immortalize the never-before-seen perspective of the planet in color, but he only had around a minute.

“Hand me that roll of color, quick, would you?” he sharply asked Jim Lovell. “Where?” replied Lovell, who had no idea where to look, and the Earth was quickly moving out of the frame of Anders’ lunar module window. “Just grab me a color, a color exterior,” Anders tensely reaffirmed.

“Yeah, I’m lookin’ for one,” Lovell shot back. Then, seconds later: “Here”, as he passed Anders the film while calling “C368”, its NASA inventory code.

But the moment had gone. Lovell’s valiant effort to dig out the color film had taken too long, and Anders’ majestic view of the planet had been replaced by the endless black expanse of space. “Well, I think we missed it,” he sighed.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of anticlimactic silence, Lovell ecstatically claimed: “Bill, I got it right here,” as, by chance, the Earth reappeared in another of the lunar module’s windows. “Bill, I got it framed, it’s very clear right here,” he almost shouted in excitement.

“Take several, take several of ’em,” Lovell commanded as Anders quickly moved into position, who had to tell his colleague to “calm down” in the process. But Lovell knew the moment was again passing: “250 at f/11,” he said, before blurting: “Now vary the exposure a little bit.”

ABOVE: NASA recreated the iconic "Earthrise" moment in real time, thanks to the Apollo 8 onboard recordings and cameras

Two clicks of the shutter later and Anders had captured the iconic Earthrise frame. Everyone on Earth would now get to see this unbelievable perspective of the planet that, otherwise, only these three astronauts would ever have seen.

Now, I’m not saying you need to plan every single shoot to a tee. After all, the Earthrise image turned out fine. Well, more than fine, as it went on to become one of the most reproduced and recognizable photos of all time.

But if there’s one thing we can take away from this incredible, funny and history-making story, it’s that, as a photographer, it pays to be prepared. And, depending on your shoot, that could even mean having an extra roll of film (or memory card, for digital photographers) within arm’s reach.

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NASA has shared new images of the Lion Nebula captured with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – and the frames depict the celestial marvel in a level of detail that astronomers were yet to see.

The Lion Nebula, or NGC 2392, is the shrunken core of a dying star (a white dwarf) surrounded by expanding gas and dust located roughly 6,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Gemini.

First discovered by the astronomer William Herschel in 1787, it was historically called the Eskimo Nebula. However, in 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the cosmic body, revealing how it looked more like a lion.

Hubble proved how the central dwarf acted as the "nose", a glowing bubble of ionized gas formed the fierce "face" and an illuminated shell of dust stretched out as the "mane".

Recently the American space agency pictured the nebula again, this time with the JWST.

Using the telescopes NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), which measures light in the near-infrared spectrum, and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), which captures longer infrared wavelengths, astronomers revealed details that Hubble couldn’t.

The images highlighted features like compact clumps of dust and a haze of ionized gas, helping astronomers to better understand how lower-mass stars die, shed their material and shape the surrounding universe.

According to NASA, it’s taken NGC 2392 thousands of years to form its current shape – and the nebula’s components will continue changing until its gas and dust migrate away from the stellar core.

Astronomers estimate that the lion will eventually disperse in approximately 10,000 years – a relatively "short period in astronomical terms", the space agency said.

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Earth Day celebrated its 56th birthday this year. Since 1970, April 22 has become a day to reflect on the environment and for people to share their concerns for the planet.

Founded by a US senator, Earth Day has grown into a global phenomenon – with over a billion people expected to be engaged with the day across 190 countries. 

This year the theme for the Day was 'Our Power, Our Planet' – with a plea that we all unite around renewable energy so we can triple clean electricity by 2030. You can find out more about how you can get involved on the Earth Day website.

What you may not know, however, is that the term Earth Day gets its name from an iconic image of our planet shot by American astronaut William Anders (1933-2024) in 1968.

Called Earthrise, the image is one of the best known in the history of photography – and legendary landscape photographer Galen Rowell described it as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken".

The image was shot from Apollo 8, the first manned expedition to orbit the moon, on Christmas Eve 1968 – but it was partly a matter of luck that Anders got the shot.

He was of the three astronauts onboard, he was the one that was holding the camera loaded with color film, and fitted with a telephoto lens, as the Earth began to rise through the porthole.

It was the wonder of seeing the beauty of our blue planet from out of space for the first time that made it such an iconic image.

"Our Earth was quite colorful, pretty, and delicate compared to the very rough, rugged, beat-up, even boring lunar surface", reminisces Anders. "I think it struck everybody that here we’d come 240,000 miles to see the moon and it was the Earth that was really worth looking at."

"That one picture exploded in the consciousness of humans," said former US Vice President Al Gore. "It led to dramatic changes. Within 18 months of this picture, the environment movement had begun."

The image itself was one of a series shot by Anders using a modified Hasselblad 500 EL medium format camera, fitted with a 250mm lens, and loaded with Kodak Ektachrome film; the exposure was 1/250sec at f/11.

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NASA has released an image of a vast section of Antarctic ice – and you’re not going to believe what can be seen on the surface. Engraved into the ice is what appears to be a massive, highly detailed hummingbird rendered in magenta and green colors.

The image was captured by NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), a joint US-Indian space agency (ISRO) satellite that monitors the movements of Earth’s land and ice masses.

This device, which orbits roughly 450 miles above the surface of the planet, creates imagery by shooting radar waves at the Earth and then measuring the travel time, strength and direction of the returning signal. This enables scientists to determine the lay of the land, who assign different colors to the varying topography.

The NISAR satellite is the first device NASA has ever sent into space to feature two SAR instruments at different wavelengths, which collect data using the satellite’s enormous drum-shaped reflector, spanning 39 feet (12 meters) wide, also making it the largest radar antenna reflector NASA has ever sent into space.

“First, it’s a beautiful image, with rich details of features that provide insights to how the glacier is moving,” said Seongsu Jeong, the NASA signal analysis engineer who produced the image.

Jeong explained that scientists are able to see what’s “hidden beneath the surface” thanks to NISAR’s radar, which can pierce through snow and deep into the ice.

According to NASA, what the image actually shows is a geographical feature called Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja (Russian for 'lost mountain'), a mountaintop in East Antarctica, around which flows streams of ice toward the ocean.

As the underlying glacier moves, the mountain’s topography stresses the ice. This creates deep fractures, called crevasses, which show as sharp green lines in the image, while the unaffected, smooth ice shows up as magenta.

NISAR was launched in July last year and, since then, has captured a range of fascinating images, including urban street grids, agricultural fields, landslides, earthquakes, and sinking land in Mexico City.

Shortly before the satellite's one-year anniversary, NASA and ISRO made access to NISAR’s data public, with teams in the US and India releasing files from the powerful radar instruments on an “ongoing basis.”

You can access the ISRO data via the Bhoonidhi portal, while NASA releases NISAR data - which it calls “data products” – via the Vertex Data Search and Earthdata Search.

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Back in February, NASA finally allowed astronauts to start taking their personal camera phones into space. Since then, we’ve been seeing all sorts of amazing images – especially taken in portrait orientation.

The latest of these comes from Anil Menon, a flight engineer part of NASA Expedition 75, who snapped a fantastic frame looking into the eye of Super Typhoon Dolphin as it swirled above the Northwest Pacific Ocean.

While Menon isn’t necessarily a photography specialist, he seems to have a good eye for working out the visual weight of an image and dedicating the right amount of space to elements in the frame.

I think he gets this spot on by affording the top half of the frame to the typhoon and almost the entire bottom half to the International Space Station (ISS). He leaves a sliver of the dark expanse of space between these elements, which gives the image some breathing room, but also adds to the “awe factor”.

While I think this composition could also have turned out great if taken in landscape orientation, it’s the vertical framing that makes it work so well for me.

Menon blasted into space on July 14 2026 and is expected to remain aboard the ISS until spring 2027, where he is helping to research bioprinting human tissues and cells, and using artificial intelligence for crew health monitoring.

He joined European Space Agency astronauts who were already aboard the ISS including Sophie Adenot, herself an avid photographer with a stellar portfolio of images from her current stint in space.

Like Adenot, Menon has been active on social media (via NASA HQ) and has already posted many clips and images of the crew and their extraordinary views from orbit. And while a lot of his content has been captured in landscape mode, it’s the portrait frames that tend to catch my eye first.

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I seldom shoot at night unless I’m waiting for a sunrise, but I’ll definitely be making the most of the astrophotography on offer this August. From the middle of the month through to the end, there are a host of galactic spectacles to capture with your camera, and NASA has kindly provided its top tips - which we’ve summarized here – to enjoy them.

There are four major events this month: a solar eclipse (August 12), the Perseid meteor shower (August 12-13), Venus shining bright after sunset (August 14-16), and a lunar eclipse (August 27-28). But no matter which event you’re gearing up to photograph, be sure to cast a quick eye over the following pointers to set yourself up properly.

Solar eclipse (August 12)

A total solar eclipse crosses northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland, and northern Spain, with a small corner of Portugal inside the path of totality.

However, you will see a partial solar eclipse in many other places. There's a 90% or more eclipse in Ireland, Great Britain, Portugal, France, Italy, the Balkans and North Africa. But there will be at least some eclipsing of the sun in most of Europe and North America.

Watching safely is key. Use certified eclipse glasses or a safe solar viewer if any part of the Sun is visible. Regular sunglasses are not safe. And never use binoculars, a telescope, or a camera without a solar filter made for the front of the optics.

In-depth guide: How to photograph the 2026 solar eclipse

Perseid meteor shower (August 12-13)

The Perseids happen every year when Earth passes through a debris stream left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. As those tiny bits of comet dust hit our atmosphere at high speed, they burn up as bright streaks of light.

To view this meteor shower, look toward the northeast once it's fully dark and watch for the constellation Perseus to clear the horizon. This is where the meteors originate, but let your eyes wander, because they can flash across any part of the sky. For the best view, stay out late as the stars climb higher, find a dark open spot, and give your eyes 30 minutes to adjust.

Venus after sunset (August 14-16)

Venus reaches its greatest eastern elongation, which is its widest apparent separation from the Sun during this evening appearance. Look low in the western sky shortly after sunset for the bright object that will outshine every star around it. Through a telescope after sunset, Venus will look close to half lit, like a tiny lunar phase.

Lunar eclipse (August 27-28)

On the night of August 27, continuing into August 28 for some time zones, the Full Moon slips through Earth's shadow, resulting in a partial lunar eclipse. It will be visible from much of North and South America and parts of Europe and Africa. At maximum eclipse, about 93% of the Moon's diameter will be inside Earth's dark central shadow, called the umbra.

The Moon will not be completely covered, but it can look dramatically darkened, with a rusty, coppery tint along the covered edge. Unlike a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse is safe to watch with just your eyes. Binoculars or a small telescope can give you a closer view of Earth's curved shadow moving across the Moon.

Our tips for shooting this month's astro events

My colleague and experienced astrophotographer, Jamie Carter, has gone into detail on how to photograph all of August's stellar events. Be sure to head here next if you're serious about getting your pictures right on the night.

And don't head off to your astro shoot without first confirming you have the right gear. Our guides to the best cameras for astrophotography and the best astrophotography filters will help you decide.

Beta Pictoris, located about 63 light-years away from Earth, is one of the most photographed planetary systems outside of our own – yet despite all the data coming from that part of the sky, a faint planet remained hidden. After researchers noted a bright spot in new images, the newly discovered planet was spotted in images dating back over 11 years.

“We weren’t looking for a new planet, explained lead researcher Aidan Gibbs. “We were trying to understand one we already knew existed. Then, this telltale signal appeared in the data where we didn’t expect it.”

Researchers were looking at Beta Pictoris b with the James Webb Telescope’s Near InfraRed Spectrograph when they spotted another bright spot in the image where they had expected to see dust: a planet now named Beta Pictoris d.

When researchers went back over older images, they spotted evidence of the planet in images that had been taken more than a decade ago.

Beta Pictoris d is estimated to be about twice the mass of Jupiter, so why is the newly discovered planet so good at playing hide and seek? Beta Pictoris d is very dim. Researchers believe it’s one of the dimmest exoplanets ever to be photographed from Earth. The planet also has the widest known orbit in the system compared to the other two known planets, which puts it just inside the system’s debris disk.

Using Webb, the researchers were able to capture a near-infrared spectrograph and a traditional image of the discovery.

"There was an unexpected bright source of light within the Integral Field Unit imaging, but we've learned not to trust bright blobs in images," Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, a principal investigator of the Webb Observations and research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, said. “They can be instrumental artifacts or other structures in the debris disk. By obtaining a spectrum at the same time as the image, we were able to quickly confirm our suspicions.”

A separate study using the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope confirmed the planet’s existence, noting that Beta Pictoris d is 100 times fainter than the first planet discovered in the same system.

The ESO research team also combed through past data, finding faint evidence of Beta Pictoris d hidden in the glare of Beta Pictoris b, dating back 11 years

“Planet d, it seems, has been playing a game of hide-and-seek with us for over a decade and only now can we say ‘found you,’” said Jaybe Bixby study co-author and astronomer at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

In traditional imaging, a planet must be bright enough not to be overshadowed by the brightness of any neighboring objects, and the brightness of Beta Pictoris b meant the neighboring planet remained undetected for several years.

While the discovery of Beta Pictoris d is new, researchers had their suspicions – the mass and shape help explain the shape of Beta Pictoris’ debris disk.

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No matter how long you or I dedicate ourselves to photography, nor how many amazing pictures we take or state-of-the-art cameras we own, none of us will ever come remotely close to being as cool as NASA career photographer Jim Ross.

On July 04, to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the USA (in 1776), Ross took to the skies in an F-18 fighter jet, snapping bird's-eye pictures of Washington, DC. Taking part in the Freedom 250 Flyover, Ross, with a Nikon Z9 in hand, also captured frames of an accompanying F-15 fighter.

“I grew up in Bozeman, Montana, when it was still considered a small town, so if someone told that little kid that he would be flying in an F-18 over the National Mall, he would have never believed it,” Ross told NASA.

Jim Ross started his career as an aviation photographer at NASA’s Armstrong (then Dryden) Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, in 1989, becoming the photo lead in 1997, a position he still holds.

Throughout his impressive career spanning almost 40 years, he’s immortalized some of NASA’s most electrifying moments – like early SR-71 flights, the delivery flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour to Los Angeles and the first flights of NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft.

In 2023, from the backseat of a T-34C research aircraft, Ross shot an exhilarating frame of NASA pilot Nils Larson while the plane was inverted during an aerobatic maneuver. The image captivated the agency and was later awarded NASA Photo of the Year.

“My mind is always thinking about what kind of photo I can take that will share what I am experiencing in the aircraft,” Ross said. “I love documenting history, and having the opportunity to capture flights and launches has kept me doing it for almost 37 years.”

Well, that’s it folks; we may as well sell our cameras, because Jim Ross has reached stratospheric levels of coolness that only a NASA photographer ever could. I’m not jealous at all. I swear.

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Images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed new secrets about a nearby galaxy, leaving European Space Agency (ESA) astronomers with all sorts of questions about its mesmerizing structure and glistening star formations.

Centaurus A (also known as NGC 5128) is located 11 million light-years away from Earth and has been well documented by scientists since its discovery in 1826. However, vibrant cosmic dust shrouding the galaxy’s central region made it difficult to observe, and even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn’t provide detailed enough images.

But unlike Hubble, JWST features a Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) that cuts through the hazy space gases, which the ESA says exposes the galaxy’s inner workings and a prime case of “galactic archaeology”.

Most notable to the astronomers is the “warped” parallelogram-like band of light peppered with stars stretching across the center of NGC 5128, while wisps of material flow outward like clouds.

This formation was revealed by combining images from the MIRI with those captured by the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), with the ESA thinking it could have been the result of a cosmic collision with another galaxy billions of years ago.

The astronomers also used James Webb’s spectroscopy instruments to determine how the black hole at the center of Centaurus A influences the galaxy as a whole. While the researchers are certain it can trigger new star formation by compressing gas, and also limit this by pushing cosmic material away, the “complex” answers continue to elude them.

Even though the ESA astronomers have been left scratching their heads, they’ve said that the new images have enabled them to trace dust, resolve millions of stars and reveal the motion of gases in unprecedented detail, transforming Centaurus A into a “vivid record of cosmic history”.

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Instead of relying solely on billion-dollar space telescopes, NASA should also consider using pictures taken by astronauts with commercial handheld cameras to study the cosmos. That’s what astronomers at Tokyo City University, Japan, have suggested in a new research paper.

The paper has revealed how an image taken by one of the astronauts during the recent Artemis II lunar mission has improved understanding of the F corona – scattered light from cosmic dust forming part of the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere.

The image was taken on day 6 of the lunar mission as the astronauts witnessed a total solar eclipse from the far side of the Moon. We don’t know which astronaut pressed the shutter, but we do know, thanks to EXIF data, that they used a Nikon Z9 and Nikkor 35mm f/2D lens, with settings: 2secs at f/2, ISO 1600.

According to the Japanese astronomers, the F corona is a faint spreading structure that can be seen in the image surrounding the Moon, which is obscuring the Sun, and special conditions such as a total solar eclipse are required for observation.

By analyzing the image, the astronomers deduced that the extent to which the F corona is distributed in the north-south direction is greater than scientific models have previously predicted, revealing new understanding of the origin and evolution of materials within the solar system.

The Tokyo-based researchers have said the study represents a pivotal intersection of science and human activity, as “a single photograph taken by a person in space” has highlighted a potentially crucial role astronauts using handheld cameras could play in the future of astronomy.

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NASA’s deep space images often feel like both science and art. But NASA’s latest images are art in more ways than one: they come with sound. NASA recently released a set of new images that are impressive on their own, but come accompanied by music created from scientific data.

NASA’s sonigications translate different data points from the photographs into different musical elements. The brightness of the image, for example, turns into volume, creating a crescendo at the brightest points of the photograph.

NASA used different scans, such as left to right and a clockwise circle, along with using different instruments to represent different data. In one sonification of the Milky Way cluster NGC3603 for example, the data that comes from Chandra’s X-ray observations becomes piano notes, while the Hubble data becomes an acoustic guitar.

A photo that creates a song is unusual in itself, but the set of images also features red, white, and blue galaxies and nebulae as NASA’s nod to America’s 250th birthday this Fourth of July. That seems extra appropriate, because what fireworks show is complete without sound?

Those colors, however, aren’t just patriotic but represent different visual data and hint at where that image came from. Chandra’s x-ray technology tends to render blues, purples, and whites. Layering those images with visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet photographs from additional space telescopes, like Hubble and James Webb, offers both more colors and a more complete dataset.

The cluster of Milky Way stars known as the nebula NGC 3603 looks almost like an exploded firework. NASA says the bright red cluster of stars is revealed by mixing data from Chandra with images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new collection also features the galaxy NCG 4736 or Messier 94, a shot that mixes images from Chandra with photos from astrophotographers on the ground using telescopes. The combination shows off the galaxy’s inner starburst ring, where new stars are forming.

The blue inside the final image collection comes from Hubble data on a distant cluster of galaxies known as ZwCl 0024+1652, while data from Chandra’s X-ray data adds the red superheated gas to the image.

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As much as I love chasing the northern lights, I haven’t yet attempted to see the southern lights. But NASA astronaut Jessica Meir arguably had one of the best views of the early June 2026 phenomenon, snapping swirling greens and reds 271 miles above the Indian Ocean aboard the International Space Station.

NASA shared the stunning photograph on June 16, but Meir captured the photo of the Australia Borealis on June 5 as the ISS passed south of Perth, Australia.

The photograph mixes both the arch of the lights with the curve of the Earth and swirling clouds. That means Meir and other ISS astronauts likely had one of the few viewing spots for the June 5 southern lights, as cloud cover will obstruct the views of the night sky phenomenon from Earth.

Meir took the photo with the Nikon Z9, which is one of the first mirrorless cameras ever to make the trek to space. As space cameras need to be thoroughly tested to withstand the rigours of space, using older DSLRs is more common – like aboard the recent Artemis II mission – but the Z9 is one of the first mirrorless cameras to be tested in space.

Meir took the shot through a window at the ISS – parts of the space station are visible at the top and bottom of the frame. A slow 1/4 shutter speed, bright f/1.8 aperture, and ISO8000 helped the camera gather enough light from the dark scene.

Meir is scheduled to remain at the ISS as the spacecraft commander through September 2026. Meir’s background is in studying life in the most extreme environments, from expeditions to study penguins in Antarctica while studying for her Ph.D. to her current role conducting biology experiments in space. Meir was also among the first all-female spacewalks alongside Christina Koch in 2019.

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After six months of lost contact, NASA has officially declared the Mars orbiter MAVEN lost to deep space. On June 3, NASA announced that the MAVEN Mars spacecraft has come to an end.

NASA unexpectedly lost communication with the orbiting Mars spacecraft in December 2025. After evaluating potential recovery efforts, the space agency has now officially declared the spacecraft as unrecoverable.

While NASA’s loss of contact with the orbiter was unexpected, the MAVEN mission was originally only expected to last for one year after reaching Mars in 2014. However, the orbiter continued to supply researchers with data on Mars’ atmosphere for more than 11 years before an uncontrollable spin drained the orbiter's battery, ultimately causing a loss of signal that could not be recovered.

MAVEN did not have a traditional visible light camera on board. Instead, the spacecraft was equipped with an ultraviolet spectograph imager that not only helped researchers study the planet’s atmosphere, but also sent back unusually colored images of the red planet. Ultraviolet images are edited with different colored filters in order to create images that the human eye can easily interpret.

In honor of the MAVEN’s 11-year mission, these are some of the best images coming from that ultraviolet camera.

This photograph, captured in July 2022, captures the red planet's southern hemisphere and polar ice cap. MAVEN captured this ultraviolet image as Mars was closest to the sun.

The ultraviolet capture shows off not only the polar ice cap, but the large pink Argyre Basin – one of the deepest on the planet – and at the top left, the Valles Marineris canyons.

Ozone turns the northern section of the Red Planet purple in this shot from January 2023. The photo is the opposite of the one above, taken when Mars is the farthest from the sun and showing the northern hemisphere.

Credit: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP

NASA built this animation by combining ultraviolet images from MAVEN with a simulated view of Mars. Combined, the animation shows how Mars pulses and glows in the night, thanks to a chemical reaction creating nitric oxide, which NASA says is caused by downward winds.

This ultraviolet photo, taken less than two years into the MAVEN mission, shows several of Mars' iconic features. The slash across the middle is the two-thousand-mile Valles Marineris canyon, while the three yellow dots to the left are volcanoes. The purple at the bottom is caused by ozone absorbing ultraviolet light.

Mars orbiters can take selfies too. This image shows a small slice of the spacecraft with Mars in the background. The arm of the camera couldn't rotate enough to get the entire spacecraft in the image, but it did manage to capture a slight selfie to celebrate four years in orbit.

NASA says this image shows rapid clouds building across a two-day span in July of 2016. The yellow spot near the top left is Olympus Mons, which is the tallest volcano on Mars.

This photo may not look like the shots of the Aurora on Earth, but the purple shows waves of energy that show that Mars gets auroras, too. MAVEN took this shot from underneath Mars, looking up. The South Pole ice cap is the white patch on the bottom left. NASA explains that Mars' auroras are not like those on Earth – they sit close to the equator, so it would be like viewing the aurora from Florida.

This image may not look impressive enough to be wall art like some of MAVEN's other colorful shots, but it is both a significant scientific breakthrough and a technical imaging feat. The blue in the image shows hydrogen escaping from Mars' atmosphere.

NASA explains that the image is a composite of around 400,000 observations taken early in the MAVEN mission. MAVEN was able to take map this hydrogen loss that happens from the breakdown of water and Mars' low gravity continually over an entire Martian year.

Finally, it feels fitting to honor the end of the MAVEN mission with a photo from the very start. The spacecraft launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida in November 2013. MAVEN took about ten months to reach Mars' orbit.

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NASA is building a base on the Moon – and cameras will be an integral part of getting humans there safely.

On Tuesday, May 26, NASA announced a three-phase plan across the next decade to build a permanent base on the Moon. The plan is a massive $20 billion undertaking to build a base near the Moon’s south pole that eventually plans to send humans to the Moon at least every six months.

The announcement could be one of NASA’s most ambitious plans for the Moon yet – and some of the tech that’s making the planned Moon Base possible is an assortment of cameras and massive seven-foot wide drones.

The very first phase, Moon Base I, will deliver payloads to the moon from later this year. That includes the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies. While that name doesn’t roll off the tongue like, say, the NASA-modified Nikon Z9, the camera tech is key to planning safe future landings.

The Stereo Cameras aren’t a single camera but an array of cameras. These cameras are designed to record how the engine plume interacts with the lunar surface.

Understanding how the engine plume interacts with the surface on the Moon in microgravity is pivotal to a safe landing, as that high-speed exhaust could interact with the lunar surface and create flying debris that could damage the spacecraft during landing.

While cameras will undoubtedly also be part of the landers and rovers that will begin landing on the moon in later phases, putting a specialized camera on the first payload to the Moon before those rovers highlights the tech’s importance in studying the Moon from a distance in order to improve crewed spaceflights.

Four massive drones will study the lunar surface

NASA also shared updates on MoonFall, a plan to study the lunar surface ahead of the planned crewed Artemis III mission using a camera of a different sort: drones.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been developing the prototype drones and has decided to work with Firefly Aerospace on building the space drones. These drones are estimated to arrive on the Moon in 2028 and will use high-resolution cameras to photograph the Moon’s surface, including terrain that would be difficult for traditional wheeled rovers to access.

These drones are about seven feet wide (2.13 meters) and four feet (1.2 meters) tall and will house up to ten high-resolution cameras. The drones will be deployed mid-descent from a spacecraft, where the drones will then spend one lunar day – which is up to 14 Earth days – photographing the surface of the moon.

NASA says this camera system will provide more detailed maps of the lunar surface than current satellite technology can provide. The drones will also house other research equipment, including a neutron spectrometer to look for subsurface water and a spectrometer to measure radiation.

The four drones will perform multiple flights during their mission. Once the drones run out of fuel, they will come down to the lunar surface and won’t fly again – but they will remain operational and continue to communicate with Earth.

NASA has only announced the first three phases of the Moon base – but even this early on, it’s clear cameras will help researchers prepare for the Moon base ahead of the crewed landings. If the viral popularity of the photos from the recent Artemis II spaceflight is any indication, Earthlings could be in for a treasure trove of new Moon images.

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At first glance, one of NASA’s newest images looks like a crescent Moon – but look a little closer, and that crescent takes on a red tint. NASA recently shared a series of stunning images of Mars’ colorful surface, and it looks like space art worthy of a wall hanging.

The images come from Psyche, a spacecraft that’s headed towards an asteroid by the same name, as researchers believe that the space object could potentially be the early core of a planet. The Psyche spacecraft, which launched in 2023, won’t reach its destination until 2029, but on the way, it’s snapping stunning images of the Red Planet.

Mars is key to Psyche’s mission because the spacecraft is using the planet’s gravity to propel it further towards its destination. And when flying so close to Mars, why not snap a few photos?

The last photo that Psyche was able to take where the entirety of Mars still fit into one frame is a shot of the Red Planet in crescent form. NASA explains that the spacecraft approached at a high phase angle, leaving only a small part of the planet lit by the sun.

The image is a striking look at the planet, with the thin sliver of sunshine drawing the eye to the planet’s colorful surface. Psyche took the photo with the Imager A, and NASA researchers enhanced the colors using red, green, and blue data from filters.

While the smiling red planet is a striking image, that’s not the only stunning image coming from Psyche’s Mars flyby. NASA also shared a close-up of the planet’s Huygens Crater. The scientific shot looks a bit like abstract art, thanks to differences in the dust, sand, and bedrock creating dramatic colors.

Another photo that NASA also shared on May 19 looks almost like an image suffering from some long exposure blur – but the streaky appearance actually comes from wind reshaping impact craters. NASA says that the wind streaks in the image are actually about 30 miles / 50 kilometers long.

Psyche has also managed to snap the highest-resolution photo yet of the ice cap on Mars' south pole. According to NASA, this ice cap is about 430 miles / 700 kilometers. The Psyche was close enough to capture the cap at a scale of about .7 miles /1.14 km per pixel.

Psyche is now beyond Mars as it heads towards the asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter. NASA expects the spacecraft to arrive at its destination in August 2029.

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When selecting cameras for a mission, NASA doesn’t just take the manufacturer’s word on performance, instead putting any potential models through the most rigorous testing to ensure they don’t fail astronauts during a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

On the Artemis II mission, which took place in April this year, the primary handheld cameras taken aboard the Orion capsule were the Nikon Z9 mirrorless and Nikon D5 DSLR. However, in the years leading up to the mission, NASA tested a range of other commercial models which, ultimately, didn’t make the cut, but were in the running.

The results of some of these tests recently surfaced online and, surprisingly, highlight that modern, commercially available digital cameras without any special modifications are up to NASA’s astronomical standards, which I bet you never would’ve thought.

The results that have surfaced were from tests carried out on the Canon R5 and Nikon Z7 II mirrorless cameras, and the Nikon D6 DSLR, with the report published in 2022. NASA placed these cameras in a thermal vacuum where temperatures ranged from -30°C to +40°C (-22°F -104°F) and set them to record stills and 4K video.

Both the Canon R5 and Nikon D6 operated successfully in the thermal vacuum across the temperature range, with the R5 noted as experiencing “no critical failures” and the D6 performance being “stable and reliable overall.” Although, the latter was tested under restricted conditions to avoid connectivity risks NASA had observed in other Nikon models.

The Nikon Z7 II, however, did not fare as well. While NASA noted that the mirrorless camera was stable and reliable overall, it didn’t complete full testing due to connectivity issues within the vacuum.

While the tests highlighted some shortcomings of these models in extreme environments, you need to keep in mind that these cameras were not modified in any way by NASA, meaning they featured the same specs that they would if you or I had bought them, which I find incredible.

I still hate how expensive cameras are, but admittedly, these results do make the hefty price tags a little more palatable.

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You can view over 12,000 of the images captured during the Artemis II mission in this "secret" album. Or, browse the best mirrorless cameras.

Few photos make me stop and ponder as much as those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. And the latest of these, published by NASA, shows a majestic spiral galaxy that the space agency describes as “glittering with star clusters” and humongous clouds of cosmic gas.

NGC 3137 is a spiral galaxy which, in cosmic terms, is located down the road from Earth, just 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump). NASA says that the latest image, crafted from observations across six different color bands, reveals the nearby galaxy in “fantastic detail.”

The center of the galaxy is home to an enormous black hole some 60 million times more massive than our Sun, says NASA, and this is encircled by a network of fine, dusty clouds. However, what caught astronomers’ eye were the dense clusters of bright blue stars and glowing red gas clouds “peppering” the galaxy, and which NASA says “signal the presence of hot, young stars still encased in their birth nebulae.”

NGC 3137 is especially interesting to astronomers because it travels through space within a group of galaxies thought to be similar to the Local Group, the galaxy group that contains the Milky Way. Similar to the Local Group, the NGC 3175 group contains two large spiral galaxies: NGC 3137 and NGC 3175, which Hubble has also observed.

NASA says that NGC 3137 is highly inclined from our point of view, giving a “unique perspective on its loose, feathery spiral structure.” Combined with its close proximity to Earth, this makes the galaxy an ideal target for astronomers studying the cycle of stellar birth and death, as well as for shedding light on a galactic system similar to our own.

Hubble's new image is just one of the ways the telescope, which has been in orbit since 1999 is still impressing today.

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When the Orion capsule of the Artemis II mission splashed down into the Pacific Ocean last month following a 10-day gallivant around the Moon, it didn’t just bring the four astronauts aboard home safely, it also brought back the thousands of images they took during the journey.

Artemis II not only marked the first human-crewed flight bound for the Moon in more than 50 years, but it set records in taking humanity farther away from Earth than ever before—surpassing 406,778 km (252,760 miles) to exceed the Apollo 13 record—and making the astronauts the first people to ever see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes.

It’s no wonder that the crew—NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—along with the automated onboard cameras, snapped over 10,000 shots in the lunar flyby alone, and now, incredibly, NASA has begun sharing these with the public.

NASA shared images during and after the mission on Flickr and the NASA Media Library, but the largest collection that I've seen so far comes from the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website, which currently hosts 12,217 images taken during the mission, including candid portraits of the Orion occupants and awe-inspiring scenes of the Moon's crater-filled landscape and our planet from afar.

However, accessing the images feels a bit hidden. Try this permalink to the Artemis II gallery. If that doesn't work – the images are large, so loading can take some time – use the search page, scroll down to "Search Using Other Methods" and then type in the mission name "ART002-E" to find Artmis II images.

We knew that there would be a ton of images to marvel at following the mission, as NASA gave us a glimpse of some 10,000 captured during the livestream of the Artemis II Moon flyby alone.

However, Scientific American suggests that there may be some 18,000 more images to be added to the existing collection, given that the image codes run from ART002-E-168 to ART002-E-30001. Just a heads-up, the platform is slow, so you’ll have to be patient to view these amazing photos.

Looking at such a large collection includes shots with blur and exposure errors, so besides being an inspirational look at our Moon, the stars, and Earth, it should make photographers feel better about coming home from a shoot with some imperfect shots – because that's human and normal.

The album includes a number of stunning images beyond what NASA released during the mission's early days. Here are a few favorites from the impressive collection.

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For the first time, NASA scientists detected what happens before a supernova explodes—and it's all thanks to old photos.

The Artemis II launch has rocketed space photography into the fore and I for one cannot get enough of it. So much so that while browsing the internet for more interstellar goodness, I happened upon an older NASA news post from August of last year reporting on the discovery of a new moon orbiting Uranus. But what I found most interesting was how it was discovered and it has everything to do with photography.

You see, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to make the discovery by capturing 10 40-minute exposures using the telescope’s primary near-infrared camera, NIRCam. The video (above) shows each of the ten images, all captured during a six-hour period from February 2, 2025 between 01:05 and 06:54 UT.

According to the video’s description, each image is “a composite of three different treatments of the data,” as it wouldn’t be possible to see the planetary atmosphere, rings and moons in a single treatment. The new moon, S/2025 U1 is highlighted by a circle in each image, which is helpful as it’s incredibly faint. As such, you can clearly see it orbiting a portion of the planet.

This is a great example of just how far imaging has come. Even NASA’s Voyager 2 couldn’t detect this moon when it cruised past Uranus in 1986. To date, it’s the only space craft to have ever explored the ice giant. If you’re keen on astrophotography, you’ll know that there’s a full moon tonight and plenty more exciting celestial opportunities for astrophotography in May 2026.

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A backyard astrophotographer discovered a new galaxy with a 2MP camera. A 14-year-old unearthed a supernova by combing through space survey images. A backyard astronomer discovered 17 comets – including two with an old DSLR.

Nothing quite illustrates the power of a camera – new or old – like astrophotography.

Last month, I watched in amazement as Artemis II sent back the first human-photographed images of space taken outside Earth’s orbit in decades. As a photographer, the images were an eloquent reminder of the power of the camera.

I can’t orbit the moon, but I can get a glimpse of the experience with a camera. That’s how powerful and impactful the camera is.

But cameras don’t even need to be the latest flagship models to be powerful. Artemis II used a decade-old DLSR, an old GoPro, and a modern mirrorless Nikon Z9 that I could buy and use in my own backyard if I wanted to.

The Artemis II images had me wondering, what else have cameras helped discover, even without ever leaving Earth’s atmosphere? Giuseppe Donatiello, an amateur astronomer, discovered five new galaxies – using a 2MP CCD camera sensor with a homemade telescope.

Terry Lovejoy is a backyard astronomer who has now discovered 17 comets. His first two? Those were discovered photographing the night sky with the Canon 300D, a 6.3MP entry-level DSLR introduced back in 2003.

It’s not just the camera, but images that have led to a number of discoveries about our universe. Caroline Moore was just 14 when she discovered a new supernova – making her the youngest person to do so. She discovered the surprisingly dim supernova using images from the Puckett Observatory Supernova Search before locating it with her astrophotographer father’s backyard telescope.

The camera isn’t just a tool for exploring space. The camera is an equalizer, allowing anyone to explore the final frontier with two feet placed firmly in their own backyard.

Standing in my backyard with a camera directed up towards the sky makes me feel both small and powerful at once. There’s something about the night sky that eases the tension in my shoulders and makes the stress of the day seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

I can’t name much beyond the Big Dipper and Polaris, but I can stand in awe of the universe just the same. As my favorite science fiction alien, Rocky from Hail Mary, would say, photographing the stars makes me feel “Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!” (An excellent movie, which, by the way, featured stunning images from astrophotographer Rod Prazeres.)

National Space Day celebrates achievements in space exploration and encourages the next generation of explorers. After watching the Artemis II mission from afar, I can’t help but think that the camera is still an integral tool for space discovery, both in microgravity and with two feet firmly planted in a dark backyard.

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You wouldn’t think a resin heat shield would make for a particularly photogenic image, but Orion’s partially-submerged heat shield is the exception. There’s an ethereal beauty to the photograph (above), which US Navy divers took of the component’s underside, shortly after the Artemis II mission’s successful splashdown, off the coast of San Diego on April 10, 2026.

The image, released by NASA, isn’t just an important documentation of humanity’s farthest voyage from Earth, it’s vital in assessing the heat shield’s performance for future missions. The disc of Avcoat was all that separated the four astronauts from a blazing 3,000 degrees during re-entry, as the spacecraft hurtled towards earth at 35x the speed of sound.

The heat shield was one of Orion’s most talked-about components, given that the heat shield present in 2022’s uncrewed Artemis I mission sustained more damage than was expected. According to a CNN report, some experts had raised the alarm over the heat shield’s suitability. Thankfully, it looks like NASA’s investigations into the cause of the problem have paid dividends, with the space agency stating that both the imagery of the component shortly after splashdown and subsequent inspections revealed “significantly reduced” charring.

With NASA reporting that it’s “on Track for Future Missions,” we could see humans back on the lunar surface as early as 2028. The third Artemis mission is currently set to launch in 2027, but the BBC recently reported that Artemis III will not land on the Moon as previously thought.

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If you’ve been following NASA’s historic mission around the Moon, you’ll know that photography has played a huge role. Did you know that NASA chose an old DSLR as its primary Artemis II camera? The Artemis II mission isn’t just science. Viral images from the Moon mission are proof of the power of a photograph. And if you’re interested in the night sky, take a look at the best telescopes for astrophotography.

If you’re going to use a $16,000 lens, it might as well be to film a milestone moment in human history. And according to DP Review, that’s exactly what photographer and videographer Jared Sanders (@hyprlyte) did when he captured a jaw-dropping video of the Artemis II launch on April 1, 2026, the spacecraft that propelled four astronauts farther away from Earth than any human being has ever travelled before.

Jared is an avid photographer of rocket launches, who previously photographed the Artemis I’s night launch, where he got to capture a full-moon rise behind the rocket and even set up a remote camera. For the Artemis II launch, his setup was a little different. In a YouTube video, before the launch, he covered all of the camera kit he was going to use, including the Nikon ZR, Fujifilm GFX 100 II, and Red Komodo X. But on the day, his plans changed slightly.

According to DP Review, Nikon had a tent at the launch site, where it was handing out gear for creators to borrow. Jared was handed the Nikon Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S, a lens that retails for $16,199.95 / £14,999.00 / AU$27,049. Unsurprisingly, Jared took the opportunity and decided to pair the lens with his Nikon ZR to capture what I think is one of the coolest perspectives of the Artemis II launch.

The video starts with slow-motion footage of the rocket launching in front of a crowd of onlookers, with a person in the foreground fist-bumping the air with excitement. We then get a cropped image of the rocket climbing through the composition before its fiery boosters dominate the frame. The content creator revealed on Instagram that the footage was graded with filmic color-grading software Dehancer.

If you’re wondering why Nikon was at the launch, the ‘Big N’ has a long and fruitful history with NASA. And indeed, the Artemis II crew took Nikon cameras along for the ride in Orion, including an old Nikon DSLR as its primary camera.

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If you want to view the images from the NASA telescope designed to replace the longstanding Hubble Telescope at full resolution, you’d better start stocking up on 4K TVs. Images from the 300MP Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are so large that viewing one image at full resolution would take more than 500,000 4K TVs.

NASA has now finished building, assembling, and testing the new Roman telescope, which means the new tech could launch several months earlier than the original May 2027 target date. NASA now projects that the telescope could launch as early as September 2026.

NASA announced that the testing for the telescope was completed earlier this week. Now, NASA needs to get the telescope, which at 42 feet high, is the largest ever built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, from where it was built, north of Washington DC, to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the telescope will launch on a SpaceX rocket.

The Roman has big shoes to fill, as the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, has led to a number of discoveries and is still in operation, despite being originally predicted to only have a 15-year lifespan.

But, where the Hubble has two 2,048x4096 pixel sensors on the Wide Field Camera, Roman has 18 square 4K sensors. That resolution boost is designed to see more of the sky. NASA says the Roman will capture a patch of sky that’s 100 times larger than the Hubble’s field of view. That, mixed with faster processing, means that NASA expects the Roman telescope to do in about a year what would have taken Hubble 2,000 years.

Roman can also see more infrared light than Hubble, which could potentially help researchers detect fainter stars and systems. NASA says the Roman is expected to create one of the deepest views into our galaxy, leading to the study of stars numbering in the “hundreds of millions.”

While Roman is expected to lead to many firsts once launched, the assembly is already breaking records. To celebrate the largest ever telescope built at Goddard, NASA allowed a drone into the clean room for the first time to help capture a sense of how large the Roman really is.

The Roman Telescope – named after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy and first female executive, Nancy Grace Roman – could launch as early as September 2026.

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A photo taken in 1968 by astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 sparked the first-ever Earth Day. As I watched the Artemis II send back iconic photos of the blue planet more than 50 years later, I couldn’t help but think of the role that photography is playing in sparking both awe and respect for our planet.

The camera allows humans who never leave the Earth's atmosphere to view our planet in its entirety – and the impact has not been small. The iconic Earthrise from 1968 inspired the first Earth Day in 1970. Two years later, Apollo 17 astronauts would take what’s widely known as the first ever clear color photo of Earth in its entirety to be taken by a human, an infamous photo known as the Blue Marble.

Inspired by the role photographs have played in space history, I dove through the NASA archives to find the most iconic photographs of Earth, both modern and historic.

The Earth and Moon in matching crescents

This 1977 image was one of the earliest photos taken by an unmanned spacecraft to show both the Earth and Moon in crescent shapes. NASA says the Voyager 1 was around 7.25 million miles away when it captured this image.

The Black Marble

The Blue Marble photograph is iconic – but this image captured by the Suomi NPP satellite in 2012 showcases the planet in darkness.

Looking at the Earth in the dark can offer insight into light pollution, while the absence of city lights makes remote locations more prominent. NASA says that the satellite used the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, which detects multiple types of light and then can filter specific ones out – this shot has auroras, moonlight, fires, and other stray sources filtered out to show manmade light.

One of the most detailed photos of Earth

When NASA shared this image in 2012, they described it as “one of the more detailed images of the Earth yet created.” But where does that added detail come from?

The photo is actually a montage built from both visible light and infrared images taken by the Suomi NPP satellite. The combination of those light ranges creates a strikingly detailed portrait of Earth.

The Earth with two auroras

The iconic Blue Marble photo, taken in 1977, captured the sunny side of Earth. But one of the first images sent back from the Artemis II crew was a full view of the Earth at night. The view shows auroras at both poles, while the blue tint on the bottom right is actually reflected moonlight. Because this is from the night side of Earth, the photographer had to use a 1/4 second shutter speed and ISO 51200 on the Nikon D5 in order to get the exposure light enough to also see the details of the clouds, oceans, and continents.

A sunrise from space

The International Space Station sees 16 sunrises each day thanks to its orbit speed. This image from 2014 by the Expedition Crew shows the sun lighting up the blue curve of the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Aurora Australis captured on 35mm film

This shot of the Aurora Australis – or southern lights – was captured on 35mm film in 1992. The crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour described this view as one of the more spectacular sights of the aurora during the eight-day mission.

The circle of an aurora from space

On Earth, I’m always in awe of the way the aurora curves across the night sky. But this image from 2005 shows the full ring of the Aurora Australis. The image was created by overlaying an ultraviolet image over a Blue Marble image, with both images taken by satellites.

The Earth and Moon from Galileo

Captured by the Galileo spacecraft in 1998, this image is a composite made from two separate images that highlight imaging space tech from the 1990s.

This is what the Earth would look like from a telescope on Mars

Many humans have directed their telescopes and astrophotography kits towards Mars, but if the roles were reversed, this is what the Earth and Moon would look like from the red planet, according to NASA. This image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment HiRISE camera taken in 2007.

…and this is what the Earth looks like from 114 Million miles away

This 2010 photograph creates a sense of just how small Earth is compared to the rest of space. NASA says the two bright spots in the bottom left corner are the Earth and Moon from 114 million miles away.

…and 3.7 billion miles away

But perhaps the most iconic tiny dot Earth photo is the Pale Blue Dot from 1990, taken by NASA’s Voyager. Earth is just a tiny spec – only about one pixel – inside a stray sun ray.

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I’ve written opinion pieces on this platform recently about why digital SLRs might be due a comeback – and what still appeals to many photographers about the format. 

Even so, you’d expect a multi-billion-dollar fly-by of the Moon to be using the very latest in cutting-edge technology.

So, I was as surprised – and intrigued – as anyone, to discover NASA’s recent Artemis II mission was using the decade-old Nikon D5 as a primary image capture device. 

Yes, there were multiple GoPros used both inside and outside the capsule, plus selfies taken with the latest iPhone 17 Pro – while the flagship mirrorless Nikon Z9 also squeezed onto the mission at the last minute. 

But the most amazing shots I’ve seen from the trip – of the Moon’s crater-scarred surface and those showing its proximity to, and distance from, Earth – were taken on a DSLR, as widely reported.

Does that now mean we can stop declaring mirrorless better in all respects, and that DSLRs should remain in the past? Even if that’s the stance most camera manufacturers have taken in their desire to get us all to replace and upgrade existing kit?

While some keyboard warriors / worriers might automatically assume NASA’s deployment of the Nikon D5 sheer lunar lunacy, there was method in the astronauts’ madness. 

Mission insiders suggested that the D5’s low light performance when it came to deep shadow detail was still peerless, even when pitted against its much newer Z9.

However, while the D5 offers a stratospheric maximum sensitivity setting of ISO3,280,000 compared with the Z9’s top whack ISO102,400, a look at the EXIF data accessible on NASA’s official Flickr page – where it’s posted the now most widely publicised images – reveals that, whichever camera was used, ISO400 was uniformly selected.

Now, I don’t know whether the cameras were not taken off this baseline because that provided consistency, whatever they were being pointed at, or if the desire for maximum clarity, high dynamic range and the lowest possible noise in challenging conditions was of paramount concern. 

Yet the quality from both the D5 and Z9 when used in space is so very impressive that I couldn’t slip a slice of dehydrated cheese between them when comparing performance.

To paraphrase the tagline for the original Alien movie: in space no one can hear you scream about whether mirrorless or DSLR is better! 

Simply put, now that Artemis II has been around the Moon and back with a DSLR on board, I believe there’s no longer any reason on Earth to have that debate.

The launch of the Artemis II could be seen from as far as around 150 miles (240 km) away, but the landing for the historic moon mission was a view that few managed to witness. But, a new video shared by NASA is showing how photographers managed to capture the historic event around 40-50 miles off the coast of San Diego: out the open door of a helicopter.

This week, NASA shared a behind-the-scenes video, captured by photographer Josh Valcarcel, of how a team of photographers captured the splashdown. The video has already gained more than 100,000 likes in a day.

The footage shows the photographers gearing up, boarding a helicopter, and taking off from a ship. Hovering over the Pacific Ocean, the crew opened the helicopter door to shoot out the window with the Nikon Z9 and Z 800mm f/6.3 VR lens.

Several NASA photographers were able to witness the splashdown, with official images from NASA carrying several photo credits, including Bill Ingalls, James Blair, and Valcarcel. Valcarcel was also the photographer behind the official crew portrait of the four astronauts in 2023.

Like the astronauts on board the Orion space capsule, the photos’ metadata indicates that the decade-old Nikon D5 with an 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens was also responsible for some of the images of the landing, along with the Z9 mirrorless camera.

The four astronauts – NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glove, and Christina Koch with Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen – splashed down safely on April 10, completing a nearly ten-day mission that orbited along the far side of the moon.

The Artemis II mission included several historic firsts, sending humans on the farthest space journey yet. The mission has already led to a number of iconic photographs, from the Earth with an aurora at both poles, the Earth rising over the lunar surface, and a total solar eclipse seen from space.

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Craving more lighthearted Artemis II news? Watch this relatable video of loosing a memory card in microgravity.

Credit: NASA via r/ArtemisProgram

I've never changed memory cards in microgravity, but I can't stop laughing at a viral 15-second video clip from Artemis II that shows even something as simple as swapping cards can be a challenge in space.

During a livestream. Astronaut Christina Koch, floating inside NASA's Orion capsule during the Artemis II lunar flyby, ejects a memory card from her Nikon in the background. The camera's memory card eject feature proved to be a little too powerful for microgravity, and it shoots away from her in the weightless cabin. For a brief, slightly comic moment, she has to chase it down before it vanishes somewhere inside the spacecraft.

It made me laugh. Then it made me think. We obsess over cameras and lenses, but storage is what actually holds the image once you've made it. Most of us choose it on price and write speed, then stop thinking about it. The experiences of the astronauts on the Artemis II mission are a prompt to think harder.

What kit were they using?

The crew flew with Nikon D5 bodies as their primary cameras, a choice that reflects NASA's preference for proven, battle-hardened equipment over the latest technology. A Nikon Z9 was also brought along for evaluation and to use for higher-resolution video and stills, but the workhorse was the D5: a body launched in 2016 and still trustworthy when the stakes could not be higher.

The card that was shot out in the clip was almost certainly a CompactFlash model, based on the D5's slot configuration and serial number data visible in the mission's EXIF files. The more significant story, however, involves the Z9 and the CFexpress Type B cards chosen to go with it.

ProGrade Digital entered into a formal Space Act agreement with NASA to supply CFexpress Type B Iridium cards for the Artemis program. These are not special space-only products, though; the 400GB version used on the mission is currently available on Amazon for $459.99. What makes them different is what they went through to get there.

The cards were subjected to extreme temperature cycling, radiation exposure and sustained performance testing over 18 months, in partnership with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and memory chip supplier Phison Electronics. The radiation element was obviously a big concern. Cosmic rays can corrupt individual bits of stored data, and the longer storage media spends beyond Earth's protective magnetosphere, the greater the cumulative risk.

The 400GB Iridium delivers read speeds of up to 3,550MB/s and sustained write speeds of 850MB/s. That sustained write figure is the one that matters most: burst speed is easy to advertise, but sustained performance under continuous load is what separates reliable professional cards from everything else.

Why this matters 

Of course, you don't need to be on a spaceship to care about the reliability of your storage. Cards fail on assignment, in the rain, in the heat, at high altitude, and typically at the worst possible moment. That doesn't mean you should spend $459.99 on a CFexpress card for your nephew's soccer game. But it does sharpen the question of whether the cheapest card is a false economy.

Speed ratings are testable; environmental durability is much harder to verify. Space qualification is an extreme benchmark, but it is at least a real one, and right now it belongs to a card you can order this afternoon.

Most of us will never shoot in zero gravity or worry about cosmic ray interference. But the next time you're reaching for the cheapest card on the shelf, it's worth remembering that the astronauts circling the Moon had to think about the same question you're glossing over. Knowing that, in their case, they couldn't just send for a firmware update and hope for the best.

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It’s almost 36 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched and NASA continues to blow minds with the unbelievable and often iconic images captured by the device.

The latest of these to be shared by the space agency is of IC 486, a barred spiral galaxy that sits at the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), roughly 380 million light-years from Earth, far beyond any distance the human mind can imagine.

To try to put this into context, it would take a spaceship travelling at the speed of light close to 5 million human lifetimes to reach the galaxy.

NASA has classified IC 486 as a barred spiral galaxy due to the central bar-shaped structure from which its spiral arms stem. Within the centre of the bar lies IC 486’s active galactic nucleus (AGN), which emits a glowing white light NASA has described as “ethereal”.

As if IC 486 wasn’t already mind-boggling enough, powering its AGN is a supermassive black hole more than 100 million times the mass of our Sun.

An accretion disk – a swirling mass of cosmic gas and dust – revolves around the black hole and generates, what NASA describes as “intense radiation”, including X-rays, responsible for the “ethereal” light that outshines the rest of the galaxy.

This latest Hubble image was pieced together using data from two separate observations that survey nearby galaxies to record high-quality images of their central black holes and the stars near their cores.

NASA combined Hubble’s imaging capabilities with the survey data to create “detailed comparisons” of how stars, gas, dust, and black holes interact in galaxy centers.

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For a blissful 10 days, the biggest stories in my feeds were not politics or natural disasters, but iconic photographs of the Earth, craters named Carroll, and broken toilets 252,756 miles from the nearest plumber. The Artemis II mission took humans the farthest from Earth in history, and, thanks to the power of photographs and videos, the world was able to watch.

I’m enamoured with the photographs that Artemis II captured between the April 1 launch and the safe splashdown on April 10. Of course, Artemis II isn’t The World’s Most Expensive Photography Trip – it was a scientific expedition that will answer key questions on the health of astronauts beyond low Earth orbit, the geology and history of the Moon, a test run for key space tech, and other research.

While the primary goal of Artemis II may not have been to take epic photographs, the historic space flight illustrates the power of photographs and video to create connections and unity. I feel as if the entire Earth laughed at the floating jar of Nutella, cried after a crater named Carroll after Commander Reed Wiseman’s late wife, and celebrated the diversity of the team celebrating the mission on the ground.

Only four humans could fit on the Orion spacecraft that circled the moon. But thanks to the power of photographs and videos, the world was able to watch and get a taste of what it may be like exploring beyond our home planet. Photographs show what Earth looks like beyond orbit, what it’s like to experience a total solar eclipse from the far side of the moon, and what it’s like to view the stars without the interference of atmosphere and light pollution.

Breaking the record for the farthest distance from Earth ever traveled by humans also means Artemis II broke the record for the longest distance livestream. While the record-breaking distance is notable, what united viewers wasn’t the number, but the astronauts' naming a crater Carroll and, in a more lighthearted moment, a floating jar of Nutella – both moments from the livestream that went viral on social media.

Not all of the viral Artemis II photographs happened in deep space either – one image of the scientists inside the Science Evaluation Room celebrating Artemis II’s record-breaking distance went viral after viewers noticed the number of women in the room.

Photographs – and videos – carry the power to create shared experiences. With cameras, the humans who have never left orbit could see what the astronauts saw. I will probably never experience what it’s like to float in microgravity, but thanks to the power of a photograph, I can see the far side of the moon and see what Earth looks like with the aurora dancing at both poles.

The Artemis II photos are not the only deep-space photos to unite humans across borders. A photo of the Earth taken in 1968 on Apollo 8 is largely credited with sparking Earth Day for its view of our fragile planet rising over the surface of the moon.

Artemis II made history, but thanks to cameras, humans were able to share in those history-making moments.

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As a photographer, I think these are the best photos from Artemis II. Or, take a look at the best cameras for astrophotography.

The crew list for the Artemis II includes a commander, pilot, and two mission specialists – but while “photographer” may not be one of the titles, photography was very much part of the first human mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. Artemis II photographs are the intersection of science and art, serving as both a tool for observations and iconic works of art at the same time.

During the livestream of the flyby around the dark side of the Moon, the Artemis II crew estimated they had taken around 10,000 photos of the Moon. NASA says that the Orion has 32 cameras on board – eliminating the cameras that are fixed in place, the crew has 17 photo-taking devices to work with. That includes the main camera, a Nikon D5 DSLR, along with a Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera, GoPros, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

As a photographer who loves to dabble in photographing the stars and the northern lights, I’ve been watching the photos sent back from Orion with fascination. Hearing the crew had 10,000 photos feels rather like coming home from photographing a wedding and realizing how many photos I have to go through. And the gear on board? It includes a 10-year-old DSLR and a nearly 12-year-old GoPro as well as a newer mirrorless and smartphone – so I feel less bad that the camera in my bag is one generation old.

NASA has gradually been releasing some of the Artemis II photos, but many more will likely arrive after the crew’s expected splashdown Friday evening, estimated for just after 8 PM ET on April 10.

As a photographer, I think these are the best photos coming back from the Artemis II mission so far.

Earthset

This photograph of the Earth "setting" over the lunar surface is one that I was hoping to see among the Artemis II photos because it recreates an iconic 1968 photo from Apollo 8. That historic space photo is credited with inspiring Earth Day and uniting a divided planet amid the Vietnam War with its awestruck view of our planet.

Keeper of the Night Sky

I love this photo because it shows both the side of the Moon that we can see from Earth and the side that's only visible with space travel. The dark patches at the top are created from ancient lava, NASA says. Those dark patches are the near side of the Moon that we can see from Earth (Ironic that the "dark side" of the Moon is actually lighter). Underneath that large dark patch is part of the side of the Moon that's not visible from Earth. That large crater is called the Orientale basin.

Artemis II in Eclipse

On Earth, the totality phase of a solar eclipse usually lasts for only a few minutes, but Artemis II astronauts experienced nearly an hour of totality, allowing for iconic photos like this one. Scientists are actually still debating whether the halo around the Moon is the sun's corona, zodiacal light, or a mix of both – but as a photographer, I love how the Moon is softly lit just enough to see a few craters, but you can still see the stars in the distance.

Shadows at the Edge of Lunar Day

Photography is all about light – and this Moon close-up is the perfect example of how much difference light can make. The harsh, directional light adds depth and drama to this close-up, but the light also helps the Artemis II astronauts observe the Moon's topography in more detail.

Starstruck

The Earth's atmosphere (and light pollution) interferes with how many stars we can see from Earth. This photo, taken on Orion on April 7, shows a dazzling view of the Milky Way. One of the Artemis II astronauts snapped this photo with the Nikon Z9 and a 35mm lens.

An Orion selfie

Okay, so this photo is far from perfect – it's overexposed and hazy. But look closer, and you can see the astronauts looking out the windows of Orion! I'll forgive the exposure errors for that, after all, this was taken with an 11-year-old GoPro Hero4 Black mounted outside Orion.

Solar Eclipse of the Heart

That's not to say that an 11-year-old GoPro can't take great pictures. This photo, taken during the eclipse that the astronauts experienced, is phenomenal. It shows both the Orion and the Moon and even manages to catch a few stars. Not bad low-light image quality coming from an older action camera.

The lines between night and day

These two images, one of the Earth and one of the Moon, show what the split between night and day looks like from space. I love how similar these two photos are, despite having entirely different subjects.

A Room With A View

While the photos coming from Artemis II are impressive, what's most unique is that these photos are coming from human hands, not unmanned space probes. This photo out the window of the Orion is a reminder that the Artemis II is a very human space experience.

A selfie with Earth

NASA only recently approved smartphones for space. This photo of Mission Specialist Christina Koch was shot on an iPhone 17 Pro Max with the front camera. This photo captures the awe of a human leaving Earth, all from a camera that feels very appropriate for our generation.

Hello, World

Look closely at this one, and you can see both the northern and southern lights in one shot! I think this a pretty amazing view of Earth, which the Artemis II captured early in the mission.

Epic infrared shots of the launch

I love seeing all the different perspectives of the launch from so many cameras – but NASA's infrared images have an otherworldly feel that's entirely appropriate for the subject. Infrared cameras work with infrared rather than visible light, so these shots reveal details that the visible light shots did not. The photo of the rocket boosters separating from the core stage has a lot more detail visible than the similar shots taken with more traditional cameras.

A long exposure launch

The Space Launch System carrying Orion went from 0 to 17,000 mph in just eight minutes. This photograph is a three-minute exposure, so it shows the path of the spacecraft across the sky.

A launch close-up

I look at shots like this and I have to wonder...were any cameras melted in the making of this shot? Hopefully, this was a remote camera with a long lens that was unharmed during the launch, but either way, this close-up of lift-off is rather epic.

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Humans have orbited the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. But besides the advances in space tech between Apollo 11 in 1969 and Artemis II in 2026, there’s another key technological change between those two launches: Artificial intelligence.

According to fact checks from mutlipe news outlets, including BBC and CBC, viral photos and videos circulating online claiming that Artemis II footage is fake are themselves AI-generated fakes.

Photos from TikTok show the four astronauts wearing a harness system in front of a green screen. But when the BBC ran the photos through Google’s SynthID AI check, which reads embedded watermarks on Gemini’s AI creations, the tool said that those green screen photos were generated with Google AI.

Eagle-eyed viewers watching a CNN interview with the astronauts that aired earlier this week found unusual text overlaid on a floating gravity toy named Rise, leading some to call the video out as an AI fake. However, an analysis showed that those artifacts didn’t appear on the original footage – BBC’s verify team says that the unusual text artifacts were not a green screen error or a sign of AI, but a glitch in the tool used to place text over video footage recorded in camera.

One survey of US adults from 2021 suggests that 12 percent of Americans believe that NASA did not land on the moon in 1969, while another 17 percent responded as “unsure.”

Fake photos being used to claim a historic event was faked is ironic, yes, but also a key example of living in the AI era. Photographs could be faked before the age of AI, but the ease at which anyone with a keyboard can create a fake image is increasing distrust over the credibility of photographs. One survey from 2025 found that 82 percent of respondents said their confidence in media has decreased as a result of AI-generated content.

NASA has been sharing photographs taken on the Artemis II mission since the Orion launched on April 1. Metadata from photographs shared from official NASA channels show photographs that were taken with the Nikon D5 DSLR, the Z9 mirrorless camera, an iPhone 17 Pro Max, and even a nearly 12-year-old GoPro.

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NASA has enough technology to send humans around the moon – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Artemis II is outfitted with the latest camera technology. Among the 32 cameras aboard, at least one of them is a GoPro Hero4 Black, which launched in October 2014.

The insight comes from the metadata attached to the photos the Artemis II crew have sent back to Earth, which shows that the photos showing part of the Orion spacecraft were captured on a GoPro Hero4 Black. To put things in perspective, the Hero4 is from back when GoPros needed extra housing to actually be waterproof and topped out at 4K 30fps and 12MP stills.

The Hero4 isn’t the only older camera that the Artemis II is using. The crew’s main camera is a Nikon D5, a decade-old DSLR, though a mirrorless Z9 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max are also responsible for some of the Artemis II images. Orion is outfitted with 32 cameras, NASA says.

Getting a camera approved for space isn’t as simple as going to an electronics store. The cameras aboard the Artemis II spaceflight need to be able to withstand the rigours of space, including microgravity and increased radiation. Temperature swings and radiation can damage electronics, and the last place you want to experience a camera failure is on a history-making space mission.

Cameras mounted on the outside of the Orion need to withstand even more, as the friction as the Orion re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere will create excessive heat. According to GoPro, four specially modified GoPros are mounted outside the Orion on the solar array wings. Besides beaming back images that show the spacecraft with the moon and Earth in the distance, the cameras are also used for the crew to visually inspect the exterior of the spacecraft.

When GoPro shared that four cameras were mounted outside Orion and that several were also inside as part of a National Geographic project documenting the daily life during the mission, the company hadn’t shared which GoPros made it aboard. Now, thanks to the metadata attached to images, we know that at least one of those GoPros is an older Hero4 Black.

The older DSLRs and GoPros are likely on board because the cameras have already been proven in space on previous space excursions to the International Space Station. While a more modern Nikon Z9 managed to make it aboard the mission last minute, Nikon has been working with NASA on a modified Z9 since 2024, originally aiming to use the camera with Artemis III – though it’s unclear if the Z9 aboard the Artemis II is a modified one.

I can remember just a few years ago telling someone that I still had the Hero4, and how baffled they were that I still had such an “old” camera. I’ve since updated to the Hero12 Black. But NASA’s use of older cameras serves as a reminder that getting great images doesn’t require updating every time a new model comes out. That should make photographers who have older gear in their bags feel a lot less pressure to upgrade.

While it’s undoubtedly important that the crew has a full-frame camera with a wide dynamic range, excellent low-light performance, and a 400mm zoom to closely inspect the dark side of the moon, an older rugged GoPro is still sending back rather epic-looking images from the mission.

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Traveling around the dark side of the moon means experiencing a solar eclipse not visible from Earth – and that’s the view that four astronauts were treated to on Monday, April 6, during the historic Artemis II spaceflight. Now, the crew has begun sharing some of those images, including photographs that show what a solar eclipse looks like from space.

The crew aboard the Orion space capsule experienced about 54 minutes of totality along the Artemis II flightpath around the dark side of the moon. That left far more time to take photos of the eclipse than the typical few minutes of totality during the solar eclipses that can be viewed from Earth. Now, NASA has begun sharing photos of what those four astronauts saw out of Orion’s windows.

This image, shot by the Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera with a 35mm lens, shows a wide view of the eclipse, showing the sun’s corona creating a halo around the moon. Covering up the sun also makes the stars pop in the image – which are often too faint to see when imaging the moon, NASA says.

On the left side of the moon, there’s enough light to see some details of the craters on the Moon’s surface. NASA explains this light is actually sunlight reflected off the Earth, hitting the moon, showing glimpses of the near side of the moon that can be seen from Earth.

Getting in a little closer, this shot taken with the Nikon D5 and 80-400mm lens – the same camera-lens combo that just recreated the iconic 1968 Earthrise photo with a 2026 Earthset image – shows not just the eclipse, but Jupiter in the distance. Like in the shot from the Z9, reflected light from Earth offers some slight illumination to the Moon’s surface details.

Finally, NASA also shared a shot of the sun beginning to peek around the Moon as the crew’s 54 minutes of totality began to close.

Just like on Earth, the humans aboard Orion wore protective eclipse glasses to safely view the eclipse. And, in a true reflection of modern times, the crew took a selfie in those glasses with the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

While Artemis II may have a lot of high-end tech, these glasses are the same cardboard glasses NASA made for viewing the 2023 eclipse on Earth. NASA says that this was the first time eclipse glasses have been used to view a solar eclipse from space, adding another first in the long list of historic Aretmis II accomplishments, including the furthest humans have ever traveled into space.

The astronauts were only able to view a solar eclipse by traveling to the dark side of the moon – the next time humans will be able to see a solar eclipse from Earth is on August 12, 2026, when parts of Europe, including sections of Russia, Greenland, Iceland, Portugal and Spain, will be in the path of totality. It’s the first time a total solar eclipse will be visible from mainland Europe since 1999.

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Aretmis II astronauts have managed to recreate one of the most iconic space photos in history, as the crew aboard Orion beams back images from the historic lunar flyby. “Earthset” is a photograph taken out one of the Orion spacecraft windows that shows a “crescent” Earth setting over a darkened lunar surface.

The photograph, captured with a Nikon D5 DSLR and a 80-400mm lens, recreates one of the most iconic space images in history, mirroring the 1968 “Earthrise” photo taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders with a Hasselblad film camera and 250mm lens.

While the original 1968 photo was of the Earth rising over the moon, the Artemis II images captures the Earth “setting” over the surface of the moon. In the image, the sun lights up only a portion of the Earth, giving our home planet the shape of a crescent Moon, while the dark side of the moon fills the foreground.

Recreating the iconic 1968 photograph was on the Artemis II crew’s planned to-do list, and despite being farther from the moon than Apollo 8 – setting a record for the furthest humans have ever traveled into space – the new photograph mirrors the original.

Differences in the Artemis II paths and the moon phases means the Moon isn’t lit in the 2026 photo like it is in the 1968 image. Despite this, and the image only being a few hours old, I fully expect the new Earthset photograph to be just as historic as the original.

While the photograph was taken in orbit, the 400mm zoom lens makes the viewer feel as if they are standing on the moon and looking back on Earth. The 1968 photograph was taken during the Vietnam War and is thought to have helped spark a worldwide environmental movement, leading to the creation of Earth Day.

The photograph was captured on April 6 at 6:41 PM EDT through one of Orion’s windows. The lit portion of the Earth shows swirling clouds over Australia and Oceania, NASA notes. On the surface of the moon, the Ohm crater is visible. The photo was shared on Flickr – and NASA hasn’t yet noted which of the four astronauts on board took the photo.

The image was captured with a Nikon D5 – a DSLR that’s now ten years old – and an 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens. That’s a far cry from the medium format film Hasselblad 500 EL that captured the original image, demonstrating the technology shift over the last 58 years.

One of the things that speaks to the changes in technology is how detailed the surface of the moon is in the modern 2026 photograph. In the original photo, the portion of the moon in the foreground was lit, but the Artemis II shot depicts a dark portion of the moon. Despite that, there are still plenty of details in the shadowy moon, without overexposing the Earth in the distance.

The image speaks to the dynamic range – the range of light a camera can capture without overexposing the brightest portions or underexposing the shadows – of modern cameras, despite being taken with a decade old DSLR.

The Artemis II flight has 32 cameras on board – and 17 of those are handheld devices, including Nikon D5 DSLRs, a Nikon Z9, GoPros and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Much like many modern photographers, the astronauts appear to be taing images with both the high-end interchangeable lens cameras and the smartphones, as Commander Reid Weismann shared a photo he took on the iPhone during a livestream.

Along with the new but iconic Earthset photograph, the crew aboard the Orion has also shared detailed close-ups of the lunar surface from the path along the dark side of the moon. The crew will likely have an even larger wealth of photographs to share after the scheduled splashdown on Friday, April 10.

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NASA publishes a lot of videos of a launch, as it did with the historic Artemis II launch on April 1, but my favourite clip of the launch has to be the one captured from an officially-hired small plane, a Cessna, which orbited the launch pad.

With the unengaging name 'Cam 11 View' in this compilation of every shot of the launch of the SLS (19:32), the camera tracks the rocket from the pad all the way through Max-Q, Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) separation, and beyond – all shot from a camera on board a plane with no more than 14 seats.

If you're used to reading my material, it won't surprise you at all – the footage from this view looks a lot like the kind you get from a drone (and, indeed, if it were a model rocket you might get something similar with one of the best camera drones and a subject tracking feature, but of course Artemis II was no model.

The SLS rocket took a crew of four people further from the Earth than any humans had ever travelled, around the far side of the moon, from where they are now headed home and are scheduled to land on April 10.

More or less the end of the shot – with the SLS 78 miles from its launch – was the separation of the Launch Abort System, the tiny rocket from the top of the craft which could be used in an emergency to pull the relatively tiny personnel module (Orion) off the top of the 322ft (98.1m) tall rocket (that, incidentally, is 17ft taller than the Statue of Liberty).

It takes just eight minutes for the Artemis 2 SLS to burn through all its fuel, and with around 8.8 million pounds of thrust it is the most powerful NASA has ever launched – that despite still being slightly shorter than the Saturn V used during the original moon landing missions (that ship had around 7.5 million pounds of thrust).

Incidentally, one of the many reasons NASA didn't just fish out 50-year-old plans (apart from the very real fact you literally can't get the parts these days), is that the new SLS is designed to be more powerful and adaptable than the Saturn V.

That's pretty exciting for a space nerd like me who has watched the design make its way to reality through the Constellation program and into Artemis because, deep down, I've grown up wanting humanity to head back to space.

I do not expect to be an astronaut myself, but flying drones has been as close as I thought likely, and getting great orbiting images is part of that. Doing so is something that even the best beginner drones can help you achieve now thanks to AI subject tracking.

Oh, you don't need a rocket as your subject either – orbiting works for someone walking, running or cycling just as easily! It just helps add drama, as is so obvious in this brilliant NASA shot – though here, of course, the Cessna is a fixed-wing aeroplane so the circular movement is essential to keep the plane in the air.

It wasn't, incidentally, the NASA-painted Cessna doing the flight on the day, just one the agency hired for the job.

The Cessna Caravan, or 'Model 208' is a single-engine plane with enough room in the back for 10-14 passengers (or some camera gear) and was seen flying circles around the launch site by enthusiasts checking FlightRadar.

The astronauts aboard the Artemis II have the opportunity to try to recreate one of the most iconic space photos of all time – but despite having an arsenal of camera tech on board, recreating the iconic “Earthrise” photo likely won’t be easy, despite the tech differences between 2026 and 1968.

NASA says that Orion has 32 cameras aboard the Artemis II historic flight set to orbit the far side of the moon today, March 6, before returning to Earth. Eliminating the cameras that are mounted on the spacecraft itself, and the four astronauts aboard have 17 handheld photo-taking devices at their disposal, including Nikon D5 DSLRs, a Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera, GoPros, and smartphones.

The camera tech that the Artmis II crew has access to is a far cry from the Hasselblad film camera and 250mm lens that Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders used to capture the iconic Earthrise photo in 1968. The advancement in camera tech would make it seem like Artemis II pilots have a better chance of capturing a 2026 Earthrise on camera, but while the astronauts have a camera advantage, flight logistics will make recreating the photo a challenge.

When astronauts took the Earthrise photo in 1968, it was a spur-of-the-moment shot that happened after Anders spotted the Earth coming up as the crew made their way around the far side of the moon. Anders had to swap cameras because he had black-and-white film loaded, but was able to take what’s now an iconic image of the Earth “rising” over the surface of the moon.

But Apollo 8 orbited the moon ten times. The Artemis II has only one chance to recreate the image, as Orion is only circling the back side of the moon once. If you count both “earthrise” and “earthset,” the astronauts will have two chances to recreate a similar photo towards the beginning and the end of their time on the far side of the moon.

The crew will only have a few minutes to catch a similar view of the moon and Earth together, and the four-person crew has to get the shot while working in microgravity in a space that’s only about the size of two minivans.

Artemis II will also be farther from the moon than Apollo 8 – the Artemis II flight path is up to 100 times higher than the 60 miles from the lunar surface that resulted in the original image. Thankfully, the astronauts have an 80-400mm telephoto lens aboard, which may help cover some of that distance, as the original image was taken with a 250mm telephoto lens. The difference between a medium format film camera and full-frame D5 and Z9 cameras will also help the lens crop in closer.

Another key difference? The far side of the moon may only be partially lit as the Orion space capsule travels on the far side of the moon, which means the surface of the moon in a recreated photo will likely look different than the well-lit surface in the 1968 image.

The original Earthrise image isn’t just iconic because of the view of the Earth rising over the moon – it also helped unify a planet that was divided during the Vietnam War. The world is watching Artemis II in similar political tension – another iconic photo could serve as a visual reminder of our fragile planet that crosses language barriers.

Whether or not Artemis II manages to take a similar shot, the crew has already been sending back iconic images from the historic spaceflight, including a shot of Earth that shows both the northern and southern lights at once and some of the first smartphone space photos, as personal smartphones were only recently approved for space flight.

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NASA has done something many people do: strapped on a GoPro when about to do something really cool.

More than 50 years have passed since humans have traveled to the moon for the sake of science – but beyond the space tech itself, the cameras the astronauts are using aboard Artemis II are wildly different than the Hasselblads that were abandoned on the lunar surface in 1969.

Between the GoPros and smartphones to the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras aboard the first manned mission towards the moon in over 50 years, the list of cameras aboard Artemis II reads nearly like a dossier on modern camera categories. It begs the question, could Artemis II be the most photographed human spaceflight in history?

There are at least 28 cameras aboard – and strapped to the outside – of the Orion for the Artemis II mission. That list includes cameras mounted to the spacecraft’s exterior and interior, as well as handheld cameras that the four astronauts aboard will use. (The unmanned Artemis I used 24 cameras.)

NASA astronauts trained with the Nikon D5. While it may seem strange to pack a ten-year-old DSLR on such a high-tech space flight, the D5 has already been used in space, so researchers were confident that the D5 could withstand the higher radiation and zero gravity of the space flight.

NASA astronauts did manage to get a more modern camera aboard ahead of the April 1 launch: A mirrorless Nikon Z9. While the Z9 doesn’t have the space history of the D5, Nikon says the Z9 is being prepped to be used aboard the Artemis III mission as well.

GoPro says that multiple action cameras are part of the Artemis II mission. That includes modified GoPros strapped to the outside of the Orion on the solar array wings, where they’ll record images of the spacecraft, Earth, and Moon. How’s that for a durability test?

The astronauts will also be using GoPros to record daily life aboard the mission, which will be used for a National Geographic project called Return to the Moon. National Geographic helped train the astronauts on using the POV cameras, so the four humans aboard will not only be filling their NASA roles but also acting as filmmakers during the duration of the approximately 10-day space flight.

Earlier this year, NASA approved the use of personal smartphones in space – marking Artemis II one of the first missions where astronauts also brought smartphones.

It’s unclear yet if the 28+ cameras aboard the Orion for the Artemis II mission are a space record – but I suspect by the completion, the mission could be one of the most documented human moon missions in history. After all, the last time humans orbited the moon in 1972, astronauts were still using film.

The archives for all of the Apollo missions combined contain around 8,400 images. I wonder how many images and videos the four astronauts aboard the Artemis II will take?

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New tech often dominates the headlines, but a recent photo series shared by NASA is only possible because of the tech’s age. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has re-shot a photo of the colorful Crab Nebula 25 years later, creating a series of images that illustrate how rapidly the night sky can change.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit since 1999, making it the oldest space telescope still in service. That longevity allows the telescope to make direct comparisons over time.

In 1999, Hubble photographed the Crab Nebula, a remnant of a supernova that humans first took note of in 1054 as a star that was so bright it was temporarily visible during the day.

But, the Hubble photographed the Crab Nebula again in 2024, and the newly released comparison images are giving scientists insights into how the nebula has changed over time. “Hubble is the only telescope with the combination of longevity and resolution capable of capturing these detailed changes,” NASA wrote.

Comparing the two images shows how the Crab Nebula has expanded outward – at a rate of 3.4 million miles per hour. But, to scientists, changes in color speak to changes in temperature and the composition of the gases

“We tend to think of the sky as being unchanging, immutable,” said William Blair, an astronomer with Johns Hopkins University and the study’s lead author. “However, with the longevity of the Hubble Space Telescope, even an object like the Crab Nebula is revealed to be in motion, still expanding from the explosion nearly a millennium ago."

Video credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, William Blair (JHU) / Video: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

While the Hubble Space Telescope is now 35 years old, the telescope's cameras have been updated over the years by astronauts, the last one being the Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009. That means the comparison images are also giving researchers a reminder of how the tech and camera resolution have changed from the 1999 photograph to the one shot in 2024.

That’s pretty good considering NASA originally expected the Hubble to have a 15-year lifespan! Researchers are continuing to study the data, including comparing the images to the infrared light images of the same nebula shot with the James Webb Space Telescope.

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The camera in your pocket is hiding tech that was originally made for outer space. The sensor that is now widely used in most smartphone cameras, compact cameras, and mirrorless cameras – the “camera-on-a-chip” CMOS Active Pixel sensor – actually got its start inside a NASA lab.

Before CMOS sensors, digital cameras used charge-coupled devices or CCD sensors. This classic sensor design gathers light from the pixels and sends it to an amplifier in order to convert energy from the light into a digital photograph.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tasked Dr. Eric Fossum with advancing the existing CCD sensor for use in outer space in the early 90s. Instead, Fossum ended up taking a tech from CCD and applying it to CMOS sensors, creating the type of sensor called a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor, or “camera-on-a-chip,” that’s now used in the majority of modern cameras.

The issue with CCD sensors wasn’t image quality – in fact, the format was known to create images with less noise than CMOS, at least at the time. But, CCD sensors are power-hungry, a challenge when developing digital cameras to outfit tech like the Hubble Space Telescope, which uses CCD sensors.

What Fossum did was take a CCD tech called “intra-pixel charge transfer with correlated double sampling” and apply it to CMOS technology. The resulting sensor measured light twice, and by subtracting the two values, corrected the noise issue that early CMOS sensors were known for.

The change wasn’t just about image quality, though. The change also helped the CMOS sensors to better withstand radiation and also required less power to run – both key features for a camera designed to be sent to space. The tech also decreased the size and increased the speed of digital imaging.

Today, this tech is behind a number of photographs taken from space – but the CMOS Active Pixel Sensor originally launched from a NASA research project is also now the most common type of digital sensor inside smartphones, compact cameras, and mirrorless cameras, with an estimated 7 billion of these sensors created every year.

The research recently earned Fossom the 2026 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering – and created the tech that’s now in many pockets.

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NASA has detected a precursor or progenitor to a supernova for the first time – and it's all thanks to old photos. Researchers have now been able to study some of a supernova's progression by comparing images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

The star, designated 2025pht, was located in the galaxy NGC 1637 and died some 40 million years ago. It took the light from the cosmic explosion this long to reach the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) – NASA’s multi-telescope system for detecting supernovae.

Researchers first spotted the supernova in June of 2025, but, most importantly, the exploding star is in a region that the telescope has photographed before. Researchers then got to work identifying the progenitor – the star that died – by aligning and analyzing archive images of Galaxy NGC 1637 taken by the Hubble and James Webb telescopes before it exploded. It's the first time that a supernova progenitor has been photographed by Webb, NASA says.

NASA has photographed a supernova before, but this time, researchers had old photos to use as a reference and gather data about what happened before the star became a supernova.

"We’ve been waiting for this to happen – for a supernova to explode in a galaxy that Webb had already observed," explained the study's lead author, Charlie Kilpatrick of Northwestern University. "We combined Hubble and Webb data sets to completely characterize this star for the first time,”

The researchers found that the supernova progenitor star was a “surprisingly red” supergiant in 2024, indicating that it was surrounded by dust blocking shorter wavelength blue light.

“It’s the reddest, most dusty red supergiant that we’ve seen explode as a supernova,” said graduate student and co-author of the results paper published on the analysis, Aswin Suresh of Northwestern University.

The James Webb Telescope uses a MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) to create images of the night sky.

NIRCam observes near-infrared light with wavelengths (0.6–5 microns) slightly longer than those of visible light to capture crisp images of stars and early galaxies, while MIRI observes longer mid-infrared wavelengths (5–28 microns) to detect cooler cosmic dust, gas, and proto-stars.

NASA launched the James Webb Telescope in 2021 with the mission of studying “every phase of the history of the universe” from the Big Bang to the formation of solar systems that can support life.

Since then, the telescope has captured unbelievable images, including of the most distant galaxy ever photographed and previously undiscovered planets.

Earlier this year, NASA announced it'll launch a new space telescope by May 2027. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will boast a 288MP camera and work in collaboration with James Webb to reveal ”billions of stars, hundreds of black holes and hundreds of forming planetary systems."

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A landmark giant tortoise reintroduction program on the Galápagos Islands used NASA satellite data and aerial imagery to help scientists pinpoint the perfect location for the reptiles’ release. It’s been roughly 180 years since the Floreana giant tortoise was driven to extinction due to over hunting and habit loss. The Floreana giant tortoise is famous for having been witnessed by Charles Darwin himself, where the species was already said to be in steep decline.

However, a long-term conservation program has put relatives of these incredible reptiles back on home soil for the first time since the mid-1800s. I say relatives, because they aren’t pure Floreana giant tortoises. Instead, they’re bred from descendants of the Floreana giant tortoise, first discovered by scientists including Dr. James Gibbs in 2000 at Isabela Island’s Wolf Volcano. Despite thinking that the Floreana line was all but extinct, these tortoises were found to have “significant Floreana ancestry.”

Fast forward to February 20 of this year and a total of 158 tortoises from the Santa Cruz Island breeding center were reintroduced to Floreana Island, some 180 years since the Floreana giant tortoise went extinct. But finding a suitable home for the tortoises on the archipelago wasn’t taken lightly. Scientists scrutinized the Galápagos Islands for the perfect locations to give the tortoises the best chance of thriving in their new home. That’s where NASA comes in.

Combining NASA satellite data with field observations, the team of scientists were able to map Galápagos’ environmental conditions, while also tracking the islands’ vegetation, moisture and temperature shifts. All vital information to ensure that the 158 reptiles could sustain themselves, longterm. Dr Gibbs, along with principal investigator Giorgos Mountrakis and their team used the data to form a decision tool to calculate habitat suitability and Floreana Island came out on top.

According to NASA, the scientists’ decision tool uses multiple NASA and partner satellite missions to gather data, as well as high-resolution commercial satellite imagery via NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program, used to identify potential locations prior to dispatching personnel for field observation.

But this data doesn’t just allow the scientists to pinpoint suitable locations now, it allows them to forecast the suitability of locations well into the future. This is crucial in providing the tortoises with the best chance of success. As Mountrakis told NASA: “This isn’t a one-year project. We’re looking at where tortoises will succeed 20, 40 years from now.”

And the work isn’t done. The Floreana Ecological Restoration Project aims to remove invasive predators and ultimately reintroduce 12 native species back onto the island, with NASA satellite data playing a crucial role in future conservation efforts.

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If you’re into wildlife conservation then you’ll no doubt be interested to find out about a cheap underwater camera that recorded a deep-sea creature that’s likely never been filmed alive. On the subject of rare encounters, here’s another suspected world first: an underwater camera filmed a shark in the Antarctic Ocean. And if you’re looking for nature photography gear, here are the best cameras for wildlife photography.

Imagine being given the task of shooting a video of something invisible: Wind. The challenge is both common and integral enough that NASA tasked itself with building a camera up to the task – and it works using polarization.

The Self-Aligned Focusing Schlieren, or SAFS for short, is a camera that can see air movement, an essential tool that helps scientists and engineers look at the airflow around plans, rockets, and other vehicles.

Research into the SAFS dates back to 2020 from NASA’s Langley Research Center, but NASA has recently shared a glimpse at what the tech looks like, now that the technology has won several awards, including the 2025 NASA Government of the Year. Why did a camera earn the highest award that NASA honors new tech with? The system allows engineers to study aerodynamics with a much simpler, low-cost setup than earlier methods.

The key to the SAFS success is actually related to something already in many photographers' bags: a polarizing filter. The system is, of course, a bit more complex than twisting a polarizer filter onto a camera lens, but the camera is actually built using a “commercial-off-the-shelf camera” and mounted much like an oversized lens.

Earlier methods of visualizing wind used two precisely aligned screens and a special camera that could see air movement by detecting changes in the density. But, the earlier focused schlieren imaging demanded a level of precision that meant setup was a multi-day process that could be disrupted by an accidental bump.

The SAFS instead uses a single grid with polarization. Polarizers filter light that’s coming from specific directions, and integrating that concept has helped the camera to work without a secondary screen, condensing the setup time from weeks to minutes.

As a NASA patent explains, light passes through a condenser lens and a linear polarizer towards a beam splitter. The light passes through the single grid around the object being tested. A reflective background mirrors the light, which means the light is then passing the object a second time. The light then passes through the grid a second time before being captured by the camera.

If that sounds complicated, imagine how complex the previous system was. As NASA described the earlier method: “It’s the equivalent of lining up two window screens on opposite sides of a room so their patterns match exactly."

Now, NASA uses the technology to improve predictions on takeoff and landings for new aircraft, but, the system has been adopted beyond NASA, including in more than eight different countries.

“When researchers can see and understand air movement in ways that were previously difficult to achieve, it leads to better aircraft designs and safer flights for everyone,” said Brett Bathel, the co-inventor of the SAFS alongside Joshua Weisberger and a member of the team at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

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The Hubble Space Telescope may be more than 30 years old, but the orbiting telescope continues to outdo its old self. Case in point: the Hubble Space Telescope just captured its sharpest view yet of the Egg Nebula, a dying star located about 1,000 light-years away.

NASA shared the photo this week, showing the star surrounded by a freshly ejected cloud of stardust that is both artistic and scientific.

The Egg Nebula gets its name from the central star – which resembles a yolk – and its cloud of surrounding dust that looks like egg white. The star is highlighted both by rings of dust and two beams of light, creating an X shape.

While that light and dust creates an artistic shape, the image is also giving researchers clues to what’s happening to the pre-planetary nebula. The shape of the dust, NASA explains, hints at gravity from a hidden companion star (or perhaps stars plural) that are buried in the dust.

The Egg Nebula is not just in the pre-planetary stage – a transitional stage of gas and dust formed from a dying star – but is also the first, closest, and youngest of its kind. While the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the Egg Nebula before, the latest photo uses data from a 2012 image from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera to get an even clearer image.

“The symmetrical patterns captured by Hubble are too orderly to result from a violent explosion like a supernova,” NASA writes. “Instead, the arcs, lobes, and central dust cloud likely stem from a coordinated series of poorly understood sputtering events in the carbon-enriched core of the dying star.

“Aged stars like these forged and released the dust that eventually seeded future star systems, such as our own solar system, which coalesced into Earth and other rocky planets 4.5 billion years ago.”

The latest image, captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows both science and art in its structure.

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NASA is set to launch its latest mind-blowing space telescope, which the agency says will “expand our understanding of the universe".

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, officially slated for launch in May 2027, but on track to enter space from as early as fall 2026, will be NASA’s flagship telescope. NASA says it will reveal ”billions of stars, hundreds of black holes and hundreds of forming planetary systems".

In part, this will be achieved thanks to the Wide Field Instrument, a 288MP camera with the power to create images of our cosmos from the solar system almost the entire way to the edge of the observable universe.

The Wide Field Instrument will enable each of Roman's images to capture a section of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full moon – that’s to say, how big the moon appears to the human eye.

NASA says that the Roman and recently-launched James Webb telescopes will work together in different but complementary ways to “trace the evolution of the universe”.

Roman will scan larger portions of the universe, creating images many times bigger than what James Webb does, enabling rapid surveying.

While James Webb will hone in on precise locations within these surveys using its higher-resolution system to capture infrared images of specific cosmic bodies light-years away.

The Roman telescope mission will last five years with a key focus on discovering microslensing signals – when gravitational forces of other planetary bodies warp the light emitted from a background star.

In theory, this should allow the telescope to identify planets within the habitable zone of a star's orbit radius.

Regardless of what it identifies, the images that the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will capture are bound to be unbelievable.

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Here's some memory card news you don't see every day: ProGrade Digital has announced that it has entered into a Space Act agreement with NASA to support Artemis moon missions.

The Space Agency will be using ProGrade's CFexpress Type B Iridium cards, in 400GB and 1.6TB capacities, along with ProGrade Digital high-speed memory card readers. Several brands were considered for the contract, but ProGrade cards were chosen due to their ability to "sustain high performance and reliable operation in a high radiation space environment". Iridium cards are said to have "exceeded the capability of other CFexpress Type B cards when tested in a space-like environment".

“The lunar surface presents very challenging environments for cameras and related storage media,” said Jeremy Myers, HULC Handheld Universal Lunar Camera COTS (commercial off the shelf) hardware lead. “The partnership developed between NASA and ProGrade will help ensure images and video are captured reliably when humanity returns to the Moon”.

From initial sample submission to being chosen for the contract took over 18 months. During this time the memory cards were subjected to many hours of extreme conditions to represent those in space. NASA's camera of choice for the Artemis campaign is a specially-designed Nikon Z9.

Artemis missions will see humans again returning to the moon, in order to establish long-term scientific lunar research, with the intention to use this knowledge to help facilitate travel to Mars.

The 'Earthrise' photo from the Apollo 8 mission is widely considered one of the most copied and iconic photographs of all time. Taken by astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, it showed the Earth as a fragile, vulnerable sphere in the darkness of space, a perspective that profoundly influenced the environmental movement over the ensuing decades. 

But now UK scientists are currently working on something that could turn out to be even more of a cultural gamechanger. A camera that aims to capture the first direct images of Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars… and may help us discover if we're alone in the universe.

Two UK-led teams are developing proposals for a high-resolution imaging camera that will fly aboard NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), an ambitious space telescope mission launching in the early 2040s. This won't be just another space camera: it's being designed specifically to photograph rocky planets similar to our own and analyze their atmospheres for signs of life.

Imaging challenge

So here's the challenge. Imagine trying to photograph a dim object that's a million times fainter than the brilliant star next to it. That's the head-scratcher facing the teams at University College London, Durham University, Leicester University, Portsmouth University, and several UK space research centers. 

Currently, space telescopes are able to find giant planets – inhospitable Jupiter-sized worlds – outside our solar system. But they struggle with smaller, rocky planets that are similar to Earth. Yet those are the interesting ones; the places where alien life might actually exist.

Capturing them on camera, though? That's like trying to see planets in our own Solar System in the middle of a sunny day.

How it will work

HWO plans to use use a clever two-part approach. First, an instrument called a coronagraph will block out the blinding glare of host stars, similar to how you might shield your eyes from the Sun to see something nearby. This should enable scientists to spot rocky planets for the first time.

Then the high-resolution imager – the camera being developed by UK teams – will take over for detailed investigation. When a planet passes in front of its star, starlight will filter through the planet's atmosphere, changing color slightly (think of how our Sun looks redder at sunset). The camera will then capture these subtle color shifts with unprecedented precision.

By studying the spectrum of this light, scientists will be able to identify specific molecules in the planet's atmosphere – water, oxygen, methane – that could indicate the presence of life.

Precision measurement

The imager will do something else remarkable: measure planetary masses by watching how planets tug on their stars. As a planet orbits, its gravity causes the star to wobble ever so slightly. By tracking these tiny movements with extreme accuracy, scientists can calculate the planet's mass and understand the strength of gravity that any surface life would experience.

This kind of precision measurement is crucial. Without knowing a planet's mass, it's much harder to interpret what those atmospheric signatures really mean.

The early 2040s might seem distant, but the work happening now in British laboratories and research centers is laying the groundwork for what could be one of humanity's greatest discoveries. 

And people everywhere should be excited. Because the images this camera captures might just rewrite our understanding of our place in the cosmos.

NASA is often at the forefront of the latest technology – but that doesn’t mean everything astronauts use in space is the latest tech. During a podcast, astronaut and photographer Don Pettit listed an unusual piece of equipment he uses along with a flagship mirrorless camera: an iconic but retro lens popular in the 1980s.

Pettit and fellow astronaut and photographer Matthew Dominick discussed using the Nikon Z9 aboard the International Space Station during a recent Houston We Have a Podcast episode. But when asked what their favorite gear was, it wasn’t the flagship mirrorless camera but rather fast lenses that took center stage in the discussion.

Lenses with a fast aperture such as f/1.4 work well for photography aboard the ISS, Dominick said, because the lighting inside is low. The photographers also often need a bright aperture to compensate for the quick shutter speeds needed to take sharp photos out the windows as ISS orbits Earth at a speed of around 17,500 mph / 27,600 kph.

But, among the astronauts' selection of lenses, Pettit mentioned an unusual but iconic lens: “We’ve got the mid-80s Noct Nikkor 58mm f/1.2.”

The Nikon Noct Nikkor 58mm f/1.2 lens is often described as a legendary lens and it’s a coveted piece of glass among collectors. The lens was initially launched in 1977, with an updated version in 1981, and remained in production until 1997.

What made the Nikon Noct Nikkor 58mm so unusual is that it was designed for handheld night photography and astrophotography. The lens’s design was meant to reduce sagittal coma flare, a type of distortion that makes pinpoints of light such as stars take on a comet shape – which naturally would be a major issue when trying to take scientific-quality images of outer space. That distortion correction mixed with the lens’ bright aperture made the glass an iconic lens for astrophotography.

The 1980s lens is so iconic that Nikon even made an updated mirrorless version, the Nikon Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct. But, the vintage lens is still very much part of NASA’s lens collection on the ISS. The vintage lens still sells for several thousand dollars on the used market.

Lenses aren’t the only retro tech that the NASA photographers work with during their months-long stint on the ISS. Pettit says that the ISS is run on 15-year-old computers that still do their originally intended job very well, but can’t keep up with the demands of photos and videos from the Z9.

“These computers do their job exceedingly well, but they’re like 15-year-old technology,” Pettit said. “If you want to use them for doing advanced image analysis, they don’t work very well. And you can’t even play a 2K movie without it skipping and stopping about every five seconds. You could play, you could play an HD video, but if you’re using like a Z 9 camera, and you’re shooting an 8K video, you can’t even watch the video. You can’t even see what you’ve done unless it’s in the camera itself.”

So how do the astronauts review their images in space? They tend to only view a handful of images while aboard the ISS, sending a few key photographs back to Earth for social sharing, but reviewing the bulk of their images once back on the ground. “It’s something that I would do enough review to see if I’m getting technically good images and if the composition is along my line,” Pettit said. “And then I don’t review anymore, because I would rather take more pictures. Rather than spend an hour looking at a computer trying to see how the pictures were that I just took, I’d rather take that extra hour and take more pictures.”

“You don’t want to spend time in this unique place editing images when you could be taking more,” Dominick added. “But it’s super important to make sure that you’re not taking terrible images, so you need to do some level of review.”

Read more insight from the photography-focused interview with Pettit and Dominick.

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Photographers often wish for more time to shoot the sunset – but the astronauts aboard the International Space Station get to witness 16 sunsets and sunrises a day. The problem? Golden hour is more like “the golden five seconds,” says astronaut, chemist, and renowned space photographer Don Pettit.

Pettit recently joined fellow astronaut and photographer Matt Dominick on NASA’s Houston We Have A Podcast to chat about the intersection between art and science and the challenges of taking photographs aboard the ISS.

While some challenges, like a five-second golden hour, are exclusive to only those photographers lucky enough to set foot (or is it float?) aboard the ISS, the discussion between the two astronauts and podcast producer Joseph Zakrzewski is filled with inspiration and insight even for photographers who photograph the stars with two feet planted firmly on the ground.

Knowing when to keep shooting…and when to put the camera down

Pettit may have 60 terabytes of RAW images from one eight-month stint aboard the ISS, but the astronaut cautioned that some experiences are best when not viewed through a viewfinder. Rocket launches are one example, Pettit says, especially for those standing a few miles away with an iPhone when dozens of professional photographers will be capturing the same launch. Sometimes, Dominick added, the astronauts will just witness phenomena like the aurora from the cupola without cameras.

“There’s something extraordinarily human with you just take in the event where you’re not worried about f-stop and shutter speed and composition and looking through the lens of a camera,” Pettit said.

He added that it’s possible to both witness something with your own eyes and capture images, recommending setting a camera up on a tripod during an eclipse so that you can both photograph it and experience the event without looking through a viewfinder.

But Pettit, who applied to astronaut training four times over twelve years before being accepted into the program, said that some images take “many, many tries.”

One such image is when Dominick photographed Pettit viewing the Earth from the Cupola, looking towards the Earth at night. The duo said that it took several tries to get the lighting in the Cupola to match the city lights on Earth so that Pettit’s face didn’t end up overexposed.

Use a time-lapse to pinpoint the best time to shoot

The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes, which means the astronauts aboard witness 16 sunrises and sunsets a day. While that means the astronauts could have a second chance at getting a shot on the next rotation, it also condenses the best time to get a certain lighting down to mere seconds, rather than a “golden hour.”

But Dominick has a hack for figuring out when the best time to shoot something is – while actually still doing his official job aboard the ISS as a flight engineer. The trick? Time-lapses.

“I spend a lot of time trying to figure out, when is that lighting just right? And instead of just staring out the window for 90 minutes when I’m supposed to be doing my actual job, I would set up a camera to take a picture every, you know, maybe quarter second every half second,” Dominick explained. “...[then] I can go watch a 90-second video and find what part of the orbit the lighting is perfect, and then set up the camera and the right exposure for the next lap, and capture a bunch of brilliant stills.”

Find the best ISO, underexpose, and use bracketing for challenging exposures

With one sunrise every 90 minutes, the photographers aboard the ISS need to adapt to changing light conditions far faster than on Earth. Dominick shared three bits of advice on getting the shot in the extreme dynamic range of shooting out a window of the ISS.

“One of the things we learned, or I learned, specifically on orbit early, was picking an ISO that has more dynamic range than others, and accepting some of the noise as a result or not.”

A camera’s ISO setting will influence how much dynamic range the sensor captures. According to DCW’s lab tests on the Nikon Z9, the camera that the astronauts mentioned in the podcast, the best dynamic range comes at ISO 1600 and under.

Both Dominick and Pettit recommend underexposing the image because once an image’s pixels are overexposed to white, there’s no information that can be recovered from that region later. One trick for ensuring the exposure is just right is to use bracketing and shoot 3-5 shots at once, all with a slightly different exposure.

Getting tack sharp stars in astrophotography…with a piece of tape?

Much like photographing the night sky from the ground, getting sharp stars requires manual focus. One hack that Pettit uses is to use magnification on the camera’s LCD to get the stars sharply focused, is to use tape on lenses, where the focus can easily be bumped out of place when moving around to adjust the composition for another shot.

“I would take a piece of Kapton tape, and I would tape it in that location, because it’s so easy to bump the focus ring inadvertently when you’re moving the camera around to get the composition you want,” Pettit said. “And just change the focus slightly, and then the stars aren’t pinpoints anymore. And I gotta have stars that are pinpoints, or I’m not happy.”

Pettit says the tape hack is also great when planning to photograph a comet. There’s no time to adjust focus once the comet comes into view, so focus ahead of time on the stars and lock the focus in with tape. (Some lenses have a lock switch built in that will also lock the focus ring in place.)

Knowing how to use your camera, well before the moment you actually need to use it

Both Pettit and Dominick picked up photography from their parents. Pettit said his mother was a photographer who had some photographs published in Life Magazine, and he got a Kodak Brownie camera when he was around six or seven years old. Similarly, Dominick’s father was a professional photographer for the Air Force.

“It’s photographs and memories after your mission,” Pettit said. “And if you don’t have the photographs, and you just have the memories. And you don’t want to find yourself on orbit picking up the camera and saying, ‘Now, how do you turn it on?’ You need to know how to use your equipment, and you need to practice way before you even get close to a rocket.”

The full interview with Pettit and Dominick is available directly from NASA as well as on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud.

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