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Rubin spots possible dwarf planet

Announcing the winners of Astronomy Magazine’s 2026 Astrophotography Contest

$Illustration of a reddish, cratered Mars with white patches of frost, seen as a crescent-lit globe. A fractured, rocky moon breaks apart in the foreground, scattering boulders and fragments that stretch into a tan, dusty ring band across the planet against a starry black sky.$

Solar System

Mars’ moon Phobos is destined to become a ring

Solar System

The weird science behind Mars’ weirdest cloud

Picture of the Day

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A round cloud of orange and red gas forms a thick ring around a glowing blue center, with dark patches of dust scattered through the middle. At upper left of the blue center are two white, brightly lit twisting pillars that resemble the shapes of tadpoles, as if they are swimming through a pond. A brown wash of faint dust and myriad stars fill the frame.

A cosmic pond

Massimo Tamajo from Syracuse, Sicily, Italy

IC 410 is an emission nebula about 12,000 light-years away in Auriga, lit by the radiation from the embedded star cluster NGC 1893. The region is best known as home to the Tadpoles — two pillars of gas and dust that are forming stars. The imager took about 2.1 hours of exposure with a 3.5-inch f/6.8 astrograph, one-shot color camera, and Hα/OIII dual-band filter, processed in an HOO palette.