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A wide-angle nightscape photograph showing a bright meteor streaking diagonally across a star-filled sky. The meteor leaves a sharp, glowing trail as it travels from upper right toward the center of the frame. The silhouettes of pine trees and rolling hills line the bottom of the image, with a faint warm glow along the horizon suggesting distant city lights or moonlight.

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from July 24 to 31: The Southern Delta Aquariids peak

Stars

How can a young blue giant have a white dwarf companion star that’s billions of years older?

Observing

The Sky This Week from July 10 to 17: The Moon and Venus share Leo

$A James Webb Space Telescope deep field image showing hundreds of distant galaxies scattered across a black background in a range of shapes — spirals, ellipticals, and elongated streaks — in colors from white and blue to orange and red. A large, detailed barred spiral galaxy with a bright white core and faint blue spiral arms dominates the center-left of the frame. Several foreground stars display the distinctive six-pointed diffraction spikes characteristic of JWST imagery.$

Cosmology, Stars

JWST studies a supernova near the dawn of time

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This artist’s conception illustrates one of the most primitive supermassive black holes known (central black dot) at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have uncovered two of these early objects, dating back to about 13 billion years ago. The monstrous black holes are among the most distant known, and appear to be in the very earliest stages of formation, earlier than any observed so far. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Science

Explore the science of space, from the astrophysics of stars to the ultimate fate of the universe.

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Observing

Learn about upcoming observing events such as eclipses, meteor showers, comets, conjunctions, and more.

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This 2016 Curiosity rover selfie shows the vehicle at the “Okoruso” drilling site on Mount Sharp’s Naukluft Plateau. The Martian scene is a mosaic of images taken with the arm-mounted Mars Hands Lens Imager (MAHLI). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Space Exploration

Human and robotic missions are helping humanity explore our solar system and beyond.

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July 2026

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Sky This Week

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Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from July 24 to 31: The Southern Delta Aquariids peak

Sky This Month

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Photograph showing the close conjunction of bright Venus with the star Regulus in Leo at dawn on October 3, 2020.

Observing

July 2026: What’s in the sky this month? Venus and Jupiter are visible in the evening, plus a conjunction of Mars and Uranus before dawn

Picture of the Day

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A glowing, ring-shaped cloud sits at the center of a dense star field, with a bright blue-green disk in the middle surrounded by a thick band of pink and magenta. Wispy, cloud-like red tendrils drift outward unevenly from the ring, reaching farther out toward the right side and giving the whole shape a lopsided, eye-like look. Countless small white, blue, and orange stars fill the dark background around it.

A glowing eye

Gerald Rhemann, taken from Farm Tivoli, Namibia

The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula around 650 light-years away in Aquarius, the glowing remains of a dying, Sun-like star’s outer layers. They now surround a hot white dwarf left at the nebula’s center. The imager captured about 24.3 hours of exposure in Hα/OIII/LRGB filters with a 12-inch f/3.6 reflector.