Category: Astrophotography

Stars shine in the vast aluminum dish of the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) in this photograph captured by astronomer and astrophotographer José Rodrigues during a recent visit to the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

What is it?

Rodrigues' image captures "airglow" infusing the night sky over La Silla with a soft orange glow, which is created as sunlight interacts with molecules in the upper atmosphere, according to the University of Lancaster.

The subtle phenomenon can be seen reflected in the 15-meter (49-foot) primary dish of the SEST telescope along with the myriad stars of the Southern Hemisphere, as the dome of the ESO's 3.6-meter telescope looms in the background.

Why is it incredible?

"Despite knowing about its 15-meter diameter beforehand, I was amazed by its size," Rodrigues noted in the ESO image release. The SEST first opened its great eye to the universe in 1987, at which time it was the only large telescope in the Southern Hemisphere tasked with collecting submillimeter wavelengths of light that exist beyond the visible light spectrum.

These specific wavelengths of light are emitted by wandering comets and colossal clouds of cold molecular dust and gas threaded throughout the Milky Way and beyond. SEST's observations improved our knowledge of ancient galaxies, star formation and so much more, with its perch 2,375 meters (7,792 feet) above sea level granting it a near unrivalled view of the heavens above.

The SEST telescope was decommissioned in 2003, though its work was continued by the more capable Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA).

With its working days over, the SEST telescope now stands as a quiet mirror reflecting the stars of the Southern Hemisphere night sky, seemingly pondering mysteries of the universe that it once tried to solve

NASA astronaut Anil Menon captured a gorgeous view of the northern lights dancing over the night side of Earth from the International Space Station on Oct. 10 using an iPhone camera.

What is it?

Menon's photo reveals spectacular pink, purple and red auroras glowing in Earth's upper atmosphere above a sparse dappling of city lights, subtly blurred by the motion of the orbital spacecraft over the course of the exposure.

Bright stars glimmer between the solar panels and outer hulls of the ISS and visiting spacecraft, painted purple by the auroral display. "Flying through is rare and amazing," Menon wrote in a separate aurora video he posted to X on Oct. 10. "You can see the lights on the outside of [the] station reflecting back like Christmas LEDs. It's definitely more immersive."

Why is it amazing?

Menon captured the auroras during a period of heightened geomagnetic activity, after several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) struck Earth's magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms ranging from minor (G1) to strong (G3) over the weekend.

During geomagnetic storms, more charged particles are accelerated along Earth's magnetic field lines toward the polar regions, where they collide with gases in the upper atmosphere; they excite them, causing them to release energy as light and producing spectacular auroral displays.

The blue-purple colors seen in Menon's image are largely produced by nitrogen at altitudes of around 60-120 miles (100-200 kilometers) , while the red hue comes from oxygen atoms higher up, typically above 125 miles (200 kilometers).

The photo is particularly impressive because it was captured on an iPhone camera, as opposed to the more traditional Nikon cameras that astronauts sometimes use to capture Earth during their time aboard the ISS.

Smartphone astrophotography has become increasingly popular over recent years, with some models now featuring bespoke modes for capturing the night sky. iPhones were even used by the astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission to document their historic flyby of the moon earlier this year!

Interested in capturing your own images of the night sky using your mobile phone? Then be sure to check out our guide to photographing stars, the moon and the Milky Way with nothing but your smartphone camera.

Behold! Amateur astrophotographer ing. Cornelis van Zuilen has created a stunning cosmic mosaic of all 110 galaxies, star clusters and nebulas of the Messier catalog — a leviathan effort that took hundreds of hours and many nights of sleeping in his car to complete.

"One of the first Messier objects I photographed was Messier 45 (the Pleiades) back in 2024, when I had just purchased my cooled deep-sky camera and was beginning my deep-sky astrophotography journey," van Zuilen told Space.com in an email. "About a year and a half ago, I decided to capture the entire catalogue."

Van Zuilen spent 352 hours and 13 minutes imaging the menagerie of deep-sky objects using an Askar 103APO telescope and a William Optics Redcat 51 MK2.5, before artfully editing each subject using photoshop and the astronomy software PixInsight.

The ancient light collected by the telescopes was captured with a range of ZWO astronomy cameras and filters.

Van Zuilen observed many of the objects directly from his balcony from the town of Heiloo in the Netherlands, while others required van Zuilen to take his telescopes further afield to avoid capturing treetops and farm buildings in his field of view.

"Doing this from the Netherlands was quite a challenge," explained van Zuilen. "I often had to travel to a semi-dark field nearby to get a clear view of the horizon, which meant many nights of sleeping in my car. But to be honest, I actually really enjoyed that part, it felt like camping."

What is the Messier catalog?

The Messier catalog was first compiled by 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier, who sought to create a list of deep-sky objects that could be mistaken for comets as they glowed in the night sky, according to NASA.

Messier's catalog has been revised several times since its creation and includes some of the most famous deep-sky objects that can be spotted from the Northern Hemisphere, including the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Pleiades open star cluster (M45) and the Orion Nebula (M42).

Each of the objects can be spotted with a modest backyard telescope under dark sky conditions, which has made the Messier catalog a popular sightseeing checklist for amateur astronomers looking to explore the wonders beyond our solar system.

"As you might notice, some images are larger than others, and there's a reason for that too," continued van Zuilen. "Those are my favorite images! And most of them have a personal story behind how they came to be, which makes the collage a bit more personal and meaningful to me."

Want to start out on your own astrophotography journey? Then be sure to read our beginner's guide to capturing the night sky, along with our selection of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Dark clouds swirl across a sky speckled with stars as the Milky Way stretches above the European Space Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert.

What is it?

In this photograph snapped by astronomer José Rodrigues, the Milky Way splashes across the night sky above two telescopes at ESO's La Silla Observatory.

Between the two telescopes, the blue and red Trifid Nebula glows to the left of the larger and redder Lagoon Nebula, all within the Sagittarius constellation.

While the colorful glow of these two nebulae pull the eye toward the center of this photograph, they are surrounded by a majestic night sky landscape. The Milky Way paints the sky with dark, looming clouds lit by the galaxy's many stars.

While some of the dust in these clouds reflects starlight, causing some of the color that we see in the nebulae, most of this dust appears as dark , branching wisps.

Why is it incredible?

This image is obviously beautiful. It is a work of art; in framing the telescopes and the nebulae together, Rodrigues has created a striking visual.

But for Rodrigues, these telescopes are more than a pretty picture. The telescope seen on the left in this photo is ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT), and the one on the right is ESO's 3.6-meter telescope. The latter scope which includes the instruments HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) and NIRPS (Near Infra Red Planet Searcher), which astronomers use to find and study exoplanets — worlds outside of our solar system.

And Rodrigues now studies exoplanets, making these instruments an important part of his life and his work.

"It is very special, as I grew up with a poster of the 3.6 m in my room, dreaming of using it to find exoplanets," Rodrigues said in a statement.

Astrophotographer Osama Fathi created this incredible view of Perseid meteors streaking through circling star trails above Egypt's Western Desert on Aug. 13-14, the night following the shower's peak under dark new-moon skies.

Fathi imaged the star trails in 240 consecutive 25-second exposures, which captured the apparent motion of the stars in Earth's sky as they seemed to circle the celestial north pole and the North Star Polaris. The length of each trail reveals how far the stars appeared to move as Fathi captured their ancient light with his Sony A7 III camera and a 16-35 mm lens during the 100-minute shoot.

But Fathi wasn't alone beneath the desert skies as he captured the scene.

"Capturing this photo in Egypt's Western Desert during the Perseids was an unforgettable experience," Fathi told Space.com in an email. "The night was exceptionally clear and I was surrounded by around 200 fellow astronomy enthusiasts sharing stories, stargazing and photographing the sky."

Perseid meteors appear as unbroken streaks of light, captured in a single exposure as tiny particles — often no larger than a grain of sand — burn up in Earth's atmosphere in the blink of an eye.

Dotted trails closer to the horizon depict the trajectories of satellites as they passed silently through the skies over Egypt's Western Desert. Fathi captured the landscape and starscape separately before combining, or stacking, the images into a mesmerizing image.

The result is a gorgeous nightscape that highlights the beauty of the natural landscape, the rotation of Earth and the natural light show of the Perseid meteor shower that we experience as Earth passes through the trail of debris shed by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.

Want to capture beautiful images of the night sky for yourself? Then be sure to read our guide to photographing star trails, along with our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography available in 2026.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your photos of the night sky with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Astrophotographer Kevin Boardman captured this spectacular view of the Crescent Nebula, revealing intricate filaments of gas surrounding a massive star nearing the end of its life some 4,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

Boardman's image represents a turbulent chapter in the life of the colossal Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163), which, visible as a blue point of light at the center of the image, is expected to end its life in a dramatic supernova explosion in about 100,000 years.

The 25-light-year-wide bubble is formed from stellar material cast off by WR 136 during its transformation into a red giant star, according to NASA. Repeated impacts by fast-moving stellar winds later send shockwaves through the outer shell, creating the complex filaments we see today.

Catalogued as NGC 6888, or Caldwell 27, the Crescent Nebula, gets its nickname from its crescent-moon like appearance when observed in certain wavelengths of light. Boardman revealed spectacular detail in the nebula by imaging it with a set of narrowband filters over 16 hours and 18 minutes spread across five nights in late July.

"In the image, orange-red H-alpha reveals the tangled filaments while blue-cyan [O III] outlines emission from doubly ionized oxygen around the shell," Boardman told Space.com in an email. Each filter isolates specific wavelengths of light emitted by ionized gases, allowing different structures within the nebula to stand out.

Boardman collected roughly 12 hours of narrowband data from the nebula itself, along with four hours and 20 minutes of data capturing the surrounding stars, before combining exposures using the astronomy software PixInsight during post-processing.

The Crescent Nebula is too faint to be spotted with the naked eye, but can be seen with a moderate-to-large telescope equipped with a light pollution filter throughout September.

First, locate the magnitude +2.34 star Sadr at the center of the cross-shaped constellation Cygnus, which appears high overhead for Northern Hemisphere observers in late summer.

Next, locate the dimmer magnitude +4.03 star Eta Cygni using the simplified star chart above, or with the aid of a smartphone astronomy app. The Crescent Nebula lies directly between these two bright stars and is best seen on the dark nights surrounding this month's new moon phase on Sept. 10-11.

Be sure to check out our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography if you're looking to upgrade your equipment, along with our picks of the top telescopes for observing the night sky.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

A spectacular series of glowing plasma loops arcs above the sun in this remarkable view captured from an astrophotographer's backyard.

What is it?

This image is a still from a high-resolution timelapse captured by astrophotographer Mark Johnston from Scottsdale, Arizona on Aug. 21, 2026.

The footage shows a coronal loop arcade — a series of arching loops of hot plasma shaped by the sun's magnetic field — extending high above the solar limb, or apparent edge of the sun.

Johnston recorded the scene for more than two hours, from 7:56 a.m. to 10:12 a.m. local time. His footage reveals the movement of plasma within the loops, including 'coronal rain' as material cools and falls back towards the lower solar atmosphere along magnetic field lines.

The sequence was captured using a TEC160FL refractor equipped with specialized hydrogen-alpha (H-alpha) solar imaging equipment, which helps reveal structures in the sun's atmosphere that would otherwise be very difficult to see.

Why is it incredible?

Coronal loop arcades like this one are a rare sight, but Johnston was particularly lucky to catch this one almost side-on at the edge of the sun, revealing the dramatic arching shape in exquisite detail.

"To see one AND catch it right on the limb AND have it happen on a clear day when I'm home and able to catch it was a real treat," Johnston told Space.com in an email.

Lucky for us, Johnston keeps a close eye on our star. The first thing he does each morning is check real-time imagery from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to see what the sun is up to.

"One day I saw this and leapt out of bed and dashed to get set up to capture it," Johnston said.

And this isn't the first spectacular solar show Johnston has captured from his backyard. Back in June, he imaged a colossal 'Godzilla' plasma cloud seemingly stalking the edge of the sun, complete with streams of coronal rains cascading back towards the solar surface.

In a rare first for me, I actually used autofocus for this entire astrophotography shoot. If I'm being honest? I prefer it when shooting astro with a mirrorless camera. Why? Because it is quicker and that means more time capturing the stars and less time setting up. I can get a star in sharp focus using autofocus in half the time that it would take me to do it manually and it's way easier to focus with the shutter or back button than play about with the focus ring, especially with cold fingers.

I only managed to get out under one clear sky to test the new R6 III but it was a wonderful session at my usual dark hill spot surrounded by a sea of stars and celestial shapes. After setting up my tripod, I was ready to start shooting, armed with the Canon 14mm f/1.4 and 45mm f/1.2 lenses.

If you are a seasoned astrophotographer, you will undoubtedly have started your craft by learning how to manually focus on stars to get them crisp and sharp in the frame. Everyone does. Whilst the manual focus (MF) versus autofocus (AF) debate continues within the community, the technology for low-light autofocusing capability has come a long way since mirrorless cameras were first introduced and the R6 III is physical proof of that.

The astrophotography

You only get the luxury of being able to do this if your camera is actually good at autofocusing in low light and for starry nightscapes. All three versions of the Canon EOS R6 feature a low-light autofocus range of -6.5 exposure value (EV), so they already have a strong baseline for shooting under dark skies. The Canon EOS R6 III features a higher resolution and advanced autofocus algorithms, so the AF system actually has more data to use and is better at using it.

I was able to capture bright objects easily and start shooting without having to spend ages using manual focus for each new shot. The autofocus was powerful enough to capture at least one star in each of my frames. I simply used autofocus on the brighter points of light in my composition, waited for the green box and then switched to manual to avoid any refocusing if I decided to recompose the shot.

Bright objects were the easiest to capture, with Jupiter, Pollux and Castor easily captured in the western sky. Light pollution washed out the contrast in this shot but it was the quickest autofocus because of the brightness of the objects.

The autofocus helped me capture a range of other constellations too. With the R6 III focusing on the bright star Arcturus, along with the rest of Boötes and Coma Berenices next to the Coma Star Cluster (Melotte 111).

The shape of Leo is recognisable and the autofocus captured the brightest star, Regulus, to bring the rest of the stars in the constellation into focus. You can even spot the Beehive Cluster (M44) in Cancer, to the right of the frame and it is fairly sharp in focus. Barring some minor star trailing from my lack of a star tracker, the stars are nicely in focus, including on minor objects like star clusters.

Using the 45mm lens, I got some close-ups of some quadrilateral shapes in the sky. Hercules' prominent trapezoidal keystone is visible and one of the corners, Zeta Herculis, was picked up by the autofocus. It is not exactly a bright star, with a magnitude of 2.88, but the R6 III picked it up easily and brought the rest of the corners into focus. Whilst barely a smudge along one of the sides of Hercules, I even managed to capture the Hercules globular cluster (M13) with the R6 III and the Canon RF 45mm wide open at f/1.2.

The polygonal head of the dragon in Draco was easily captured in the centre of the frame, with bright stars Eltanin (2.23), Rastaban (2.79) and even Iota Herculis (3.8) showing prominently. The autofocus capabilities of the EOS R6 III are maximised when used alongside a lens with a very fast aperture like f/1.4 and f/1.2. Without these types of lenses, you would be much less likely to be able to autofocus on such dim stars.

The upgrades

The big question when looking at the third iteration of a camera model is to figure out if the upgrades are actually worth it. First, you have to think about your budget and also what you are using the camera for. For astrophotography, there are a few upgrades in the EOS R6 III that can be considered to see whether they are worth it.

The most noticeable upgrade on the R6 III is the resolution, which has been upgraded from the R6 II's 24.2MP sensor to a 32.5 MP sensor. On top of improved resolution for general and astrophotography, the boosted number of pixels allows the Dual Pixel CMOS AF II to collect even more data points because there are more pixels. Dual Pixel architecture splits each pixel into two separate photodiodes and allows each photodiode to read the light from the star at two different positions and allows the lens motor to bring those points together into perfect focus.

The upgraded sensor resolution combined with upgraded tracking algorithms from the flagship Canon EOS R5 II make the R6 III better at locking onto low-light points and make autofocus for astrophotography much more reliable than in previous models.

I initially expected the higher resolution to translate into more image noise on photographs but this was not the case. The R6 III utilizes dual-gate gain architecture, which means that every pixel has a switchable path at the hardware level depending on the ISO level used and allows images with higher ISOs to have a heavily reduced base amount of noise and thus makes them less grainy.

Photos at lower ISOs on the R6 III have an incredibly high dynamic range (HDR) thanks to the low conversion gate (LCG) circuit. This allows the natural color of the stars to be preserved instead of coming across as indeterminate white blobs, as well as the subtle hues of the dark surrounding sky in the photograph.

Aside from the technical aspects of how the resolution improves the autofocus, the detail in images from the R6 III is noticeable and is great for picking up finer stellar structures such as star clusters and smaller stars. When paired with a distorted lens like the Canon RF 7-14mm f/2.8-3.5 fisheye lens, extra resolution really helps details pop. I didn't get to use the fisheye lens for astro but general daytime shooting delivered some high-quality photographs.

The final important upgrade on the R6 III is the inclusion of a CFexpress card slot, which allows faster writing and reading speeds both in camera and during media downloads. A UHS-II SD card has an average read speed of 300MB/s and an average write speed of 260MB/s.

This may seem fast but the most advanced CFexpress cards have a read and write speed of over 3000MB/s, which makes huge workloads so much easier to process. This may only be of benefit to professional photographers who shoot a lot of video or need to do a huge amount of burst photography in RAW format, but it does vastly improve the performance of this camera. Bear in mind that CFexpress cards are much more expensive than SD cards and require an additional CFexpress reader to transfer data to a computer.

Is it worth it?

The price difference between the R6 Mark II and the Mark III is just under $1000 and for that amount of money, justifying the move up to the latest model comes down to a few factors that you will have to consider. The power of the low-light autofocus is tempting but you should think about the camera as a whole to see whether it is worth making the investment.

If you are looking to boost resolution in your night-time scenes and have been shooting astrophotography for a long time, the R6 III could be worth the extra investment thanks to the 32.5MP sensor, which retains the powerful dual-gain architecture for getting high dynamic range images at lower ISOs and delivering high ISO images with significantly less grain.

If you have a heavy workflow, you are likely to be frustrated with the lack of a CFexpress card slot on the earlier R6 models and would benefit from the advanced functionality the new slot will give you, especially if you shoot a lot of RAW imagery and video.

Stick with an earlier model or a different mirrorless camera if you are a very casual astrophotographer who does most of your shooting in the daytime. I just can't justify the massive jump in price for basic shooting, where a beginner or intermediate photographer's money might be better spent on getting a fast f/1.4 lens for superior astro. I used the Canon RF 14mm f/1.4 lens for astrophotography testing and I don't think the images would have looked half as good if I had used a lens with a smaller aperture. If you already own the R6 II, the only reason you might upgrade is if you need to do more heavy cropping into your images or need better hybrid video functionality from a camera.

Astrophotographer Efrain Morales captured spectacular footage of China's Tiangong space station as its silhouette buzzed Tycho Crater during a lunar transit on May 29, one night before May's Blue Moon.

Morales recorded the outlines of Tiangong's vast solar panels and habitable modules using a 12-inch telescope and astronomy camera as it passed silently across the lunar surface in the skies above Puerto Rico at 11:33 p.m. EDT on May 29 (0333 GMT on May 30).

"It is a challenge in less then a second to capture this event," Morales said in an email to Space.com. "Using a program the ISS Transit Finder helps in giving information to capture the space station. Adjusting the FOV and at times calculating last minute deviations in time and positions in which makes it more challenging."

The orbital outpost appeared to dive directly toward Tycho Crater, whose 53-mile-wide (85 kilometer) impact site and bright ejecta dominate the southern region of the lunar disk on the nights surrounding the full moon phase.

The dark expanses of Mare Nubium (the Sea of Clouds) and Mare Nectaris (the Sea of Nectar) can also be seen scarring the lunar disk to the left and upper right of the footage, respectively, where ancient lava flows hardened to form basaltic plains billions of years ago.

What is the Tiangong space station?

The Tiangong space station, which translates to "Heavenly Palace" from Mandarin, is made up of the core module Tianhe and theMengtian and Wentian laboratory modules, which orbit Earth at an altitude ranging between 217 and 280 miles (340 to 450 km).

Tiangong is currently crewed by the three taikonauts of the Shenzhou 23 mission — commander Zhu Yangzhu, pilot Zhang Zhiyuan and payload specialist Lai Ka-ying — who launched to the orbital station atop a 203-ft (62 m) Long March 2F rocket on May 24.

Want to see the Tiangong space station for yourself? Then be sure to read our guide to tracking and photographing the orbital outpost, along with our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your night sky photography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.