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A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. The year was 2004, and no space aliens were involved. The saucer, pictured here, was the Genesis sample return capsule, part of a human-made robot Genesis spaceship launched in 2001 by NASA itself to study the Sun. The unexpectedly hard landing at over 300 kilometers per hour occurred because the parachutes did not open as planned. The Genesis mission had been orbiting the Sun collecting solar wind particles that are usually deflected away by Earth’s magnetic field. Despite the crash landing, many return samples remained in good enough condition to analyze. So far, Genesis-related discoveries include new details about the composition of the Sun and how the abundance of some types of elements differ across the Solar System. These results have provided intriguing clues into details of how the Sun and planets formed billions of years ago. via NASA https://ift.tt/6nxehRi

A darker Moon sets over Manhattan in this night skyscape. The 16 frame composite was assembled from consecutive exposures recorded during the November 8 total lunar eclipse. In the timelapse sequence stars leave short trails above the urban skyline, while the Moon remains immersed in Earth’s shadow. But the International Space Station was just emerging from the shadow into the sunlit portion of its low Earth orbit. As seen from New York City, the visible streak of this ISS flyover starts near a star in Taurus and tracks right to left, through the belt of Orion and over Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major. Gaps along the bright trail of the fast moving orbital outpost (and an aircraft flying closer to the horizon) mark the time between individual exposures in the sequence. The trail of bright planet Mars is at the top of the frame. Pleiades star cluster trails are high over the eclipsed Moon and Empire State Building. via NASA https://ift.tt/x7Dk1s4

On November 8 the Full Moon turned blood red as it slid through Earth’s shadow in a beautiful total lunar eclipse. During totality it also passed in front of, or occulted, outer planet Uranus for eclipse viewers located in parts of northern America and Asia. For a close-up and wider view these two images were taken just before the occultation began, captured with different telescopes and cameras from the same roof top in Shanghai, China. Normally very faint compared to a Full Moon, the tiny, pale, greenish disk of the distant ice giant is just to the left of the Moon’s edge and about to disappear behind the darkened, red lunar limb. Though only visible from certain locations across planet Earth, lunar occultations of planets are fairly common. But for this rare „lunar eclipse occultation“ to take place, at the time of the total eclipse the outer planet had to be both at opposition and very near the ecliptic plane to fall in line with Sun, Earth, and Moon. via NASA https://ift.tt/RbP09qF

Jerry Elliott, a former NASA physicist and one of the first Native Americans hired at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, speaks during Native American Heritage Month event in 2017 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. via NASA https://ift.tt/j1bwoqS

The beginning, middle, and end of a journey through planet Earth’s colorful umbral shadow is captured in this timelapse composite image of a total lunar eclipse. Taken on November 8 from Kitt Peak National Observatory this eclipse’s 1 hour and 25 minute long total phase starts on the right and finishes on the left. Reddened sunlight, scattered into the central shadow by Earth’s dusty atmosphere produces the dramatic dark red hues reflected by the lunar disk. For this eclipse, additional reddening is likely due to scattering from ash lingering in the atmosphere after a large volcanic eruption in the southern Pacific earlier this year. Seen at the right and left, the Earth’s shadow is still lighter along its edge though. That faint bluish fringe along the lunar limb is colored by sunlight filtered through Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer. via NASA https://ift.tt/7k6IK3z