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A long, brown oval known as a „brown barge“ in Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt is captured in this color-enhanced image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. via NASA https://ift.tt/2OmXsds

You’ve probably seen a circle around the Sun before. More common than rainbows, ice halos, like a 22 degree circular halo for example, can be easy to spot, especially if you can shade your eyes from direct sunlight. Still it’s rare to see such a diverse range of ice halos, including sundogs, tangent, infralateral, and Parry arcs, all found in this snapshot from planet Earth. The picture was quickly taken in the late morning of September 4 from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. The beautiful patterns are generated as sunlight (or moonlight) is reflected and refracted in six-sided water ice crystals in Earth’s atmosphere. Of course, atmospheric ice halos in the skies of other worlds are likely to be different. via NASA https://ift.tt/2MumLIF

NASA completed the final test to qualify Orion’s parachute system for flights with astronauts, an important milestone on the path to send humans on missions to deep space. via NASA https://ift.tt/2CSqxMr

Bright enough for binocular viewing Comet 21P / Giacobini-Zinner stands out, even in this deep telephoto mosaic of the star cluster and nebula rich constellation Auriga the Charioteer. On the night of September 9 its greenish coma and diffuse tail contrast with the colorful stars and reddish emission nebulae in the almost 10 degree field of view along the Milky Way. The comet was near its perihelion and closest approach to Earth, about 200 light-seconds away. Riding across the distant background just above the comet’s tail are well-known Auriga star clusters M38 (left of center) and M36 (toward the right) about 4,000 light-years away. At the top left, emission region IC 405 is only 1,500 light-years distant, more dramatically known as the Flaming Star Nebula. To its right lies IC 410, 12,000 light-years away and famous for its star-forming cosmic tadpoles. A child of our Solar System Giacobini-Zinner is a periodic comet orbiting the Sun once every 6.5 years, and the parent body of October’s Draconids meteor shower. via NASA https://ift.tt/2x93nLD

Ever stared down the gaping eye of a category 4 hurricane? It’s chilling, even from space. via NASA https://ift.tt/2OeQkiW

Our Moon’s appearance changes nightly. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured video animates images taken by NASA’s Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2018. A single lunation describes one full cycle of our Moon, including all of its phases. A full lunation takes about 29.5 days, just under a month (moon-th). As each lunation progresses, sunlight reflects from the Moon at different angles, and so illuminates different features differently. During all of this, of course, the Moon always keeps the same face toward the Earth. What is less apparent night-to-night is that the Moon’s apparent size changes slightly, and that a slight wobble called a libration occurs as the Moon progresses along its elliptical orbit. via NASA https://ift.tt/2x1jU52