Recently (12/5/25 and 13/5/25) Astronomy Picture of the Day published two reconstructions (one each on consecutive days from data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft) of how our home galaxy The Milky Way looks from the side and from above.

Side view:-

From above. Our sun is circled below within the galaxy’s Orion Arm:-

Froam Astronomy Picture of the Day for 19/1/25.

This is an animation constructed from photos taken during the descent of the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe through Titan’s atmosphere in 2005.

By which I mean one moon eclipses another.

Neither is Earth’s Moon of course.

Via Astronomy Picture of  the Day for 26/2/24 this is Mars’s moon Phobos eclipsing its other moon, Deimos, as seen by European Space Agency‘s probe Mars Express.

Well that’s what this picture looks like to me.

It comes from the European Space Agency (ESA) via Astronomy Picture of the Day for 16/5/18 using data from the Gaia satellite and shows the rotation of the Greater Magellanic Cloud or Large Cloud of Magellan.

As viewed from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sprays out gas just twelve hours before its closest approach to the sun (on this pass.) From Astronomy Picture of the Day, 15/8/15.

Pecdant’s corner:- USian alert? The APOD page says the comet’s primordial ices are sublimating. That would be subliming, then. In my understanding to sublimate is to suppress or divert an instinct.

Okay, so the harpoons didn’t fire and the lander bounced twice, but to set down on a comet is a stunning achievement.

(Pinched from the Daily Galaxy, picture from ESA/Rosetta/Philae)

*Not quite; but I couldn’t resist.