I never tire of seeing pictures of this feature of the surface of Mars. Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar system. This one was taken by NASA’s Viking probe and was Astronomy Picture of the Day‘s post for 10/12/24.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 4/11/23. This is an asteroid known as 152830 Dinkinesh. It’s only 800 or so metres wide. It was flown past by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft on 1/11/23 and the long range camera revealed that the asteroid has a moon. The moon is about a quarter the size of Dinkinesh.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 10/1/22.

A time-lapse video of Comet C/2021 A1 (named Leonard) as it progressed on its trip through the inner solar system.

The video was taken by NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-Ahead (STEREO-A) over ten days in December and processed in such a way as to highlight differences from one frame to another.

This clearly shows the comet’s tail being wagged as it is buffeted by the solar wind.

But it does remind me of films I have seen of spermatozoa swimming on their way to fertilising eggs.

One of the most important cogs in the Apollo 11 team which made the first Moon landing (way back in 1969, 52 years ago!) has died.

While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin flew down to the Moon in the Lunar Module, Eagle, Michael Collins stayed in Moon orbit in the Command Module, Columbia, keeping the whole mission together, orbiting the Moon alone – the supposedly loneliest human in the universe – thirty times before the Lunar Module returned Armstrong and Aldrin to Columbia.

Having started his career as a fighter pilot and going on to be a test pilot Collins was a veteran of Gemini 10 where he became the fourth human to space walk and the first to do it twice but retired from NASA in 1970 very soon after his most historic mission.

Michael Collins: 31/10/1930 – April 28/4/2021. So it goes.

What an odd apparition Jupiter’s magnetic field is, with various magnetic poles. At least as seen from NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

This is from YouTube via Astronomy Picture of the Day for 25/2/20.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 30/6/19.

An animated video made form photos taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

Another great picture of a galaxy courtesy of NASA – via Astronomy Picture of the Day for 17/3/19.

It’s thought that huge amounts of glowing gas are falling into the galaxy’s central black hole.

This is M106:-

Courtesy of today‘s Astronomy Picture of the Day. A composite of images taken by Nasa’s MESSENGER probe.

Mercury of course has a very slow rotation – onky three turns for every two trips round the sun.

Nasa’s Cassini probe has produced an intriguing close-up view of Saturn’s moon Pan.

This photograph is today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Pan orbits inside the the Encke Gap of Saturn’s A-ring but is an odd object indeed.

This NASA image made from assigning colours to three monochromatic photos taken through the Hubble Telescope was Astronomy Picture of the Day for 22/4/16.

It almost looks like a living cell of some sort.