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Suparco The Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) ( خلائی و بالائے فضائی تحقیقاتی مأمور)

Proud to help immortalise these out-of-this-world shots 🌕Captured with the and during the Artemis II mission.Image...
10/04/2026

Proud to help immortalise these out-of-this-world shots 🌕
Captured with the and during the Artemis II mission.

Image credits: NASA


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Some images from Orion Capsule 🚀
10/04/2026

Some images from Orion Capsule 🚀

Is it just me or is that galaxy getting closer? 👀M90 (NGC 4569), shown here in this new Webb image, is indeed getting cl...
25/03/2026

Is it just me or is that galaxy getting closer? 👀

M90 (NGC 4569), shown here in this new Webb image, is indeed getting closer! Over time, its orbit through the Virgo cluster has accelerated so much that M90 is in the process of escaping the cluster entirely and happens to be moving in our direction.

Webb’s new view of M90 was taken by our Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), allowing us to peer through the galaxy’s dust and see the stars more clearly. This new image was captured as part of a treasury of 55 massive, star-forming galaxies. The data on the properties of these galaxies, and the stars within them, will add valuable insight to our picture of how galaxies grow and evolve over cosmic time.

This galaxy’s orbit took it on a path near the center of the large Virgo Cluster of galaxies about 300 million years ago and the dense gas of the inner cluster stripped enormous quantities of gas from the galaxy. This gas is no longer available to form new stars in M90, with the spiral galaxy eventually fading. As a result, M90 is getting “flatter,” evolving into a lenticular galaxy.

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Credit: NASA, CSA, ESA, A. Leroy (The Ohio State University), and I. Lopez (INAF - Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Cat's got your telescope! 🐱Hubble's latest view of the Cat's Eye Nebula shows off this spectacular cosmic object in the ...
05/03/2026

Cat's got your telescope! 🐱

Hubble's latest view of the Cat's Eye Nebula shows off this spectacular cosmic object in the sharpest detail yet.

These are the visually intricate remnants of a dying star, located about 4,400 light-years away. Hubble focused on the very core of billowing gas, revealing a tapestry of concentric shells and dense knots, likely created by episodic mass loss from the central star.

Together, these features form a kind of cosmic “fossil record” of this dying star's final evolutionary stages.
Find out more:
Find out more: https://go.nasa.gov/4l6ccNH

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Tsvetanov

Feeling a little explosive? Don't worry, sometimes stars do too. At the end of their lives, some stars explode catastrop...
28/02/2026

Feeling a little explosive? Don't worry, sometimes stars do too.

At the end of their lives, some stars explode catastrophically in a supernova, releasing so much energy that they briefly outshine their host galaxies. The light from the incredible detonation can be seen across vast distances, while the explosion itself scatters elements like carbon or oxygen into the surrounding space.

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's wide and repeated scans of the southern sky during its ten-year survey will reveal millions of supernovae across the cosmos. Featured here are four supernovae imaged by Rubin in the southern part of the Virgo cluster of galaxies.

Using supernovae, scientists will trace the expansion history of our Universe, measure how that expansion has changed over time, and track how elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are spread to seed future generations of stars and planets.

Take a tour of these supernovae in Skyviewer: https://bit.ly/4r3hNpK

📷: NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA
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The pair of points at the centre of this image, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), are an old stellar couple k...
28/02/2026

The pair of points at the centre of this image, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), are an old stellar couple known as AFGL 4106.

Just like we humans are strongly influenced by the presence of companions over the course of our lives, so are stars, literally.

The two stars are at close yet distinct late stages of their lifecycles, with one having blown off enough mass to produce a dusty surrounding envelope. Using the VLT, researchers have now mapped this debris, shown here in orange, and precisely characterised the central stars.

This type of observations allow scientists to better understand how the presence of companions affects the death of stars.

Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2608a/

📷 ESO/G. Tomassini et al.
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27/02/2026

The death of a Sun, from backyard… to 😨

This is Messier 57, the Ring Nebula — one of the most famous planetary nebulae in the night sky, sitting about 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Through a small telescope, M57 looks like a small gray smoke ring floating between two stars. You’re seeing the glowing shell of gas left behind after a Sun-like star shed its outer layers — a glimpse of what our own Sun will do billions of years from now.

Now compare that to James Webb’s view.

Webb doesn’t just see the ring — it dissects it. Infrared vision reveals layered shells of gas, temperature differences, chemistry, and delicate filaments sculpted by stellar winds. What looks like a simple donut from Earth becomes a complex, three-dimensional structure shaped over tens of thousands of years.

The scale difference is wild:
• Your telescope collects light with a mirror maybe 8–10 inches wide
• Webb’s mirror spans 6.5 meters
• Webb sees infrared wavelengths completely invisible from the ground
• And it operates far beyond Earth’s atmosphere, where nothing blurs the view

Same object. Same physics. Totally different levels of detail.

This is why amateur astronomy and space telescopes complement each other — one lets you experience the universe directly, the other lets us understand it in depth.

Shout out to every astrophotographer out there capturing the wonders of reality.

What looks like a brain (complete with what appear as left and right hemispheres) is actually a dying star blowing off a...
26/02/2026

What looks like a brain (complete with what appear as left and right hemispheres) is actually a dying star blowing off a shell of gas, and within that shell, a cloud of various gases. The dark lane that divides the sides of the “brain” may be related to an outflow from the central star.

Webb has captured two views of this nebula. The near-infrared view (left) shows more stars, as well as background galaxies. In the mid-infrared (right), the cosmic dust glows more prominently.

What’s next for this star will depend on its mass, which is yet undetermined. If it is a high mass star it will explode in a supernova. If it’s less massive and more Sun-like, it’ll keep shedding layers until only its core remains as a dense white dwarf star.

Read more at the link in our comments.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

What if you could go back in time and see a star just before it goes supernova? Archives of telescope data are essential...
24/02/2026

What if you could go back in time and see a star just before it goes supernova? Archives of telescope data are essentially letting astronomers do just that.

Forty million years ago, a star in a nearby galaxy went supernova. We didn’t see the light from this explosion until it finally reached Earth on June 29, 2025. Prior to June 29th, it would have just looked like a star. Astronomers looked through Webb (as well as Hubble) data of Galaxy NGC 1637, and were able to pinpoint a single red supergiant star located exactly where the supernova currently is. This is the first time Webb data has been used to find a supernova progenitor, though scientists had been waiting for a chance to look for a supernova to explode in a galaxy Webb had already observed.

This star was surprisingly red, even for a red supergiant. This indicates it was surrounded by dust that blocked shorter, bluer wavelengths of light. It’s the reddest, dustiest red supergiant yet seen that has resulted in a supernova explosion. The dust is part of a puzzle.

We would expect that the most massive stars (those that will end their lives as supernovas) to be among the brightest and most luminous, and thus easy to spot in pre-supernova imagery. But that hasn’t been the case. Perhaps the most massive and old stars are also the dustiest, and the dust could make them appear less luminous and harder to see. This particular dusty red supergiant seems to support that hypothesis.

The composition of the dust also surprised astronomers - the dust appears to be rich in carbon, while astronomers expected it to be silicate-rich. Astronomers think perhaps this carbon was dredged up from the star’s interior shortly before it exploded.

The next step is to try to find and study similar red supergiants that have the potential to go supernova, but haven’t yet.

Read more at the link in the comments.

Image description: A face-on view of barred spiral galaxy NGC 137 shows Hubble and Webb data combined, with a small box around a reddish looking dot located on the right side in an outer spiral arm. This is the supernova explosion. The center of the galaxy is bright and hazy, and the galaxy is speckled with blue and red stars. Top right: The star BEFORE the explosion shown with combined Hubble and Webb data. Crosshairs mark the red supergiant star. Bright blue and red stars and dusty haze are visible in the background. Second from top right: Hubble data from before the supernova. Note the star that is about to explode is not visible. Crosshairs mark its location. In the background are pale blue stars and dust. Second from bottom right: Webb data from before the supernova explosion. The red supergiant (marked with crosshairs) is very visible in the infrared, because Webb can see its infrared glow through the dust blocking it from Hubble’s view. Reddish stars and dust are visible in the background. Bottom right: Hubble’s view of the supernova AFTER the explosion. Blueish background stars and dust are still visible in the background.

Image credit: , , , , Charles Kilpatrick (Northwestern), Aswin Suresh (Northwestern); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Light from the age of the dinosaurs The light that Webb collected to create this image has been journeying to us from NG...
20/02/2026

Light from the age of the dinosaurs

The light that Webb collected to create this image has been journeying to us from NGC 5134 for 65 million years, or since soon after Tyrannosaurus rex went extinct! (Meaning, NGC 5134 is 65 million light years away!)

For perspective on the size of the universe, this galaxy is actually relatively close to ours! So close that Webb can spot incredible details in its tightly wound spiral arms. Webb’s MIRI instrument collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust speckled through the galaxy’s clouds, tracing the clumps and strands of dusty gas. Webb’s NIRCam instrument records shorter-wavelength near-infrared light, mostly from the stars and star clusters that dot the galaxy’s spiral arms.

Read more:
https://spacesciencepk.netlify.app/ #/
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2602a/
https://pse-suparco.netlify.app/

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Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy

HDR photograph of the “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse peak captured over Antarctica the day before yesterday.The detail on ...
20/02/2026

HDR photograph of the “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse peak captured over Antarctica the day before yesterday.

The detail on the lunar surface here is spectacular, but the real star is the corona. Usually invisible to the naked eye, these glowing plumes are superheated plasma reaching millions of degrees—far hotter than the Sun’s visible surface itself.

Nature’s greatest paradox, captured in a single frame.
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