TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
December 6, 2025
Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
Fifty three years ago, in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This snapshot from another world was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the lunar valley's floor. The image shows Schmitt next to the lunar rover parked at the southeast rim of Shorty Crater. That location is near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. And for now, Cernan and Schmitt are the last to walk on the Moon.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
More Airplane Trouble From Space Energy (Pole Shift) | S0 News and frens
Dec.6.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBcTkta4fJ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhQsYrGNnd4 (New Pole Shift Warning Sign: Topside Auroral Brightening)
https://ts2.tech/en/carrington-class-sunspot-g3-geomagnetic-storm-and-cold-moon-supermoon-what-to-know-on-december-6-2025/
https://thefederal.com/category/business/airbus-a320-incident-experts-raise-questions-about-solar-flare-theory-219465
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-weak-spot-in-earths-magnetic-field-is-growing-but-scientists-say-not-to-worry-heres-a-look-at-what-shields-us-from-space-weather-180987800/
https://www.SpaceWeatherNews.com
https://spaceweather.com/
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
Jizzero crater
End of November Images of 3I/ATLAS
December 6, 2025
The rotational gradient map of the new Hubble image of the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS, taken on November 30 with a remarkable angular resolution of 0.04 arcseconds per pixel, shows evidence for two jets, with a clear anti-tail extending out to more than 60,000 kilometers (ten times the Earth’s radius) in the direction of the Sun.
The previous Hubble image, taken when 3I/ATLAS was approaching the Sun on July 21, 2025 (as reported here), showed a sunward anti-tail as well.
During perihelion, the anti-tail apparently reversed direction relative to the steady motion of 3I/ATLAS. It appears to always point toward the Sun, irrespective of the direction of motion.
This phenomenon is not normal in familiar comets and needs to be explained. As I often say: the foundation of science is the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise.
And speaking about science of the people, amateur astronomers continue to supply large-scale images of 3I/ATLAS with evidence for multiple jets extending out to millions of kilometers.
Here on planet Earth, there is some good news. As of this morning, YouTube took down the fake AI videos on 3I/ATLAS. All it took was a brief addendum to my latest Medium.com post here.
For details on the steps leading to the removal of this fake content, click here. Unfortunately, shortly after the previous channel had been removed, a new YouTube channel appeared here.
Nature is more imaginative than AI creators or script writers in Hollywood.
It is therefore far more inspiring to collect facts about our cosmic neighborhood than to watch the hallucinations of AI systems.
Frank Sinatra famously sang:
“Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
And let me see what spring is like
On a-Jupiter and Mars”
However, my sincere wish is to ride an object like 3I/ATLAS and fly with it to interstellar space after passing near Jupiter and Mars.
The reason is simple: the backyard of other stars is where we might find a higher level of intelligence than available on Earth. And by Earth, I also mean the internet.
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/end-of-november-images-of-3i-atlas-0c49237ccb51
https://medium.com/@earthexistclothing/3i-atlas-the-ghost-machine-946ec9b6fd18
https://usaherald.com/hubbles-new-3i-atlas-capture-confirms-an-anomaly-hiding-in-plain-sight/
https://x.com/forallcurious/status/1997132917563445751
https://x.com/RedCollie1/status/1997269572794421629
https://x.com/cosmos4u/status/1997318331217391751
https://x.com/tonycorp45/status/1997305263406063999
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZJs999obsU (Red Collie (Dr. Horace Drew): An update on 3I/ATLAS: the greatest USO (Unidentified Space Object) in modern history)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgdcnkyM5Uw (Dobsonian Power: THE TRUTH BEHIND 3I/ATLAS NASA BAD PICTURES!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqzQnf2pTRc (Ray's Astrophotography: Comet 3i Atlas - Is it a SEED of LIFE or something STRANGE - I took a PICTURE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMyIXGaIXJQ (Chuck's Astrophotography: Live 3I/ATLAS Getting Closer to Earth)
Hubble’s New 3I/ATLAS Capture Confirms An Anomaly Hiding In Plain Sight
December 6, 2025
KEY FINDINGS
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The shape is unmistakable.
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The symmetry is unnatural.
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And the implications lead directly to December 19.
When NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute released the newest Hubble image of 3I/ATLAS—taken November 30, 2025 using the F350LP filter aboard the Wide Field Camera 3—I found myself staring not at a comet’s familiar disorder, but at something profoundly structured.
A smooth, spherical glow extends outward nearly 40,000 kilometers in all directions, yet from this perfect shell emerges a narrow, elongated extension pointing directly toward the Sun.
That single detail, hiding in plain sight, is the anomaly that changes everything.
In the language of comet science, this feature is called an anti-tail—a tail that extends toward the Sun rather than away from it. In the laws of physics, that feature should not exist. And yet here it is, sharper and more defined than ever.
The significance of this becomes clearer when we compare it to natural behavior. Comets shed volatile ices that vaporize under solar heating, producing a dust tail that curves gently backward and an ion tail that stretches straight outward, pushed by the solar wind.
Every motion, every plume, every brightening is chaotic. Nothing remains stable. Nothing remains predictable. And nothing, under any standard comet model, organizes into a clean, sunward line of debris tens of thousands of kilometers long.
Yet this is exactly what the new Hubble image shows: a 60,000-kilometer sunward extension, narrow, and coherent.
To understand why this matters, it helps to look at the work of Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who has been studying 3I/ATLAS with growing scientific interest.
Loeb suggests that the teardrop-shaped halo is not made of dust or gas at all. Instead, he argues it is composed of macroscopic non-volatile fragments—solid objects, not dust grains—that were separated from the main body during perihelion by the object’s measured non-gravitational acceleration away from the Sun.
In plain English, the object sped up in a way that cannot be explained by solar radiation alone, and in the process, it shed solid pieces that remained clustered in a predictable formation.
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This is where the story becomes remarkable. Loeb’s model predicted that by November 30—if these large fragments separated from ATLAS at perihelion—they should appear approximately 60,000 kilometers closer to the Sun than the main body.
Hubble’s newly released image shows the anti-tail extending almost exactly 60,000 kilometers. In the world of investigative analysis, that degree of alignment between prediction and observation is rare. In astrophysics, it is extraordinary.
And in the context of interstellar visitors—objects that arrive without warning and behave in ways our models are not built to anticipate—it is a moment of clarity in the middle of confusion.
The image does more than confirm a prediction. It reveals a pattern. The spherical coma is unusually symmetric for a body that should be venting gas unevenly after perihelion.
The nucleus remains compact and stable in appearance. The star streaks across the image—straight white lines produced by Hubble’s tracking of ATLAS—remind us that the object’s motion is smooth and steady, not jittered by chaotic sublimation.
And the anti-tail itself, pointing sunward, challenges the very definition of a comet, which by nature should release material blown away from the Sun, not toward it.
The broader implication is that we are no longer just documenting anomalies; we are watching consistent behavior that repeats across time, across instruments, and across viewing angles.
When a behavior repeats, it becomes evidence. And when evidence repeats across independent platforms—ESA’s Juice spacecraft, Hubble’s pre-perihelion and post-perihelion images, ground-based amateur telescopes—the anomaly is no longer incidental. It is structural.
The timing is crucial because December 19, 2025 marks the close approach of 3I/ATLAS to Earth. That moment will give astronomers their best chance yet to capture high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy before the object moves outward into the colder reaches of the solar system.
What we expect to learn on that date is not just the color or shape of the coma, but whether this sunward debris field continues to behave in a coherent pattern as the object cools. Will the anti-tail elongate, or dissipate?
Will the nucleus brighten, dim, or rotate? Will the swarm of macroscopic fragments appear more clearly under changing illumination? And most fundamentally, will 3I/ATLAS continue to follow the non-gravitational acceleration profile already measured?
These answers matter because 3I/ATLAS is teaching us, in real time, that interstellar objects do not have to resemble the comets and asteroids we know.
They can carry materials we have not yet cataloged. They can react to sunlight in unfamiliar ways. They can shed debris that does not behave like dust. And they can move according to forces our models are only beginning to describe.
Hubble’s newest image confirms that the anomaly was never subtle. It was always there, hiding in plain sight. Now, with December 19 approaching, the world has an opportunity not only to observe it but to understand it.
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Crew Swaps Commanders on Sunday as Trio Packs for Departure
December 5, 2025
Expedition 73 will swap commanders this weekend before three crew members return to Earth on Monday.
Expedition 74 officially begins once the home bound trio undocks from the Rassvet module inside the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft the following day.
Veteran Roscosmos cosmonaut and station Commander Sergey Ryzhikov will hand over a symbolic key representing command of the orbital outpost to four-time space flyer NASA astronaut Mike Fincke at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Dec. 7.
Fincke will formally take responsibility of station operations and lead the new Expedition 74 crew at the moment Ryzhikov and Flight Engineers Alexey Zubritsky of Roscosmos and Jonny Kim of NASA back away from the orbital outpost inside their Soyuz at 8:41 p.m. on Monday.
Ryzhikov and Zubritsky spent Friday packing cargo and personal items inside the Soyuz MS-27 and making final preparations for their Monday night departure with Kim.
The trio aboard the Soyuz descent module will parachute to landing in Kazakhstan less than three-and-a-half hours later at 12:04 a.m. on Tuesday completing an eight-month space research journey orbiting over 250 miles above Earth.
NASA’s live coverage of the crew’s return will be broadcast on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel beginning at 4:45 p.m. on Monday with farewell and hatch closure.
NASA Flight Engineer Chris Williams, who arrived at the station with Flight Engineers Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev on Nov. 27, has stepped into his new role as a first-time station astronaut and assisted Kim inside the Quest airlock on Friday installing lights, cameras, and straps on a pair of spacesuit helmets.
Williams then wore electrodes around his eyes as computerized medical gear operated by NASA Flight Engineer Zena Cardman sent light signals to test his retinal response in microgravity.
Kim also cleaned his crew quarters and took airflow measurements as he prepares to end his stay in space.
Cardman later checked out wireless high-definition camera hardware to be used inside the station when photographing future spacewalks.
Flight Engineers Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev took turns measuring their blood pressure then getting up to speed with life on orbit during the first half of Friday.
Next, Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev collected a variety of station microbial and personal biological samples for stowage and analysis as part of ongoing research to keep crews healthy in space.
Flight Engineer Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency uninstalled the NanoRacks CubeSat deployer after it deployed several tiny satellites into Earth orbit for government, educational, and commercial research.
Fincke spent his shift replacing orbital plumbing components and inspecting fire extinguishers and breathing masks.
Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Platonov completed the end of the week transferring fluids into a Progress cargo craft then assisted Kud-Sverchkov processing microbe samples swabbed from surfaces in the station’s Roscosmos segment.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/12/05/crew-swaps-commanders-on-sunday-as-trio-packs-for-departure/
https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/1997003264374567176
Two NASA Scientific Balloon Launches Planned From Antarctica
December 5, 2025
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program is back in Antarctica for another long-duration scientific balloon campaign, with two launches planned from the icy surface.
Launch operations will begin early December from the agency’s facility located near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf.
To follow the missions, visit NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website for real-time updates of balloons’ altitudes and locations during flight.
The program is supporting two missions this year: the Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) and the General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS).
NASA’s PUEO will be the first balloon mission to launch through the agency’s Astrophysics Pioneers program, which supports compelling astrophysics science at a lower cost.
The PUEO payload is designed to detect signals from neutrinos, high-energy particles that travel across the universe undisturbed, carrying information about events billions of light-years away.
The mission will search for radio signals created when these neutrinos from space hit ice. This will be the most sensitive survey of cosmic ultra-high energy neutrinos ever conducted, offering valuable clues about the highest-energy astrophysical processes, from the creation of black holes to neutron star mergers.
“I’m excited to see our first Astrophysics Pioneer mission on the launch pad, with more to come very soon,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“The PUEO mission is essentially like using the Antarctic ice as one big telescope, to detect signals from high-energy events that will help us better understand how our universe works.
It’s a great example of the important science we can undertake at a lower cost when we do things differently and embrace innovation, as well as the opportunities the program creates for early- and mid-career researchers.
The GAPS experiment is designed to help reveal the origin of dark matter – an invisible form of matter that makes up more than 80% of the total matter in the universe, yet little is known about its true nature.
The GAPS mission is optimized to detect certain anti-matter particles that are only produced when dark matter decays. A single detection of one of those particles could have a tremendous impact on our understanding of how the universe works.
Zero-pressure balloons, used in this campaign, are in equilibrium with their surroundings as they fly.
They maintain a zero-pressure differential with ducts that allow gas to escape to prevent an increase in pressure from inside the balloons as they rise above Earth’s surface.
This zero-pressure design, polar orbit, and constant sunlight makes the balloons very robust and well-suited for extended duration flights, such as those in this campaign.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia manages the agency’s scientific balloon flight program.
Peraton, which operates NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, provides mission planning, engineering services, and field operations for NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program.
NASA’s balloons are fabricated by Aerostar. The NASA Scientific Balloon Program is funded by the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/wallops/2025/12/05/two-nasa-scientific-balloon-launches-planned-from-antarctica/
Space Explorers: Moonrise on the ISS
December 5, 2025 at 3:47 PM PST
Stream now with KPBS Passport on KPBS+ / Watch Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV
Drawing from over 250 hours of exclusive footage and video diaries filmed on the International Space Station, "Space Explorers: Moonrise on The Iss" is a documentary inspired by Felix & Paul Studios’ Emmy Award-winning virtual reality series, "Space Explorers: The ISS Experience" — the largest production ever filmed in space.
Later this decade, the Artemis program will send people to the Moon for the first time in 50 years. In "Moonrise on the ISS," meet some of the potential candidates of Artemis before they were candidates.
The documentary follows seven astronauts as they live on the International Space Station (ISS), an outpost of humanity in space. Astronauts conduct science experiments, use themselves as guinea pigs for medical research, and test life-support systems—effectively making the ISS a proving ground for travel to the Moon and beyond.
However, much has changed since the Apollo program. In "Moonrise on the ISS," Anne McClain dreams of becoming the first woman on the Moon and reflects on the historical women of spaceflight that have made her opportunities possible.
Christina Koch and Jessica Meir set new milestones.
The documentary also features Victor Glover, a candidate for the first person of color on the Moon, as well as Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques.
Canada will be the second country to send an astronaut to circle the Moon. As the astronauts learn from one another and prepare for the future of spaceflight, they share how living among the stars has shifted their perspectives about life on Earth.
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2025/12/05/space-explorers-moonrise-on-the-iss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIiHJmqK_Vo
Scientists capture 51 images showing exoplanets coming together around other stars: 'This data set is an astronomical treasure'
December 6, 2025
Astronomers have unveiled a stunning new gallery of dusty rings encircling young stars, revealing the intricate architecture of developing planetary systems.
Using observations from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope, astronomers documented 51 budding exoplanetary systems after studying 161 nearby stars, offering an unprecedented glimpse at debris disks around stars beyond our solar system.
These debris disks are formed by collisions between asteroids or comets that generate large amounts of dust and resemble our own solar system where asteroids collect in the inner belt and comets populate the distant Kuiper Belt, according to a statement.
"This data set is an astronomical treasure," Gaël Chauvin, co-author of the study and SPHERE project scientist, said in the statement.
"It provides exceptional insights into the properties of debris disks, and allows for deductions of smaller bodies like asteroids and comets in these systems, which are impossible to observe directly."
Scientists study debris disks because they offer a snapshot of what young solar systems look like after planets begin to form.
Young stars form within collapsing clouds of gas and dust, which flatten into broad protoplanetary disks where material gradually clumps into larger bodies.
As these systems mature, collisions between leftover asteroids and comets produce fine dust creating the debris disks we see today.
By examining how this dust reflects starlight, astronomers can piece together how planets grow and how systems like our own take shape over time.
However, debris disks fade as collisions become less frequent and dust is gradually removed — either because it's blown out by stellar radiation, swept up by planets or remaining planetesimals or has fallen into the central star.
Our solar system is an example of the end state of this process, with just the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt and faint zodiacal dust remaining.
Using advanced instruments like SPHERE allows astronomers to study the dust in younger systems — roughly the first 50 million years — that can still be detected.
Most importantly, SPHERE blocks starlight using a coronagraph, a small disk that physically masks the star to reveal faint surrounding objects.
The telescope's adaptive optics system corrects for atmospheric distortions in real time, and optional polarization filters enhance sensitivity to light reflected by dust, making debris disks easier to detect.
The new survey reveals remarkable variety, from narrow rings to wide diffuse belts, lopsided disks and disks viewed both edge-on and face-on.
In fact, four of the disks were imaged in this detail for the first time, the researchers said.
Striking views of HD 197481 and HD 39060 capture sharp streams of material darting out from either side of its central star (representing an edge-on view), while incredible views of systems like HD 109573 and 181327 capture a nearly perfect circular debris ring (representing a face-on view).
In many systems, dust congregates in sharply defined rings, hinting at unseen planets shaping the debris, much like Neptune molds the Kuiper Belt in our solar system.
On the other hand, the dust distribution in younger systems like HD 145560 and HD 156623 is more chaotic and billowy, where less defined structures suggest material hasn't yet been fully sculpted by planets or cleared by collisions.
Comparing the different structures within the disks revealed clear trends, like more massive stars tend to host more massive disks, and disks with material concentrated farther from the star also generally contain more mass, according to the statement.
"All of these belt structures appear to be associated with the presence of planets, specifically of giant planets, clearing their neighborhoods of smaller bodies," researchers said in the statement.
"In some of the SPHERE images, features like sharp inner edges or disk asymmetries give tantalizing hints of as-yet unobserved planets."
While some giant exoplanets have already been detected in these systems, the SPHERE survey offers a guide post for new targets to be studied in greater detail by instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope and ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, which could reveal the exoplanets responsible for sculpting these spectacular disks.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/scientists-capture-51-images-showing-exoplanets-coming-together-around-other-stars-this-data-set-is-an-astronomical-treasure
https://www.mpg.de/25784351/spheres-debris-disk-gallery
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/12/aa54953-25/aa54953-25.html