TYB's
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
May 19, 2026
NGC 2170: The Angel Nebula
Is this a painting or a photograph? In this celestial abstract art composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines just above the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of colorful stars. Like the common household items that abstract painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars featured here are also commonly found in a setting like this one – a massive, star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). The giant molecular cloud Mon R2, is impressively close, estimated to be only 2,400 light-years or so away. At that distance, this canvas would be over 60 light-years across.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25e-ppJ4sk
Solar-Watch Coming, Schumann Resonance | S0 News and frens
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUHpGvsp-vE (Stefan Burns: Your Genius Activation is about to Happen…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mZYecdPv0k (Randall Carlson: CLEAR EVIDENCE How The Most Significant Climatic Disruption in Human History Shaped Our Modern World)
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mars-reveals-zwan-wolf-effect.html
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/villarrica/news/302780/Villarrica-volcano-Central-Chile-new-thermal-anomaly-in-crater.html
https://spacedaily.com/the-carrington-event-of-1859-was-a-solar-storm-so-intense-that-telegraph-operators-kept-sending-messages-after-disconnecting-their-batteries-because-the-storm-itself-was-powering-the-lines-a/
https://www.gulftoday.ae/news/2026/05/19/6-killed-in-china-after-truck-falls-into-river-in-heavy-rain
https://watchers.news/2026/05/19/pds-tornado-watch-followed-by-19-tornado-reports-large-hail-and-damaging-winds-across-central-u-s/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/severe-weather-outbreak-including-threat-of-strong-tornadoes-continues-monday-in-nebraska-kansas-iowa-095500372.html
https://meteoagent.com/schumann-resonance-forecast
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquake/news/302819/World-Earthquake-Report-for-Tuesday-19-May-2026.html
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://www.spaceweather.gov/node/1485
https://www.spaceweather.gov/node/1487
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=18&month=05&year=2026
https://sciencex.com/news/2026-05-mars-interstellar-visitor-astronomers-thought.html
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https://skyandtelescope.org/online-gallery/comet-c-2025-r3-panstarrs-in-the-clouds/
https://www.worldatlas.com/space/halley-s-comet.html
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/chasing-alien-mysteries-in-the-sky-249a9150cece
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/the-difference-between-scientific-research-and-social-media-opinions-007f56580a43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Jg2PyQmO8 (Ray's Astro: A 12th Asteroid Hit Earth While I Was Tracking the First 11)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XeETsxB8I (MARS ANOMALIES and Beyond: Apollo 16 ~ Strange Anomalies and How I Enhance Moon Photos ~ 5/19/2026)
Seen from Mars, an interstellar visitor looks completely different and changes what astronomers thought they knew
May 19, 2026
Last fall, a Chinese spacecraft orbiting Mars captured images of a comet from another star system, offering scientists a fresh vantage on a rare visitor.
In July 2025, telescopes spotted 3I/ATLAS—only the third interstellar object ever seen in our solar system. It behaved exactly like a comet, with a bright coma of dust and gas.
Even NASA's Webb Space Telescope found its chemistry unusual: 3I/ATLAS had a much higher CO₂-to-water ratio than nearly any solar system comet. Chinese space scientists seized a rare opportunity: they turned Mars-orbiting Tianwen-1's camera toward the comet as it flew by.
In doing so, they achieved a milestone—in their words, "These observations constitute the first imaging of this object from a vantage point significantly out of its orbital plane, providing a unique constraint on dust dynamics."
Remarkably, the researchers note this was indeed China's first deep-space astronomy from orbit. The two sets of images (just days apart) highlight how the coma's shape changed as the geometry shifted.
These findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A Martian view of an alien comet
Unlike nearly all previous observations (made from Earth or Earth orbit), Tianwen-1 saw the comet from well out of its orbital plane. This unique perspective was crucial for understanding the comet's behavior.
The HiRIC camera is actually a 512×512-pixel CMOS imager (∼1.94″/pixel) designed for snapping Mars, not faint comets. The team trained it carefully on 3I/ATLAS for 30-second exposures, capturing 57 frames over three epochs (Sept. 30, Oct. 1, Oct. 3).
These observations spanned only a few days, but with the comet racing at ~86 km/s relative to Mars, each image showed the coma and tail in a new configuration.
From this Martian vantage point, astronomers could see aspects of the comet that Earth telescopes never could.
As described in their paper, "This is China's first deep-space observation of an astronomical object," and it gave unique insight into the dust around 3I/ATLAS.
(For example, the comet's nucleus had been estimated at 1.3±0.2 km across from Hubble data, with a ~16-hour spin. Slow dust seen from Earth implied large grains; now Mars sees those grains directly.)
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Dust grains as big as sand
The key finding: 3I/ATLAS's dust cloud was filled with unusually large particles.
By comparing the images to standard dust models, the researchers found the coma is dominated by grains hundreds of micrometers in size (solar-pressure parameter β≈10⁻³–10⁻²).
In other words, most grains are on the order of a tenth to a millimeter across—about the size of coarse sand.
These hefty bits moved very slowly once released: the extent of the sunward coma implies ejection speeds of only 3–10 m/s. For comparison, previous analyses had estimated about 5 m/s and a mix of tens-to-hundreds-of-micron grains.
Despite these changes, the coma's overall brightness profile remained steady across the epochs. Near the nucleus, it falls off roughly as 1/ρ (ρ = distance), steepening to about 1/ρ1.5 farther out. This is exactly what one expects if large dust is steadily streaming away under sunlight.
Using calibrated photometry, the team estimated a dust mass-loss rate of order 10³ kg/s—about a ton of material every second. That's much higher than earlier ground-based estimates of tens of kg/s, indicating the comet was shedding far more dust than first thought (with most in these big grains).
Where are the jets?
Astronomers had briefly reported narrow dust jets in 3I/ATLAS's coma (likely linked to its spin). Intriguingly, the Tianwen-1 images showed no such jets.
In the Mars data, the comet's cloud was smooth and fan-shaped, without discrete streaks of dust. The authors explicitly write that they "searched for jet structures … but found none."
They even express doubt about some Hubble jet claims: if those jets were real, they argue, they should have appeared in their data (from a very different angle)—but they did not.
Cosmic clues and next steps
All of these observations lead to some clues regarding the formation of 3I/ATLAS. This interstellar body and its predecessor, 2I/Borisov, share massive grains and unusual volatiles.
This is an indication that both formed in very cold environments outside their star systems, allowing for the preservation of volatiles such as carbon dioxide.
There's also a practical takeaway: modern spacecraft can double as telescopes.
As the authors conclude, "the success demonstrated the capability and flexibility of the Tianwen-1 orbiter spacecraft, and set an example for exploiting operating spacecraft in deep space to perform target-of-opportunity astronomical observations."
Tianwen-1 was launched to orbit Mars, but this study shows it can also chase comets. In the future, orbiters or planetary probes might routinely be redirected to snap otherwise-missed sights.
The next interstellar traveler could potentially also be observed not only on planet Earth but also through the eyes of another planet. Every new perspective holds new surprises as we keep pursuing our quest for these cosmic travelers.
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