TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
July 28, 2026
Barnards Loop over Twin Volcanoes
What's connecting these two volcanoes? In ancient folklore, the two volcanoes, Parinacota (left) and Pomerape (right), are connected by representing a mythical prince and princess who engaged in a forbidden romance. Beneath the ground, the two peaks are not known to be connected by a common pool of hot magma, and neither volcano has erupted in the past 1000 years. Above the ground, there is usually nothing in the sky that connects them – except if you use careful timing and look from a specific location. The featured well-planned image was captured from Bolivia in mid-April with a series of camera exposures taken on the same day and from the same location. Then, Barnard's Loop appeared to connect the volcanic peaks. Also visible in the image is the Orion Nebula in the center, the star Betelgeuse on the right, and the Rosette Nebula on the upper right.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qbWWT0WjUU
S0 news guy doesn't have an update yet, which is a little strange considering he hasn't missed a day in years. Maybe just running late.
BREAKING: IT IS BAD ! Explosions, Collapses, Fires & Tsunami - Maximum Intensity SHAKING VII ! Silki and frens
Jul 28, 2026
A SHALLOW powerful M7.1 earthquake struck near Uki, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan, rupturing the active Hinagu–Futagawa fault system.
The quake reached the maximum JMA Shindo 7 intensity, triggering a tsunami advisory, widespread fires, explosions, bridge and road damage, and major structural collapses.
This video covers the latest damage, the MaxValu shopping center fire, affected areas including Uki, Kumamoto City, Yatsushiro and Uto, aftershock risks, the 2016 Kumamoto comparison, tsunami updates, and what could happen next.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ZfG1rdlyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNLOdq8fATU (Stefan Burns: This Could Be Very Bad News For California…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBPs0NRURic (EarthMaster: Earthquake activity ramping up globally tonight.. Too many to title. Monday Night report)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgNIzCrKlc (Mr Weatherman: Unsettled Areas with a New Earthquake…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGTD9CSydk8 (MrMBB333: They never experienced ANYTHING like it…EVER! (Mystery in the Midwest))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN1EC2r2UTc (Time For Truth: 7.4 Earthquake Rocks Mexico & Guatemala | Hundreds of Aftershocks Follow (Recap))
https://qs-gen.com/european-sawa-space-mission/
https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/07/27/flooded-basements-downed-trees-again-plague-chicago-after-heavy-storms-monday/
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-forecasts/strong-july-storm-to-unleash-flooding-rain-across-the-northeast-through-thursday/1915958
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2026/07/28/summer-weather-severe-storms-flood-monsoon-wildfires-heat-maps/91075173007/
https://watchers.news/2026/07/28/local-state-of-disaster-declared-after-tornado-tears-through-menasha-appleton-and-neenah-wisconsin/
https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/tornado-causes-major-damage-in-wisconsin-as-severe-storms-leave-thousands-without-power/1916035
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/07/28/tyumen-region-declares-state-of-emergency-as-it-braces-for-major-flooding-a93347
https://www.newsx.com/world/japan-earthquake-over-50-injured-residents-trapped-inside-kumamoto-shopping-mall-pm-sanae-takaichi-orders-urgent-rescue-efforts-253710/
https://asia.nikkei.com/photos/in-focus-powerful-magnitude-7.1-earthquake-jolts-kumamoto
https://www.autonews.com/toyota/an-toyota-nissan-japan-earthquake-tsunami-evaluating-disruption-0728/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/world/asia/japan-earthquake-kumamoto-castle-damage.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-28/magnitude-7-1-earthquake-hits-japan-kumamoto-prefecture/106968604
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/east-asia/china-earthquake-today-usgs-b3022732.html
https://www.fijitimes.com.fj/volcanic-ash-reaches-fiji-airspace-disrupting-fiji-airways-flights/
https://schumannresonance.today/
https://www.weatherbug.com/news/Severe%20Storms,%20Flooding%20Impact%20Northeast%20And%20Mid-Atlantic
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/past24hours.html
https://www.spaceweather.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=28&month=07&year=2026
I guess its doublet season.
Pretty crazy if those are tunnels and facilities and things that are all connected down there.
Id love to see a nice detailed map of it all.
Falling fireball triggers massive plane crash search
Monday, July 27, 2026
A large-scale rescue response team turned out in minutes after what appeared to be an aircraft crashed into the sea off the coast of Oamaru.
After an hour of quick and widespread investigation, it turned out the alleged aircraft was actually a “fireball” falling from space, Senior Sergeant Iain Notman, of Dunedin, said.
At 6pm on Sunday, a member of the public called police to report what they thought was an aircraft on fire crashing into the ocean near Kakanui, south of Oamaru.
This kicked off “large scale, immediate, and extensive” inquiries.
Dunedin Air Traffic Control, multiple Oamaru-based flight schools and commercial helicopter companies were contacted and said their aircraft were accounted for.
Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand and Maritime New Zealand had no activations, and Flight Radar showed no flights in the area.
Southern police then co-ordinated with the national centre and discovered there had been multiple calls from Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin all describing a red ball of light falling with what looked to be smoke training behind, Snr Sgt Notman said.
The consensus was that it was an atmospheric event down the east coast of New Zealand.
Astronomer Dr Ian Griffin said it was most likely a meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere.
“A fireball is a rock from space that’s burning up high over the Earth … the really bright fireballs are caused by slightly bigger rocks.”
Dr Griffin said it was similar to a shooting star, but bigger.
https://www.odt.co.nz/otago/north-otago/falling-fireball-triggers-massive-plane-crash-search-tm305fr7
moar space objects
https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Planetary_Defence/Lightning_watch_satellites_spotted_mystery_Atlantic_fireball
https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2026-07-28/engk-yeri-skywatchers-prepare-for-a-rare-triple-header-planet-parade-eclipse-and-perseids/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nASmbs66OU4 (Ray's Astro: COMET 3I:ATLAS - I Wasn’t Expecting THIS New PICTURE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMxvE03dxgE (Dobsonian Power: SEARCHING FOR THE MONOLITH ON THE MOON WITH A TELESCOPE)
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasa-science-soars-during-august-total-solar-eclipse/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6u0DU_hDHs (Chasing Solar Eclipses With NASA Pilots)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UqEGElLxfs (High-Flying Balloons Give Students Unique Views of Solar Eclipses)
moar NASA
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/2026/07/27/nasa-fuels-roman-space-telescope-for-late-august-launch/
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronaut-chris-williams-to-discuss-space-station-mission/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronaut-chris-williams-returns-to-earth/
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/natural-disasters/wildfires/smoke-blankets-oregon/
NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse
Jul 27, 2026
Each time the Moon covers the Sun during a total solar eclipse — darkening daytime skies and briefly revealing the Sun’s ethereal outer atmosphere, the corona — it presents new opportunities to better understand our star and its influence on Earth.
On Wednesday, Aug. 12, as the next total solar eclipse sweeps over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, NASA-funded science teams will be chasing the Moon’s shadow with a high-altitude jet and scientific balloons to investigate the Sun’s dynamics and how the temporary darkening of our skies affects our atmosphere.
“From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the Sun’s corona in a way we can’t from anywhere else in the solar system,” said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“The Sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence.”
High-flying jet to record solar dynamics
Soaring in the nose cone of NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft is a suite of four cameras to take high-resolution images of the corona in several different wavelengths of visible and infrared light.
Part of an instrument developed by the NASA Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the cameras will capture at least 20 images per second, recording structures, outflows, and rapid changes in the corona during the total solar eclipse.
With these images, scientists hope to learn more about the formation of prominences (solar material that gets suspended above the Sun’s surface), better understand the corona and how it gets heated to nearly a million degrees, and investigate how material in the corona and the solar wind are related, which flows out from the Sun across the solar system.
By chasing the Moon’s shadow, the jet will extend how long the cameras can observe the corona. On the ground, the longest anyone will be able to see the corona is two minutes and 18 seconds.
But flying along the eclipse path at 460 miles per hour, the jet’s view of the corona will last nearly three minutes.
NASA’s WB-57 will fly at 50,000 feet, above any clouds that might obscure the view of the corona from the ground.
The altitude also allows the cameras to observe some infrared wavelengths that get absorbed by the lower atmosphere before reaching the ground, and the corona only has been observed in those wavelengths a few times before.
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The instrument, called SCIFLI Multispectral Airborne Imager, or SAMI, also flew on a WB-57 during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, providing valuable imagery and information about the corona.
However, the study’s principal investigator, Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says each total solar eclipse provides new opportunities to learn more about the corona.
“The Sun is always changing,” Caspi said. “Every eclipse is different. So we could see things we didn’t see before. And we learn from each eclipse how to better observe the next one.”
Caspi’s team also is making some enhancements for the 2026 campaign based on lessons learned in 2024. For example, the team will adjust exposure times to better capture bright features that were overexposed in 2024 imagery.
They will also leverage software developed since 2024 to process and analyze the data sooner than before.
The experiment is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Low Cost Access to Space Program.
Balloons to watch atmospheric changes
When a total solar eclipse suddenly turns daytime skies dark, our atmosphere changes in ways we don’t yet fully understand.
The NASA-supported Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, led by Angela Des Jardins at Montana State University, is sending students from several U.S. universities to Iceland and Spain to launch scientific balloons before, during, and after the eclipse to better understand those changes.
In Iceland, two teams will launch a total of 80 balloons starting 18 hours before the eclipse until eight hours afterward to study how the eclipse affects Earth’s “boundary layer,” the part of the atmosphere that touches the ground.
The thickness of the boundary layer changes depending on factors such as surface temperature and moisture in the air.
Previous balloon flights during solar eclipses in October 2023 and April 2024 showed that the boundary layer collapsed, or decreased in thickness, in locations with clear skies but not where there were cloudy skies.
Scientists wonder whether that will be different in Iceland in 2026. Changes in the boundary layer are driven by the day-night cycle. However, in Iceland in August, the days are long and nights are short, so the nighttime influences might not be as strong as in 2023 or 2024.
“Will this eclipse be able to collapse the boundary layer?” said Matthew Bernards, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Idaho, who leads one of the Iceland teams.
In Spain, three balloon teams will launch a total of six balloons with 360-degree cameras to image the eclipse shadow from above.
These balloons also will include instruments designed to measure levels of ozone in the atmosphere, which requires sunlight to form.
Similar balloon experiments showed that ozone decreased during totality in April 2024. Scientists wonder whether there will be differences with this eclipse, particularly since it happens at a later time of day and during a different season.
Follow along
While the total solar eclipse won’t be visible in the U.S., some parts of the country will be able to see a partial solar eclipse. Learn more about where to see the eclipse and how to view it safely.
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https://science.nasa.gov/missions/swift/nasas-swift-sees-wandering-mega-black-hole-shredding-star/
extra
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/cosmic-origins/community/ad-astra-community-workshop-detailed-schedule-available/
https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/solicitations/roses-2025/amendment-68-new-opportunity-d-8-habitable-worlds-observatory-precursor-science-investigations/
https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/solicitations/roses-2025/amendment-67-d-3-agigo-change-to-ixpe-and-nicer-general-observer-second-opportunity-in-roses-25/
https://nasawatch.com/2026/07/27/white-house-issued-new-space-policy-video/
NASA’s Swift Sees ‘Wandering’ Mega Black Hole Shredding Star
Jul 27, 2026
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured an “orphan” black hole lighting up as it devoured a star on the outskirts of a faraway galaxy. These phenomena are rare to begin with, and none had ever before been seen so far outside of a galaxy’s core.
“We were looking for these star-shredding events as a way to find otherwise invisible supermassive black holes wandering away from the galactic cores where they usually reside,” said Robert Stein, a research fellow at The University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“With this discovery, which is one of just a couple that have been confirmed so far, we’ve validated a new technique and can use it to hunt for more.”
A paper describing the results, led by Stein, was published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Researchers saw an ultrabright flare unleashed by a star being torn apart by extreme gravitational forces after drifting too close to a monster black hole — a phenomenon called a tidal disruption event.
The black hole behind the blast weighs in at about a million times the Sun’s mass. Its existence was first flagged in November 2025 as an unusual brightening in a galaxy about 750 million light-years away by ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility), a survey conducted by the Palomar Observatory in Southern California.
“Out of the half million flashes ZTF detects each night, our new artificial intelligence algorithm automatically recognized a flare that looked a lot like a tidal disruption event, despite its unusual location in the outskirts of a galaxy,” Stein said.
For a few months, the tidal disruption event outshone its entire host galaxy in ultraviolet wavelengths, temporarily radiating with the light of about 10 billion suns.
Other telescopes, including the SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) telescope in Chile, followed up on the ZTF source to look at the event’s spectrum, which revealed features supporting that it was likely a tidal disruption event.
Astronomers then used NASA’s Swift to look at wavelengths they can’t detect with ground-based telescopes to uncover new information.
For example, Swift’s UVOT (Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope) took the blip’s temperature and found that it had quite a fever at about 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 degrees Celsius).
“The combination of all this data helped us rule out other explanations and confidently say it’s a tidal disruption event, despite its strange location,” said Jonathan Carney, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who took the first spectra that supported the flare’s interpretation as a tidal disruption event.
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Hidden heavyweights
Nearly every galaxy in the universe is anchored by a supermassive black hole sitting right in the center. About once every 100,000 years, a star will drift too close to this invisible heavyweight and trigger a tidal disruption event.
While they’re rather rare in any given galaxy, scientists scour millions of galaxies for them. Each year, astronomical surveys typically spot about 30 tidal disruption events occurring somewhere in the universe.
Prior to 2024, they’d only been seen in galaxy cores.
That’s partly because astronomers mainly looked for them there; after all, it’s where all the known supermassive black holes were, and you can’t get a tidal disruption event without one (the gravitational pull of lighter black holes isn’t strong enough).
Then scientists saw the telltale signs of a star being shredded 2,600 light-years from the center of its host galaxy. That inspired more astronomers to look beyond galaxy cores for similar events, and now a team has identified one more than 30,000 light-years away from a galaxy’s center.
Oddball origin story
So how did the newfound black hole become so off-kilter?
“It must have originated in a galaxy’s center, but not the one it’s in the outskirts of now,” Stein said. “We think the host galaxy’s supermassive black hole is still at its core, but the one eating the star could have started off in a small galaxy that merged with the big one we see today.”
The researchers have outlined two possibilities. Three or more galaxies may have merged together, and the gravitational tug-of-war between their central supermassive black holes may have flung the lightest black hole out to the galaxy’s edge.
Or a dwarf galaxy could be midway through a merger. As the dwarf’s stars fell into the larger galaxy, one may have passed too close to the dwarf’s supermassive black hole.
“Further discoveries could reveal the origin of this apparent ‘orphan’ black hole,” Stein said. “The key science question we want to answer is: How common are wandering black holes?”
The answer may soon be within reach. “Pointed science observations with Swift's UVOT and XRT (X-Ray Telescope) instruments are temporarily suspended as the mission awaits an orbit boost, which is planned for this summer,” said co-author S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard.
The spacecraft, whose primary mission ran from 2004 to 2006, is slowly sinking toward Earth due to atmospheric drag after more than 20 years of observations of the changing universe.
Nudging it to a higher orbit could extend its lifetime even longer. “Once it resumes normal operations, Swift could continue searching for more examples of out-of-place black holes.”
In the coming years, scientists will use the new technique to search for disintegrating stars in observations from the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, in Chile and NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
“Rubin’s wide, deep surveys will reveal a much larger sample of tidal disruption events than current observatories are capable of collecting, including ones that are off-center,” Carney said.
“And Roman’s space-based surveys will extend the current search zone by seeing ones that are farther away, looking back through 9 billion years of cosmic history.”
Adding their observations to Swift’s and those from ground-based observatories will bring astronomers closer than ever before to completing a census of the universe’s behemoth black holes.
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NASA's Johnson Space Center
@NASAJohnson
Suit up. Artemis III is getting real. 🚀🌕
Today’s suited training session prepares the crew for the upcoming @NASAArtemis III mission, where astronauts will test docking procedures between Orion and commercial human landing systems.
The suited training allows the crew to gain familiarization with the suit while interacting with the Orion mockup.
12:35 PM · Jul 27, 2026
https://x.com/NASAJohnson/status/2081825882931421570
extra
https://x.com/NASA/status/2081860978694594863
https://x.com/NASASolarSystem/status/2081803694480261151
https://x.com/USEmbassyMEX/status/2081766588798169498
https://x.com/Interior/status/2082097082949611889
Jared Isaacman: NASA's Moon Base by 2028, Optimus Robots on the Moon, The Truth About UFOs | Ep #274
Jul 27, 2026
The mates chat with Jared Isaacman on NASA’s plan for a Moon base by 2028, Optimus Robots on the Moon, and the truth about UFO’s.
Peter H. Diamandis, MD, is the Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University, ZeroG, and A360
Salim Ismail is the founder of Open ExO, a GP at Exponential Venture Capital/The Organizational Singularity Fund and a sought after global speaker and thought leader.
Dave Blundin is the founder & GP of Link Ventures
Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross is a computer scientist and founder of Reified
Jared Isaacman is an entrepreneur, pilot, and commercial astronaut who has served as the 15th administrator of NASA since December 2025.
Chapters
00:00 The future of NASA and space exploration
06:23 How NASA is using artificial intelligence
12:55 Humanoid robots on the Moon and Mars
15:29 Orbital data centers and the space economy
20:03 Rebuilding NASA for speed and focus
28:25 The plan to land on the Moon and build a lunar base
38:31 The new space race with China
45:18 Nuclear propulsion and the journey to Mars
50:58 Asteroid mining and commercial space exploration
01:00:41 Cooperation, competition, and the rules of space
01:08:41 Life beyond Earth, UAPs, and NASA’s next moonshot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV_lyWrkBs8
Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse! Astronomers capture clearest image yet of famous star's elusive companion
July 28, 2026
Astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama Desert region of Northern Chile to discover the strongest evidence yet that the famous star Betelgeuse has a companion star.
That means after a century of investigation, scientists are closer than ever before to conclusively identifying Betelgeuse as a binary system composed of two stars, Betelgeuse A and Betelgeuse B.
Betelgeuse is a red colored star visible with the naked eye in the constellation of Orion and located around 650 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers initially proposed the existence of another star orbiting Betelgeuse around 100 years ago in an attempt to explain the familiar star's strange dimming, which has been observed for over 1,000 years.
While other teams have gathered evidence of the existence of Betelgeuse B, this new image is the clearest ever direct observation of the star. The scientists behind the discovery are thrilled.
"This is the conclusion of a century-long quest," team leader Miguel Montargès of the Observatoire de Paris, France, said in a statement.
"We have shown that Betelgeuse is not single; it is accompanied by a faint stellar companion. I jumped from my chair when I saw the processed images."
The discovery of this new evidence of Betelgeuse B follows two papers published in 2024 that suggested this elusive stellar companion would be at its furthest from Betelgeuse A in December of that year.
With that clue in hand, Montargès and colleagues set about hunting it. "Honestly, I thought we did not have the sensitivity to detect Betelgeuse B as it was predicted," Montargès said. "Because it is more massive than predicted, we see it!"
Betelgeuse B had previously been theorized to be around the same mass as the sun, but these new observations reveal that this elusive star has instead around two to three times the mass of our star.
"The fact that we can still discover a nearby companion, more massive and brighter than the sun, around such a well-studied star is remarkable," Montargès added. "These are among the best moments in science: seeing something new, unexpected."
Capturing Betelegeuse B was only possible thanks to the VLT's SPHERE instrument, which features a coronagraph that blocks out the light of a planetary system's star.
Combined with the advanced optics on the instrument, this allows scientists to measure the wavelength and polarity of light both coming directly from the star and being reflected off of any nearby planets. But that's not all SPHERE can do.
"It is remarkable to see how SPHERE and advanced post-processing techniques, originally developed to find exoplanets, also excel at detecting a companion around a massive, evolved star like Betelgeuse," team member Anthony Boccaletti, also an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, said.
There are still many questions to answer regarding Betelgeuse B. The team still needs to solidly confirm that what they have seen is actually a companion star, and they would also like to know how the presence of this star could shape the future of Betelgeuse A.
This red supergiant star nearing the end of its evolution gained notoriety a few years ago when its sudden and rapid brightening led to speculation it was about to suffer an explosive death.
"To be certain that the companion is really there, we still need to observe it in one year on the other side of the star, but there is very little space left for doubt," Montargès said.
"The question is truly open whether this companion is going to have an impact on the evolution of the red supergiant."
The team's research was published on Tuesday (July 28) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/betelgeuse-betelgeuse-astronomers-capture-clearest-image-yet-of-famous-stars-elusive-companion
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2611/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5oB6q31Lak
In reference to the Beetlejuice image, is the black and white code for interdimensionality?
ISS meets Venus in incredible daylight photo
July 28, 2026
An astrophotographer captured a breathtaking scene as the International Space Station zoomed by Venus in the daytime sky.
What is it?
Photographer AJ Smadi set up the scene on July 18 in a park near Seattle, Washington.
Smadi used a 9.25" (23.5 cm) Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope and a ZWO ASI662MC camera equipped with an ultraviolet and infrared filter to capture the incredible image.
But this isn't the first time Smadi has pulled off such a feat. Just over a year ago, the photographer captured the ISS beside Venus in a photo that was selected by NASA as one of its Astronomy Photos of the Day.
"The thing that inspired me to capture Venus with the ISS is the fact that nobody has done it before," Smadi told Space.com by email.
"After having realized this in April 2025 following my first time capturing the pair together, I was determined to best my own achievement," Smadi said.
Smadi regularly photographs the ISS but says the clarity differs greatly depending on the stability of the air and its distance.
Why is it incredible?
Capturing Venus, the ISS, or any other object in space (other than the moon) during the daylight hours takes careful planning and a deep understanding of astrophotography techniques and filters.
The ISS travels at a mind-boggling 4.6 miles per second (7.5 km per second) and is 84 million miles (135 million kilometers) away from Venus, so lining up a photograph of the two seemingly side-by-side is no easy feat and takes painstaking planning.
For more of AJ Smadi's work, including photos of the ISS transiting the sun, the moon, and passing by Saturn, visit his Instagram.
https://www.space.com/stargazing/iss-meets-venus-in-incredible-daylight-photo-space-photo-of-the-day-for-july-28-2026
https://www.instagram.com/aj.smadi/