iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Two planets for the price of one 🙂👍 Playing around in Celestia, I was able to identify the approximate time & orientation of that #Artemis II shot of Earth's nightside. Revealing that the bright object at lower-right is Venus. Thanks to @Nina_cried@mastodonapp.uk for suggesting that I check 🙇‍♂️

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Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

You'll have seen this – Earth from #Artemis II en-route to the Moon. But look again – it's Earth's *nightside*, lit by the near-full Moon, not the Sun 🌕️ The aurorae, airglow, stars, & city lights in Europe, Africa, & the Americas give the game away. Cool. NASA/Reid Wiseman #Space #Photography

A picture of the Earth from space illuminated by the full Moon – it looks like daylight, but this is the night side of the planet, not the day side. There are city lights on the continents and a green aurora towards the north and south poles, plus a faint rim of upper atmosphere airglow as well. You can also see a faint dark rim of the Artemis II window frame and the zodiacal light (probably). North is at lower-left and you can see North Africa, then Spain and Portugal on that side. You can see South America and North America on the right side.

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Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

/cc @thocarp.bsky.social @yuvharpaz.bsky.social @melina-iras07572.bsky.social Aloha folks – just to let you know that these data go public tomorrow, but we're still working on them, as there tricky issues with saturation, banding, noise, etc. Plese be sure to tag me if you also make & post images 🙇‍♂️

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Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Sneak preview 👀 More of our #JWST data are going public tomorrow, for the galactic star-forming region Sharpless 305 & nearby massive protostar RAFGL5232. Work in progress, as the data are rather problematic 😬 But as others will be quick to post images, here's our snapshot first 😉 #Astronomy

$A colourful field of stars sprinkled across purple ionised gas and redder dust. The main cluster of stars is seen in a cavity to the upper right, while a very bright source surrounded by more gas and dust is seen in the lower left corner, with the characteristic six bright spikes due to diffraction in the optics of JWST. With a credit line in the lower-left corner that reads "Sharpless 305 & RAFGL5232 with JWST NIRCam / Credit: Mark McCaughrean, MPIA / NASA, ESA, CSA"$

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Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Hello folks – it's been a while 👋 Just popped in to show off my new #JWST NIRCam image of a young protostellar jet in Cassiopeia, HH288, aka The Dragon Jet 🐉 If you like what you see, there's much more info & a movie over on Mastodon: mastodon.social/@markmccaugh... and Flickr: flic.kr/p/2rTPMvp

n image of a young protostellar outflow called HH288 in the constellation of Cassiopeia, as seen with JWST. Much of the background is dark black and blue, with many stars sprinkled across with different colours and brightnesses, many showing the classic eight-pointed shape that comes from the JWST optics. The Dragon Jet itself is a swath of red, orange, and yellow emission spread horizontally across the image, with at least two crossing flows. The main flow resembles a Chinese dragon, hence the name. The presence of several protostellar outflows associated with The Dragon and also in the separate dense core below it, The Dragon's Egg, suggests that this is an interesting place to study young outflows from protostars spanning a range of masses.

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Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Aloha again 🤙 Materialising briefly to let you know my book, "111 Places in Space That You Should Not Miss", published by Emons Verlag, is out now in Europe & the UK, & the US in September 🔭🚀🛰️🪐☄️✨ 10% discount at uk.bookshop.org/p/books/111-... with code "lovebookshops" 📚 100% Tigger approved 😽

A picture of our gold and brown bengal cat standing next to a copy of a book with a spacey cover and a house plant, on one of our balconies with red tiles.

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