Daniel Machacek

@danielmachacek.bsky.social

Space nerd, Image processor, Lazy photographer, Humanist

@andrealuck.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

Phobos (including Saturn and Deimos) in the latest release of @esa.int Mars Express

Can you spot Saturn?

Full size & more info: flic.kr/p/2sFoFaS 🔭🧪
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

ESA Mars Express
Release September 15, 2026
Note: Saturn has been enlarged by 300%

@ridingrobots.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

From NASA 📍Gale Crater, Aug. 11, 2026, 8:30 a.m. local Mars time. The Curiosity rover captures the Sun rising on crags known as yardangs, a scene that scientists have long been waiting to see up close.

@stim3on.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

Six months have passed since the #ArtemisII mission and NASA has just released the reentry video from the Orion capsule!

Here is a timelapse of the reentry, but be sure to check out the realtime version linked below! 🔭🧪

@pomarede.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

Snippets from a 171-images, 360° Mastcam panorama captured two days ago by Curiosity

#Mars Oct. 2, 2026 - Sol 5032🧪🔭
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk

An ochre toned image capturing a Martian landscape, with the UHF antenna of the Mars rover Curiosity in the foreground.An ochre toned image capturing a Martian landscape. An ochre toned image capturing a Martian landscape, with the instrumented turret of the Mars rover Curiosity in the foreground. An ochre toned image capturing a Martian landscape, with the UHF antenna of the Mars rover Curiosity in the foreground.
@p-s-v.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

Messier 27 by Andrew McCarthy

Description from Andrew McCarthy

"​I pointed my telescope at a dying star for 30 hours to capture this: a detailed look at the expanding planetary nebula.

A similar fate awaits our sun."

x.com/AJamesMcCart...

Messier 27 by Andrew McCarthy
@theplanetaryguy.comReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

This will never stop blowing my mind. A 12-year sequence of real telescope images of a star 133 lightyears away. And around it, four planets slowly orbiting. Four real exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, imaged as they move around their host star.

@stim3on.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

I hinted that there would be more images from the Juice flyby, so here is the timelapse of the full event!

It's always amazing to get these views of our fragile Blue Marble from the spacecraft we send out to explore the solar system!

🔭🧪 #planetsci

@stim3on.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

Great day here at ESOC, staying in the control room with the team while the images came down and processing the JMC images.

Earth proved to be a real stunner with Africa and Madagascar in full view.

#planetsci 🔭🧪

@science.esa.intReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

A successful Earth flyby improves Juice’s course to Jupiter

Earlier today, Juice flew just 8640 km above the Indian Ocean and snapped these images with its onboard monitoring cameras.

1️⃣Africa, by Juice monitoring camera
2️⃣Madagascar, by Juice NavCam
3️⃣Moon, by Juice NavCam

🔭 🧪 #planetsci

Mostly black space, most of Earth visible at the top right of the image. Part of a spacecraft visible on the left.Part of the island of Madagascar in black and white.A crescent Moon, with about a quarter of the Moon showing. Many craters are visible.
@ddavisspaceart.bsky.socialReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

The Sunset of September 27, 2026 was an epic spectacle whose intensity and beauty were memorable. The cloud ceiling had a wide opening toward the West that admitted Sunlight which underwent progressive color changes as it briefly in turn illuminated layers of otherwise invisible cloud textures.

The Sunset of September 27th, 2026 was one of the greatest visions the sky has ever opened up and revealed to me. It was a sunset like few I can remember in many years. I knew early on what was likely as a heavy cloud ceiling was opening up far to the West with the underside textures in that part of the cloud ceiling catching the light early on from the distant sunlit clouds. Vast connected cloud formations were in turn bathed in the last sunlight which progressively turned from a golden to orange to very red, in as pure a spectral filtering of Sunlight as I can recall seeing. One layer of cloud formations after another caught the light as the rays steadily angled upwards. The most distant yellow gold clouds were dazzling, like incandescent molten gold that defied photography. Lower layers were bathed in the reddest light that contrasted in hue with the more orange colors in the illuminated parts of the broken cloud ceiling above. Wide areas of the field of view were thus illuminated, appearing and fading one after the other like a parade of vast apparitions coming and going. The last lit clouds gave up their lurid radiance reluctantly and with a very red final flourish. But the brilliance was still happening, withdrawing beyond the Western horizon as Earth's rotation carried us into the realm of the night. The Sunset lit clouds far away were still in itself illuminating clouds nearby. From their altitude the brilliance and colors along the horizon hundreds of miles away dominate the ambient lighting. This brought an extended 'echo' of the Sunset as every cloud surface facing West shone with that fading lurid glow, like a long slowly fading piano note after a great symphony. I have seen many hundreds of Sunsets and sunrises, but something about this one struck me as almost like a kind of religious experience. Awestruck wonder and numbly bathing in the experience while periodically trying to preserve a visual record.An all sky frame of the Sunset of September 27, 2026. Canon 6D with a fisheye lens. I now shoot most such sequences aimed straight up to show the entire horizon. Unfortunately due to a technical issue this became the first frame of the time lapse sequence, but I did get the extended 'afterglow'.
@theplanetaryguy.comReposted by @danielmachacek.bsky.social

These are what the clouds on Jupiter look up close.

The small patches of white are cloud tops, soaring above the main, colourful cloud layer.

Image from NASA's Juno spacecraft during its 38th close approach to Jupiter on 29 November 2021, processed by Kevin Gill (@kevinmgill.bsky.social)

A complex, swirling pattern of lighter and darker clouds. One large system, angled to the upper left in this scene, is a tawny brown colour and is elongate. Another, more circular storm system is at lower centre, and is a grey–greenish colour. The background swirls are various shades of grey to blue; small, white features dot the scene.
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