Solabration

In 2012, photography student Regina Valkenborgh placed a tiny homemade pinhole camera on a rooftop at Bayfordbury Observatory—and forgot about it. When it was discovered in 2020, it had recorded nearly eight years of the Sun’s journey across the sky.

Made from a simple beer can, the camera used a technique called solargraphy, allowing sunlight to slowly imprint its path onto photographic paper. The result captured around 2,953 glowing solar arcs, each representing roughly one day.

The higher arcs reveal the long days of summer, while the lower arcs mark winter’s shorter daylight. Gaps in the trails show cloudy days when sunlight failed to reach the film.

What began as an accidental forgotten project became one of the longest solargraph exposures ever captured—a stunning visual record of time, seasons, and Earth’s journey around the Sun.

Source:-
Upper image- Regina Valkenborgh
Lower image - unknown

🌌 A STAR IS EXPLODING 45 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS AWAY — AND YOU CAN SEE IT

Something extraordinary is happening in our night sky.

Astronomers have discovered SN 2026aaiv, a Type Ia supernova exploding in the spiral galaxy NGC 7331, about 45 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. And remarkably, it has been getting brighter since its discovery on September 1.

But there is something even more incredible to understand:

This explosion happened 45 million years ago.

The light we are seeing tonight began its journey across the universe when Earth was in the early Eocene. The dinosaurs had already been gone for roughly 20 million years, while mammals were beginning to diversify into many of the forms that would eventually shape the modern world.

That ancient light has been traveling through space for 45 million years — and only now is it reaching our telescopes.

And you can actually try to find it.

🔭 Where should you look?

SN 2026aaiv is inside NGC 7331, also known as Caldwell 30, in Pegasus.

After dark, look toward the eastern sky and find the famous Great Square of Pegasus — four bright stars forming a huge diamond. From the northwestern corner, marked by the star Scheat, look just above the square toward the fainter star Matar. NGC 7331 lies nearby.

The supernova is located at:

RA 22h 37m 05.6s
Dec +34° 24′ 35″

You won't see it with your naked eye. NGC 7331 itself requires binoculars or a telescope, while the supernova is considerably more challenging. Observers have already reported seeing it with a 14-inch telescope, and astrophotographers using relatively modest smart telescopes have captured it as well.

And here's one more astonishing coincidence:

NGC 7331 produced another Type Ia supernova just last year.

Two stellar explosions in the same galaxy within roughly a year is an extraordinarily rare occurrence.

So when you look toward Pegasus tonight, you're not simply looking at a distant galaxy.

You're looking at ancient light that has crossed 45 million years of space and time to reach you.

✨ Somewhere out there, a star died long ago.

And tonight, its final light is finally arriving at Earth.

STEP OUTSIDE AROUND 8:15 P.M. TONIGHT AND LOOK HIGH ABOVE YOUR HEAD -- You will see a brilliant bluish white star, visible even from a brightly-lit city. It is, in fact, the fifth brightest star in the sky. Its name is Vega (pronounced Vee-gah . . . not pronounced like the subcompact automobile manufactured and marketed by GM's Chevrolet division in the '70's).

There is a reason that you should gaze upon Vega on this particular evening. Astronomers tell us that this star is 25 light years from Earth. In other words, it takes 25 years for the light emitted by Vega to span the 146.96 trillion miles from there to here, traveling at 186,282 miles per second.

So when you look toward Vega tonight, you will be looking at light that started on its journey toward Earth on the night before 9-11: September 10, 2001. 😢

Every human who lived before you died without ever seeing a sunset on another world.

We're the first ones who get to look.

That glow is Mars, and the sky there does the opposite of ours. Blue where we'd get orange. Fine dust hanging in the thin air scatters red light out wide and lets blue pass straight through, so the color pools in a tight halo around the sun instead of bleeding across the whole horizon.

A robot sat alone in the cold and took the picture for us.

Nobody was there to watch it happen. It happened anyway.

60 years ago today, humanity saw this for the first time.

On August 23, 1966, NASA's Lunar Orbiter I — a robotic spacecraft scouting the Moon for future landing sites — turned its camera around and captured something nobody had ever seen before: Earth, from the vicinity of the Moon.

The image was grainy. Black and white. Transmitted across nearly a quarter million miles to a tracking station near Madrid, Spain.

But it was the first time our planet was ever photographed from another world.

Two years later, Apollo 8's "Earthrise" would become the iconic version everyone remembers. This one came first — and quietly changed how we understood our place in the universe. 🌍

📸 Credit: NASA

The Sun disappeared behind the Moon on 12 August 2026. We've gathered together the best images of the event

The Artemis II mission may have been a work trip for the four astronauts onboard, but it was also the journey of a lifetime—and NASA just published the first big batch of photographs the crew took to share their experience with the rest of us. http://spklr.io/6042EKCFq

Seven days ago, Comet C/2025 R3
passed its closest point to Earth.

73 million miles away.
The nearest it had been
in 170,000 years.

And at that exact moment
it was completely invisible.

The geometry placed it
3.7 degrees from the center
of the Sun in our sky.
No telescope reached it.
No dark sky saved it.
It arrived at its closest
through the one part of the sky
where our eyes cannot follow.

Tonight that changes.

As the comet continues its outbound
journey away from the Sun,
the angular distance between
the comet and the Sun increases.
Tonight it crosses the threshold
where it begins to emerge
into the evening sky.

Face west after sunset.
Let the sky darken fully.
Look low on the western horizon,
just above where Venus blazes.
The comet will appear as
a soft, slightly fuzzy warm glow.
Golden-green. Not sharp like a star.
Something that does not quite
resolve when you stare at it directly.

It was invisible at its closest.
Now it is returning to visibility
as it moves away.

The moment of greatest closeness
was the moment of greatest hiddenness.

Some things work exactly that way.

Are you stepping outside tonight
for the comet or the six planets
or both. Tell me below.