Communication with Voyager 1 depends on its 3.7-metre high-gain antenna, which transmits narrow-beam radio signals using only about 20 watts of power, comparable to a refrigerator light bulb. These signals are received by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), a system of massive dish antennas in California, Spain, and Australia. The DSN’s sensitive receivers amplify the faint X-band signal, now billions of times weaker than a typical FM radio broadcast, before computers decode it into scientific readings and engineering status updates.
Category: 7. Science
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How to successfully grow 5 of the most difficult annuals
Annuals are a great and cost-effective way of injecting some color into your garden. Growing quickly from seed or easily available ready to plant out, annual flowers are perfect for sprucing up a tired-looking border or jazzing up containers.
Over my career as a professional gardener and flower farmer, I’ve had the opportunity to grow a wide array of annuals, both for adding to beds and borders and for cutting commercially. Annual flowers tend to germinate readily and be easy to care for, but some can be far more difficult and tricky to get going.
If you need some inspiration on what you could grow to bring your borders and pots alive, here are the best annual flowers to get you thinking. However, if you fancy a challenge, here are my most difficult annuals to grow and some tips to help ensure they are a success.
Most difficult annuals to grow
From germination issues to a lack of flowers and even pests and disease, annuals are not always the simplest to grow. However, with a little bit of nurturing and the right care, these annual flowers will be brightening up your backyard in no time.
Nicotiana
(Image credit: Future/Edward Bowring)
Widely referred to as the flowering tobacco plant, Nicotiana is celebrated for its fragrant, long-lasting blooms and ability to attract moths. An ideal cottage garden plant, I have grown and come to love both Nicotiana alata and Nicotiana sylvestris for their delicate flowers and evening scent.
Flowering from early summer right up until the fall, Nicotiana are commonly grown as annuals, but some can be treated as short-lived perennials in US hardiness zone 10 and above.
Planted out after all threat of frost is over, flowering tobacco plants require full sun to partial shade and a consistently moist soil. Having grown Nicotiana in various borders in a garden I used to manage, those planted in a less-than-ideal, dry, and free-draining, south-facing bed struggled, whereas those in a more moisture-retentive soil and dappled shade thrived.
Furthermore, if you choose to grow them from seed, they need light to germinate, so the seeds should not be covered but rather gently pressed into the soil and kept at 72-78°F.
Heaven Scent Nicotiana are available from Burpee.
Sweet peas
(Image credit: Future/Edward Bowring)
One of the most adored garden flowers, sweet peas, Lathyrus odoratus, are a delight both in the garden and when cut and brought indoors. Generally highly scented and in an array of colors, there is a sweet pea variety for everyone. However, known to be a bit of a diva, sweet peas can sometimes be tricky to grow.
A perfect addition to any cut-flower garden, sweet peas require vertical support such as an obelisk or a teepee, but can equally be trained up a fence. Sweet peas prefer full sun and a rich, moisture-retentive soil, but can struggle in a hot summer and even stop flowering if the temperature rises too high. In hotter parts, planting them so that they receive some shade and respite from the harsh afternoon sun can help prolong their flowering.
Encased in a hard coating, you can speed up the germination of sweet pea seeds by soaking them in water and nicking them with a sharp knife before sowing. With deep roots, sweet peas are best sown in root trainers or deep pots and kept far away from any mice, who, from my experience, seem to adore freshly sown sweet pea seeds.
To prevent mice from eating the seeds, you can either sow them indoors or, when grown outside, place a few sprigs of prickly holly over the soil to put off any little critters from digging them up.
A hungry annual plant, sweet peas need a consistent supply of moisture and nutrients to keep them flowering as long as possible, especially towards the end of the season. Regular irrigation, incorporating lots of well-rotted manure or organic matter into the soil before planting and a weekly feed with a high-potash fertilizer will help ensure a great display.
If this wasn’t enough, sweet peas also require near-constant picking and deadheading to keep them blooming and stop them from going to seed. Sweet peas might be high maintenance and a bit fussy, but they are more than worth it for the joy they bring.
Sweet pea seeds are available from Ferry-Morse and thrive in US hardiness zones 3-8.
Snapdragons
(Image credit: mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo)
Guaranteed to bring color to your beds, borders and containers, snapdragons or Antirrhinum are a long-standing favorite of gardeners and cut flower growers. Available in soft pastels and vibrant hues, snapdragons are great for attracting pollinators and will bloom from early summer until the fall.
Almost always treated as annuals that die back with the first frost of winter, snapdragons can also be grown as perennials in some warmer parts of US hardiness zone 7 and above.
Generally considered an easy-to-grow flower, getting snapdragons to germinate can be tricky. Having grown them for sale as cut flowers, I have found that snapdragons are best sown in the fall or early spring, 8 to 10 weeks before the last frost to give them a head-start.
Antirrhinum seeds are so small that they are best handled with a damp toothpick and sown in modules. Needing light and a temperature of around 70°F to germinate, the seeds, like Nicotiana, do not need to be covered.
Although happy enough when left to their own devices, there are some things you can do to encourage your snapdragons to keep flowering. Even though they require full sun to thrive, they prefer a cooler climate and can benefit from some shade from the midday sun.
If rainfall is limited, watering 2 to 3 times a week will help maintain plant health and bloom production, but being susceptible to overwatering, snapdragons should not be watered if the soil is already moist.
However, from growing them for sale in the past, perhaps the most important thing you can do is to deadhead your snapdragons correctly. Removing the spent flower stalks as soon as the blooms finish, just above a leaf node, will not only provide a tidy appearance but also encourage new blooms to emerge.
Snapdragon seeds are available from Burpee.
Morning glory
(Image credit: Getty Images/DigiPub)Morning glory, or Ipomoea, is prized for its trumpet-shaped flowers and vigorous nature. A tender yet fast-growing climbing plant, morning glory can grow to 4m high and is ideal for covering a bare fence or growing up a pergola.
Morning glory is generally considered an easy annual to grow, but, from my experience of growing it in a walled garden, getting it to flower well and put on a long-lasting display can be a different matter. Although it is commonly treated as an annual, it may regrow the following year in USDA zones 7 and above.
Commonly grown from seed, morning glory needs a long growing season and should be sown 6 weeks before the last frost to give it the best chance of maturing and flowering before the end of summer.
To help promote flower production, you will want to plant morning glory in a sunny and sheltered spot where it will receive at least 6 hours of sun per day. If grown on fertile soil, supplementary fertilizer is not strictly required, but can be added at the time of planting in poorer substrates. Water regularly after planting and once established, only when the soil is dry.
Once mature, and after the first blooms have appeared, you can apply a fertilizer that is high in phosphorus and potassium, such as Jack’s Classic 12-15-30 available from Amazon, to encourage more blooms. Tempting as it may be to put on a general-purpose fertilizer, it is important not to apply high levels of nitrogen, as this can promote new leafy growth rather than any flowers.
Towards the end of the summer, regular deadheading is needed to prevent the vine from wasting energy on seed production. As soon as the flowers fade, you can remove them using a pair of pruning shears and wait for new flowers to emerge.
Morning Glory seeds are available from Burpee.
Bells of Ireland
(Image credit: Getty Images/Iva Vagnerova)
Grown for its spikes of pale green, bell-shaped calyxes and white to pale pink flowers, Bells of Ireland, Moluccella laevis, is a favorite of both gardeners and florists. It is also right on trend, having recently been spotted in Pamela Anderson’s stunning, no-foliage bouquets.
Perfect for adding to bouquets, both freshly harvested and as dried flowers, Bells of Ireland is equally at home in a cut flower patch as it is in a garden border.
Although I find that Bells of Ireland tend to self-seed freely, growing them deliberately from seed is known to be notoriously difficult due to its slow and often unpredictable germination. However, after several years of trying different methods, the following is what I found to be most successful.
Requiring cold stratification, you can either direct sow outdoors in early spring or keep the seeds in the freezer until you plan to sow them. Bells of Ireland seeds germinate best after soaking them in water overnight and at a temperature of 65-68°F, but patience is required, as it can take up to 21 days for seedlings to develop.
Furthermore, since Moluccella laevis develops tap roots, which can make transplanting them more tricky, sowing the seeds in modules can prove beneficial.
Once large enough, plant out in full sun at a spacing of around 12 inches and water deeply. For cut flowers, harvest the entire stem by cutting at the base once the small white flowers begin to appear. To encourage self-seeding, you can leave some flowers to go to seed, which will hopefully germinate the following spring.
Suitable for growing in zones 2-11, Bells of Ireland seeds are available from Burpee.
Hopefully, these tips will help you succeed, but if all this talk about the most difficult annuals to grow has put you off, don’t let it. Instead, why don’t you try one of these easiest annuals to grow, as picked by one of our other gardening experts.
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Meteorite that hit home is older than Earth, scientists say
Watch: Large fireball seen shooting across sky over Southeastern US A meteorite that crashed into a home in the US is older than planet Earth, scientists have said.
The object flew through the skies in broad daylight before exploding across the state of Georgia on 26 June, Nasa confirmed.
Researchers at the University of Georgia examined a fragment of the rock that pierced the roof of a home in the city of McDonough.
They found that, based on the type of meteorite, it is expected to have formed more than four billion years ago, making it older than Earth.
Residents in Georgia and nearby states reported hundreds of sightings and a loud booming noise when the fireball tore through the skies.
The rock quickly diminished in size and speed, but still travelled at least 1 km per second, going through a man’s roof in Henry County.
Multiple fragments that struck the building were handed over to scientists, who analysed their origins.
“This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough,” Scott Harris, a geologist at the University of Georgia, said.
Using optical and electron microscopy, Harris and his team determined the rock was a chondrite – the most abundant type of stony meteorite, according to Nasa – which meant that it was approximately 4.5 billion years old.
The home’s resident said he is still finding pieces of space dust around his home from the hit.
The object, which has been named the McDonough meteorite, is the 27th to have been recovered from Georgia.
“This is something that used to be expected once every few decades and not multiple times within 20 years,” Harris said.
“Modern technology, in addition to an attentive public, is going to help us recover more and more meteorites.”
Harris is hoping to publish his findings on the composition and speed of the asteroid, which will help to understand the threat of further asteroids.
“One day there will be an opportunity, and we never know when it’s going to be, for something large to hit and create a catastrophic situation. If we can guard against that, we want to,” he said.
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NASA’s James Webb Telescope discovers shocking chemistry of worlds that shouldn’t exist
A study led by Charles-Édouard Boukaré of York University, published in Nature Astronomy, has developed a framework for decoding the interiors and atmospheres of lava planets. By combining geophysics, atmospheric science and mineral chemistry, the team used numerical models to simulate how molten rock, vapour, and solid crust interact over immense timescales. The models suggest two end-member interior states: fully molten young planets, where heat circulates efficiently, and older ones that have partly solidified, with distinct chemical differences between their magma oceans and atmospheres.
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How many years NASA’s Voyager-1 will take to exit our solar system?
Key numbers used
Voyager 1 speed ≈ 17 km/s (typical quoted value).
1 astronomical unit (AU) = 149,597,870.7 km.
1 year ≈ 365.25 days and 1 day = 86,400 seconds.
Convert Voyager speed to AU per year (digit-by-digit)
Seconds per year = 86,400 × 365.25 = 31,557,600 s.
Distance per year = 17 km/s × 31,557,600 s = 536,479,200 km/year.
Convert to AU: 536,479,200 km ÷ 149,597,870.7 km/AU ≈ 3.586 AU/year.
So Voyager 1 travels about 3.6 AU per year.
Now the times for different Oort Cloud radii
(We divide distance in AU by 3.586 AU/year to get years.)
If the feature is at 1,000 AU:
Time = 1,000 ÷ 3.586 ≈ 279 years.
(This is roughly where a few sources place an inner Oort-like region in some estimates — hence the ~300-year figure.)If the inner Oort Cloud (Hills cloud) is at 2,000 AU:
Time = 2,000 ÷ 3.586 ≈ 558 years.If the outer edge is at 100,000 AU:
Time = 100,000 ÷ 3.586 ≈ 27,900 years (≈ 28,000 years).
Many popular summaries round that to ~30,000 years, which is the figure you saw earlier for Voyager passing beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud.Continue Reading
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The Merlin Bird ID App Is Better Than Meditation, and It’s Not Just for Birders
I’ve done everything I can think of to improve my mindfulness. I’ve tried countless meditation apps and breathing exercises to stay in the present, and I’m always working on improving my mental health.
What helps me stay grounded has nothing to do with any of that. It’s an app for identifying birds.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin Bird ID launched in 2014 to help people identify the birds they see and hear. Thanks to eBird, the world’s largest database of bird sounds and photos based on 800 million global sightings, the app allows you to record a bird, answer a series of questions or upload a photo to name your winged friend. Or you can simply use the app to explore the different birds in your area, no matter where you are in the world, and even if you’re offline.
The app’s homepage, with three avenues for identification.
One of my favorite features of Merlin Bird ID is that you can use it to keep track of your bird sightings and, like an IRL Pokemon GO, “collect ’em all.”
The first time I used the app, I sat out on my balcony, clicked the green “Sound” button and watched as the app identified the birds chirping and singing in all directions. You can see the different sound frequencies as they appear on a real-time spectrogram, a visual representation of the audio world. The next time I checked the clock, I was shocked to see that an hour had passed. Then, I dug out my binoculars and let even more time fly.
What a spectrogram on the app looks like.
As any Merlin Bird IDer knows, there is no thrill quite like pressing the “This is my bird” button for the first time, and it never gets old. From there, you can record your location. The app, in turn, will save your report to improve its performance.
Before long, I had different bird sounds memorized. In the morning, I would wake to the sound of a California Towhee’s alarm-like and frankly, yes, annoying cheeping from a tree outside my window right as the sun started to rise. On walks around my neighborhood, I’d auditorially part the sound of cars and distant construction to hear the melody of House Finches mixed with staccato chirps of Lesser Goldfinches and the droning coos from a pair of Mourning Doves religiously stationed on electrical wires. It was the song that had been the soundtrack of my world, but I hadn’t noticed until now.
By sight, I’d recognize Red-Whiskered Bulbuls with their black crests and fire engine cheeks, a blush color waiting to be replicated in powder form. Black Phoebes made themselves known with their fluffy soot-black heads, statue stillness and ivory bellies. At the hummingbird feeder on my balcony, there is a never-ending line of customers with iridescent throats in sunset colors: Anna’s Hummingbirds (my favorite, as you might guess), Allen’s and even the uncommon Rufous, who spend all day fighting over sugar water when not watching the feeder from their magnolia tree perches.
A customer at our feeder. I think they’re an Allen’s Hummingbird.
What’s most thrilling is when the Merlin Bird app hears a bird that you can’t see, making it feel as though it’s your mission to treasure hunt your way to it. This is often a lesson in patience, as it may take you several tries to find the songbird you seek. Recently, while sitting in a new-to-me park, the app told me a Mountain Chickadee was nearby and I spent the next 45 minutes trying to spot it with my binoculars. It ended up on a branch directly above my head, and when I got up to leave, it flew down right by my face as if in on the joke that it was there the whole time.
I’ve yet to find the Red-Winged Blackbird who always seems to be just out of reach, no matter where I am in my city, but I console myself with the seemingly all-knowing flock of Common Ravens (also unjustly called an “unkindness”) evermore on my street and the surprising number of noises they can produce.
Birds I haven’t spotted … yet.
I also often listen back to the comforting hoo-hoos of a Great Horned Owl singing a 9:30 p.m. lullaby right before the start of spring. I like time-travelling to these moments, though I have come across some retrospectively hilarious conversations I unintentionally recorded in between birdsong. With that being said, Merlin Bird ID does save your audio recordings but only on your device in the app. To share the recordings with eBird, you have to manually export and upload them.
I now seek out unexplored wooded spaces to meet new feathered friends, an excuse for forest bathing, which has led me to see the shade of blue unique to a Ruddy Duck’s bill. After a rainstorm, I’ve come across a group of Acorn Woodpeckers with impressive red mohawks excitedly pecking wet, softened wood while calling to each other. Like a conversation between punk besties over dinner. My area is known for its large flocks of Amazon parrots (and their persistent screeches), whom I’ve now had the pleasure of seeing up close as they use their light yellow bills to climb trees and collect their berries. And once, just once, I caught the backside of a Yellow Warbler in a nearby watershed park.
The Acorn Woodpecker
Because of this app, I’ve spent more time listening to the world around me and less time in my own head, bobbing between the past and future. I’ve found myself surrounded by and in conversation with nature more than ever before. It may be the closest thing we have to magic here on Earth. Now, perhaps that is the key to grounding yourself: Getting your butt on the ground and taking the time to listen to those who are singing around you.
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Testing the Nature of 3I/ATLAS by Its Non-Gravitational Acceleration | by Avi Loeb | Aug, 2025
Press enter or click to view image in full size(Image credit: Max Barry/Nation States) A simple way to distinguish a spacecraft from a rock is through its large non-gravitational acceleration. A natural icy rock like a comet is propelled by its mass loss. That mass loss can be observed through the cometary plume of gas and dust that surrounds the comet’s nucleus. By measuring the rate of mass loss and the characteristic ejection speed of gas and dust, one can calculate the rate of momentum change per unit time, or the non-gravitational force exerted on the nucleus. Since the evaporation occurs on the dayside of the rock which is warmed up by the virtue of it facing the Sun, this force pushes the comet’s nucleus away from the Sun. At a large enough distance, typically a few times the Earth-Sun separation, the surface of the nucleus is not warmed enough by sunlight to release volatile ices and dust and the cometary activity diminishes.
A technological object, on the other hand, could operate an engine and maneuver independently of the Sun. It can be propelled towards the Sun or any planet of interest and exhibit a non-gravitational acceleration of arbitrary magnitude or direction. Observing non-gravitational maneuvers could shift the ranking of an interstellar object on the “Loeb scale”, from `0’ — the default value for a natural comet to `10’ — a definitely artificial object.
Given this perspective, it is of great interest to measure the acceleration of the new interstellar object 3I/ATLAS along its path through the Solar System and check whether it shows any deviation from the expected trajectory, as dictated by gravity alone. If 3I/ATLAS will not continue along its expected path after its closest approach to the Sun on October 29, 2025, then the stock market might crash from worries about an alien tech visitation.
If 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, what is its expected non-gravitational acceleration?
The recent imaging of 3I/ATLAS by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a glow ahead of the object but no bright tail of gas and dust behind it — as often observed for comets (see related paper here). In addition, spectroscopic measurements show no evidence for molecular or atomic gas accompanying this glow (see related papers here, here and here, as well as the discussion about water ice here). A natural interpretation of these anomalies is that 3I/ATLAS is a dust-rich comet that releases little gas, but mostly large dust particles which are not pushed back by Solar radiation pressure or the Solar wind because of their small surface-to-mass ratio. In this case, we can calculate the expected non-gravitational acceleration of this comet from the observed plume of dust leading it.
A detailed analysis of the observed glow ahead of 3I/ATLAS (see related paper here) suggests a mass loss rate of up to 60 kilograms per second for dust particles of 100 micron size (where a micron is a millionth of a meter) and an ejection speed of ~2 meters per second in the direction of the Sun. The estimated mass loss rate drops to 6 kilograms per second and an ejection speed of 20 meters per second for 1-micron particles. Since the non-gravitational force exerted on 3I/ATLAS equals the mass loss rate times the ejection speed, its value is the same in both cases and does not depend on the assumed size of the ejected dust particles.
The brightness distribution in the glow preceding 3I/ATLAS was also used to set limits on the diameter of its nucleus, inferred to be in the range of 0.32–5.6 kilometers. This implies that the nucleus mass is in the range of 30 billion to 200 trillion kilograms. Applying the resulting non-gravitational force to this mass leads to a non-gravitational acceleration in the range of 3×10^{-14} to 2×10^{-10} AU per day squared, where AU stands for Astronomical Unit which is defined as the Earth-Sun separation. This non-gravitational acceleration range is equivalent to values between 6×10^{-11} and 4×10^{-7} centimeters per second squared, in the direction away from the Sun.
For comparison, the first interstellar object 1I/`Oumuamua exhibited on October 25, 2017 a non-gravitational acceleration of 1.4×10^{-7} AU per day squared, equivalent to 2.7×10^{-4} centimeters per second squared (see related data here). This is larger than the expected non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS by a huge factor, ranging between a thousand and 10 million. If 1I/`Oumuamua was a familiar comet, it had to lose about a tenth of its mass during its passage close to the Sun. But despite its large non-gravitational acceleration, 1I/`Oumuamua did not display any cometary evaporation (see observational data here), making its large non-gravitational acceleration a major anomaly concerning its nature (as argued in my related paper here).
If 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, its outgassing may intensify as it gets closer to the Sun. A measurement of the expected non-gravitational from its cometary activity would confirm its natural origin. A paper that I wrote with my student, Sriram Elango, before the discovery of 3I/ATLAS, showed that localization data from the Webb telescope in combination with terrestrial telescopes can pinpoint the trajectory of an interstellar object to unprecedented precision using parallax, since the Webb telescope is located 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth at the L2 Lagrange point. A major deviation of the measured non-gravitational acceleration from the expected range for a comet, would suggest that 3I/ATLAS might be propelled technologically.
For now, we cannot assess with any confidence whether 3I/ATLAS is a natural dust-rich comet with no gaseous tail on an extremely rare trajectory, or perhaps a technological object on a path that was designed to align with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun. All we know is that 3I/ATLAS exhibits a rare (0.2% probability) alignment of its retrograde path with the ecliptic plane to within 5 degrees, and its arrival time along this path is perfectly suited for a close encounter with Mars, Venus and Jupiter (with a 0.0005% probability, as discussed here). These coincidences would allow a mothership to release mini-probes that will reach planets as they move into the mini-probes’ orbits, taking advantage of the mothership’s retrograde motion. Since 3I/ATLAS will hide behind the Sun at its perihelion on October 29, 2025, we will not be able to observe whether it releases any mini-probes into Earth’s orbit.
Exquisite measurements of the non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS would provide an important clue about its nature. The verdict will not be decided by debates on social media, but rather by accurate measurements of instruments. This is the same as the video assisted referee (VAR) protocol used by FIFA to decide whether a goal was scored under controversial circumstances. FIFA rules by viewing data recorded by cameras, rather than by asking soccer players or the goalkeeper for their opinions. We all know that the Earth moved around the Sun for 4.54 billion years before the Vatican placed Galileo Galilei in house arrest for suggesting that. Whether 3I/ATLAS is natural or technological in origin has nothing to do with popular opinions on Earth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Press enter or click to view image in full size(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023) Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
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August full moon 2025 captivates skywatchers worldwide as Sturgeon Moon lights up the sky (photos)
August’s full moon, known as the ‘Sturgeon Moon’ made a splash when it leapt above the southern horizon on Aug. 9 earlier this week, illuminating the summer sky mere days before the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
The Sturgeon Moon gets its name from the large lake fish that were once abundant around this time of year and which served as an important source of food for several Native American tribes. It’s also sometimes known as the ‘Red Moon’, on account of the ruddy hue it has been known to adopt in the summer haze, while the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes knew it as the ‘Ricing Moon’ and used it as a sign that it was time to bring in the harvest.
Some photographers aimed their lenses at the moon during moonrise, capturing its dramatic yellow-orange glow as Earth’s atmosphere scattered the bluer wavelengths of sunlight in a process known as Rayleigh Scattering. Others snapped the moon as it tracked a low path through the summer sky, recording spectacular detail on the lunar surface, while lining up impressive shots that blended the ancient and the new in a single frame.
Read on to see a selection of some of the best August full moon photos from around the world.
The August 2025 full Sturgeon Moon in pictures
This stunning view of the full Sturgeon Moon suspended between New York’s iconic skyscrapers was taken by Nazli Zeynep Karabulut on the night of Aug. 9, as the lunar disk rose over New York and was temporarily speared by the point of the Empire State Building.
August’s full moon is pictured rising over the Manhattan skyline. (Image credit: Photo by Nazli Zeynep Karabulut/Anadolu via Getty Images) Ismael Adnan Yaqoob captured the moon thousands of miles from New York as it drifted close to the lights of an amusement park in the city of Mosul, Iraq on the same night (Aug. 9).
The full Sturgeon Moon seen rising from an amusement park in Iraq. (Image credit: Photo by Ismael Adnan Yaqoob/Anadolu via Getty Images) This stunningly detailed high-contrast view of the lunar disk was captured on Aug. 9 by Tayfun Coskun as the moon hung above Mt. Hamilton in San Jose, California. Dark lunar seas can be seen scarring the lunar surface alongside sweeping mountain ranges and prominent impact sites, including the majestic form of Tycho Crater, which dominates the lower region of the moon’s disk.
A detailed shot of the moon taken by Tayfun Coskun in August 2025. (Image credit: Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images) Photographer Riccardo De Luca captured a beautiful shot of the orange-red Sturgeon Moon as it rose above the historic Colosseum in Rome, with the towering Arch of Titus illuminated to the right of the image.
The full moon is pictured rising above the Colosseum in Rome. (Image credit: Photo by Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu via Getty Images) Isa Terli’s moody composition featured a potent mix of the old and the new by capturing the red form of the rising Sturgeon Moon as it hung between the supports of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey.
The August 2025 full moon seen rising between the supports of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image credit: Photo by Isa Terli/Anadolu via Getty Images) This image of the yellow full moon rising near the ancient temple of Poseidon in southern Greece was captured on Aug. 9, by photographer Costas Baltas, close to the city of Athens.
A yellow full moon pictured rising next to the Temple of Poseidon near Athens. (Image credit: Photo by Costas Baltas/Anadolu via Getty Images) A spotlight shone from the tip of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, appears to pick out the orange form of the rising Sturgeon Moon in this dramatic composition by Mustafa Yalcin, also taken on Aug. 9.
The full moon caught in a spotlight shone from the pinnacle of the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. (Image credit: Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images) Lorenzo Di Cola snapped a shot of the lunar disk rising over the ruins of Rocca Calascio on Aug. 8, in the runup to the full moon from the Province of L’Aquila, Abruzzo in Italy.
An orange moon is pictured rising above the ruined castle Rocca Calascio in Italy. (Image credit: Photo by Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Photographer Yasin Akgul captured the Sturgeon Moon warped by atmospheric disturbance on Aug. 9, as it loomed above the rooftops of Istanbul, Turkey, close to the famous Galata Tower.
The Sturgeon Moon imaged on Aug. 9 2025 rising over the rooftops of Istanbul, Turkey. (Image credit: Photo by Yasin AKGUL / AFP) (Photo by YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images) Faisal Bashir took a stunningly detailed shot of the lunar disk on Aug. 8, ahead of the full moon phase, framed by the delicate silhouettes of overhanging leaves.
The August moon captured a day before its full moon phase in the sky over Kashmir. (Image credit: Photo by Faisal Bashir/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Photographer Max Guliani also posted a series of impressive moonrise shots to his X account, showing the full lunar disk looming large between the iconic skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan.
The Full Sturgeon Moon rising over Midtown Manhattan from across the Hudson River #NYC pic.twitter.com/ycZph4faFOAugust 9, 2025
Gary Hershorn, meanwhile, lined up a slew of shots that featured the full moon resplendent alongside the Statue of Liberty, including one well-timed composition that captured a passenger jet traversing the lunar disk.
The full Sturgeon Moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Saturday evening #newyorkcity #nyc #newyork #statueofliberty #fullmoon #moon #SturgeonMoon @statueellisfdn pic.twitter.com/kBkIP40g8xAugust 10, 2025
While there’s no doubt that August’s Sturgeon Moon put on a dramatic show, next month’s full moon phase is set to be even more spectacular. Sept. 7-8 will see a total lunar eclipse sweep over the surface of Earth’s natural satellite, temporarily transforming it into a red “blood moon” for skywatchers in Asia, Australia, Europe and Africa. You can keep up with all the lunar eclipse action with our lunar eclipse live blog.
Editor’s Note: If you capture an image of the full Sturgeon Moon and want to share it with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
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See Saturn and the moon in a stunning close encounter on Aug. 11
Monday evening (Aug. 11) offers a perfect chance to identify what many consider the most beautiful object in the night sky: the ringed planet Saturn. Helping guide the way, will be another familiar celestial companion, the moon, shining in its waning gibbous phase.
As I’ve pointed out over the years here at Space.com, to the naked eye, Saturn does not exactly scream for attention. It lacks the dazzling, eye-popping brilliance of Venus or Jupiter and it does not have the fiery orange-yellow color of Mars.
In fact, to the eye, Saturn appears to be nothing more than a bright “star” that shines with a yellowish-white glow. Most people looking around the current midsummer sky might take note of it as they look low toward the eastern horizon at around 10:30 p.m. local daylight time, but not knowing they are looking at the solar system’s ringed wonder.
But on Monday, the moon will make it easier to spot as it will be situated to the upper right of Saturn.
If it is clear, that evening will be a great night to invite your friends and neighbors over to peer through your eyepiece at both Saturn and our nearest neighbor in space, two wonderful sky objects.
First, the moon
Next comes Saturn
View of the moon and Saturn at approximately 11 p.m. local time on Aug. 11 (Image credit: Created in Canva Pro by Daisy Dobrijevic) After you are done showing off the moon to your friends, it will then be time to turn your telescope toward Saturn. It’ll be located about 5 degrees, roughly “half a fist” at arm’s length, to the lower left of the moon.
Any telescope with at least 30x magnification will reveal Saturn’s iconic rings, which are currently tilted about 3 degrees toward Earth. The quality of your view depends on your telescope’s size, but bigger isn’t always better. Avoid maximum magnification, which can exaggerate atmospheric turbulence and make the image shimmer or blur.
Instead, try moderate magnification:
- For a 3-inch scope, use about 75x
- For a 6-inch scope, try 150x
- For a 10-inch scope, go with 250x
Even seasoned observers still gasp at the sight of Saturn’s rings through a decent telescope. It’s always a showstopper.
For the clearest view, wait until around 12:30 a.m. local time, when Saturn climbs higher than 30 degrees above the horizon.
They’re not all that close
TOP TELESCOPE PICK
(Image credit: Jason Parnell-Brookes) Want to see the night sky up close? The Celestron NexStar 8SE is ideal for beginners wanting quality, reliable and quick views of celestial objects. For a more in-depth look at our Celestron NexStar 8SE review.
A final “gee-whiz” fact you can reveal to your friends is that what you are seeing in Monday’s sky is an illusion of perspective. The moon and Saturn are nowhere near each other in space. The moon will be 230,000 miles (370,000 km) from Earth, while Saturn is more than 3,500 times farther away at 816 million miles (1.31 billion km).
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers’ Almanac and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook
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James Webb telescope captures one of the deepest-ever views of the universe, improving on iconic Hubble image — Space photo of the week
Quick facts
What it is: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, revisited by the James Webb Space Telescope
Where it is: Close to the Big Dipper in the night sky
When it was shared: Aug. 1, 2025
The James Webb Space Telescope‘s (JWST) latest extragalactic survey has revealed fainter and more distant objects than ever before, some dating back to the earliest periods of the universe. But it stands on the shoulders of a giant: When NASA published the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image in 2004, it stunned the world of astronomy. A composite of 800 images from exposures totaling 11 days, the deep image of an otherwise unremarkable part of the night sky revealed nearly 10,000 galaxies, many among the most distant known.
Now, JWST has observed that same patch of sky with different eyes — and found 2,500 more objects. Crucially, they’re even more distant.
JWST’s new take on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, named the MIRI Deep Imaging Survey (MIDIS), is the deepest-ever mid-infrared image of that part of the night sky.
The extraordinary new image is the result of nearly 100 hours of observing time using the space observatory’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). It includes hundreds of extremely red galaxies, some of which may date back to less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Related: 42 jaw-dropping James Webb Space Telescope images
At the core of the composite image is one ultralong exposure. Using just one of MIRI’s filters, JWST took an exposure of the night sky for 41 hours — the longest single-filter observation it has performed of an extragalactic field to date. The plan was to capture galaxies in mid-infrared light — something neither Hubble nor human eyes can detect — which also revealed previously unseen regions of dust and old, red stars.
Capturing light in wavelengths beyond the capabilities of human vision always brings a problem: How can we even begin to look at it? Processing such images requires filters that assign a different color to each different wavelength of light. In this image, galaxies rich in dust and star-forming activity are orange and red, extremely distant compact galaxies are greenish, and galaxies bright in the near-infrared are blue and cyan.
Researchers described the image in a paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, along with a slider tool, a pan video and a transition video with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field for comparison.
For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.
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