European Space Agency, ESA

The first Ariane 6 with four boosters stands tall on the launch pad 👑

With the 20-metre version of the fairing, the height of the rocket is 62 metres!

Teams at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana are doing the final checks before liftoff, set for today at 17:45–18:13 CET (13:45–14:13 local time).

📸 ESA - M. Pédoussaut

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3 days ago | [YT] | 3,718

European Space Agency, ESA

The Universe is so dramatic 🎭

This shimmering view of interstellar gas and dust was captured by our Euclid space telescope. The nebula is part of a dark cloud called LDN 1641, located around 1300 light-years away in Orion.

In visible light, this patch of sky looks almost empty. But Euclid’s infrared vision reveals a rich tapestry of hidden stars and filaments of dust, including very young stars still spewing out material as they form.

Look closely and you’ll spot bright magenta knots and arcs - these are jets and outflows from newborn stars carving their way through the cloud.

In the upper left of the first image, the dust thins, and the view opens onto the distant Universe, where faint galaxies appear far beyond the stars of the Milky Way.

👉 Swipe to explore the highlights:
2️⃣ Young star HOPS 221: Below the two bright foreground stars, HOPS 221 is ejecting material in powerful outflows - seen as pink-white jets.

3️⃣ Young star HOPS 215: At the centre, HOPS 215 is literally blowing a cavity into the surrounding dust as it grows.

4️⃣ Young star HOPS 216: HOPS 216 has carved two cone-shaped structures into the cloud and launches a lumpy jet along their axis - a clue that its magnetic field fluctuates over time.

5️⃣ Young star pair HOPS 210: Two red stars nestled in orange dust. Above them, a faint second pair peeks through a darker patch of cloud.

6️⃣ Young stars HOPS 204: In the upper left, HOPS 204 glows within orange dust.

7️⃣ Newly found dwarf galaxy: A previously unknown nearby dwarf galaxy. I In visible light, we can clearly see its nuclear cluster, including some individual stars.

Euclid observed this region in September 2023 to fine-tune its pointing ability - a crucial step in ensuring the telescope can capture sharp, stable images across large patches of sky. This single field, more than three times the size of the full Moon, was imaged in under five hours.

Read more: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/11/Euclid_p…

📸 ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by M. Schirmer (MPIA, Heidelberg); CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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4 days ago | [YT] | 4,701

European Space Agency, ESA

📸 This was our #WeekInImages 02-06 February 2026.

1️⃣ See you in March, Artemis II 🚀
2️⃣ Overhead perspective of Flaugergues Crater 🔴
3️⃣ Technicians prepare Ariane 6 for flight VA267 🚀
4️⃣ ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron 🧑‍🚀
5️⃣ Earth from Space: Olympic view ❄️
6️⃣ Changes in methane concentration 2019–2022 🔎
7️⃣ Fast download speeds for European science in space, five years on 🛜
8️⃣ Resonance igniter firing 🚀

More 👉 www.esa.int/About_Us/Week_in_images/Week_in_images…

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6 days ago | [YT] | 2,747

European Space Agency, ESA

📸 This was our #WeekInImages 26-30 January 2026.

1️⃣ This is Crew-12 🧑‍🚀
2️⃣ Dark rings and new light 🌌
3️⃣ COSMOS Field MoM-z14 Galaxy (NIRCam pullout image) ✨
4️⃣ Aerial view of booster for Ariane 6 flight VA267 heading to the launch pad 🚀
5️⃣ Map of forest carbon from ESA’s Biomass mission 🌳
6️⃣ Temperatures over Europe and northern Africa by MTG-Sounder ♨️
7️⃣ Astrophysical anomalies from Hubble’s archive 👀
8️⃣ Earth from Space: Rudong coast, China 🌏
9️⃣ ESA Directors speak to media at the European Space Conference 🤝

More 👉 www.esa.int/About_Us/Week_in_images/Week_in_images…

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1 week ago | [YT] | 3,515

European Space Agency, ESA

This galaxy doesn’t fit into just one category 🌌

Meet NGC 7722 – an uncommon lenticular galaxy located around 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

Lenticular galaxies sit between spirals and ellipticals, and NGC 7722 is a striking example. It lacks the familiar spiral arms, yet features a bright central bulge, a glowing halo, and a visible disc wrapped in dark red dust lanes that coil around its outer regions.

This is the sharpest image of NGC 7722 ever captured by Hubble, revealing dust structures thought to be the aftermath of a past galaxy merger. While lenticular galaxies don’t form many new stars, NGC 7722 is far from quiet – in 2020 it was host to the explosion of a star that could be detected from Earth.

Read more: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/01/Dark_rin…

📸 ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz), Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgement: Mehmet Yüksek

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4,560

European Space Agency, ESA

Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images! 🌍🛰️

These two views from our planet were captured on 15 December 2025 by EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder satellite, launched in the summer of 2025.

MTG-S1 is a geostationary satellite that provides data on temperature and humidity over Europe every 30 minutes.

1️⃣ A ‘temperature’ image: dark red corresponds to high temperatures, mainly on the warmer land surfaces, while blue corresponds to lower temperatures, typically on the top of clouds.

2️⃣ A ‘humidity’ image: blue colours correspond to regions in the atmosphere with higher humidity, while red colours correspond to lower humidity in the atmosphere.

Read more: www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Meteo…

📸 Thales Alenia Space, OHB, ESA and Eumetsat

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 3,735

European Space Agency, ESA

📸 This was our #WeekInImages 19-23 January 2026.

1️⃣ Proba-3: our eyes on the Sun’s inner corona ☀️
2️⃣ Webb reveals Helix Nebula in glistening detail ✨
3️⃣ A celebrity cluster in the spotlight 🌌
4️⃣ Aurora over the Netherlands, January 2026 🤩
5️⃣ Spectrum on the launch pad 🚀
6️⃣ Rocket roll 🚀
7️⃣ ExoMars drop for a safe landing 🔴
8️⃣ Unleashing a solar flare ☀️
9️⃣ Sophie Adenot exercising on E4D 🧑‍🚀
🔟 ESA Director General discusses wildfire management at the World Economic Forum annual meeting 🤝

More 👉 www.esa.int/About_Us/Week_in_images/Week_in_images…

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 3,692

European Space Agency, ESA

You’re looking at more than 300 galaxies around 5 billion light-years away 🌌

This is the galaxy cluster MACS J1149, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, and the immense mass of these bends spacetime itself.

As light from galaxies far beyond the cluster travels toward us, it is stretched and warped by this gravitational pull, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The result is a cosmic gallery of distorted arcs, streaks, and strangely shaped galaxies scattered across the image.

Read more: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/01/A_celebr…

📸 ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, C. Willott (National Research Council Canada), R. Tripodi (INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Rome)

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 4,855

European Space Agency, ESA

This isn’t just beautiful, it’s a star’s last breath 🧬✨

Webb has revealed the intricacies of the Helix Nebula with this stunning cosmic view!

The nebula, one of the closest planetary nebulas to Earth, is famous for its striking shape. It is also a favourite among astronomers, providing a view of the final moments of a dying star. Now, Webb’s NIRCam has offered the clearest infrared look at the nebula so far, showing how the final breath of the central star is transforming into the raw ingredients for new worlds.

In this image, colour tells us about temperature and chemistry. Hot gas blasted by ultraviolet light appears blue, while cooling gas in which molecules are forming appears yellow. At the outer edges, red tones trace where gas thins, and dust takes shape.

Read more: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/01/Webb_rev…

📸 NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)

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3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 4,806

European Space Agency, ESA

📸 This was our #WeekInImages 12-16 January 2026.

1️⃣ Circinus Galaxy (Hubble and Webb) 🌌
2️⃣ Power to the Moon 🌕
3️⃣ Wildfires in Patagonia 🔥
4️⃣ Earth from Space: The fate of a giant 🧊
5️⃣ Gas flares in Iraq imaged by Sentinel-2A 🛰️
6️⃣ ESA's Planetary Defence team 🤝

More 👉 www.esa.int/About_Us/Week_in_images/Week_in_images…

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 3,508