Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Perseids over a Little Planet
Explanation: It looks like a view from the Little Prince‘s planet. The featured image is a throwback to the 2024 Perseid meteor shower, surrounded in this projection by the Bieszczady Mountains in Poland. Visible in the sky is the arch of the Milky Way, along with several nebulas in red and over a hundred meteors pointing to the radiant. The Perseids are easily visible and quite popular in the Northern Hemisphere summer. (Watching meteor showers in the winter is less convenient for a good reason). This year they are expected to offer an even more dazzling spectacle than usual, because the peak coincides with a new moon. The 2026 Perseid meteor shower will peak tonight with as many as 50-100 meteors per hour, when the Earth’s path crosses through debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. Typically, the best times for seeing the meteors are between midnight and pre-dawn. You won’t need binoculars to see the meteors, but a lawn chair and a dark sky location help.
The glacier-capped Snæfellsjökull volcano is the defining feature of Iceland’s Snæfellsnes peninsula, shown in this image acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on July 25, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
The Sun, Moon, and Earth align on August 12, 2026, to produce a total solar eclipse. When this celestial event last occurred, on April 8, 2024, the path of totality stretched across North America, giving millions the chance to glimpse the Sun’s corona. In 2026, the viewing locales are more limited; only a handful of land areas in the Northern Hemisphere, including parts of Iceland and Spain, fall within the path of totality.
On August 12, the Moon’s shadow will first cross over the Arctic Circle from northern Russia and then track along the eastern side of Greenland. At about 5:45 p.m. local time in Iceland (17:45 Universal Time), the country’s western fringes—including the Snæfellsnes peninsula, shown in the Landsat image above—will begin to experience totality. The greatest eclipse will occur near this sparsely populated peninsula when the Moon appears the largest and covers more of the Sun.
The path of totality of the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, spans Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. The base imagery for the map comes from Blue Marble: Next Generation, with data from Black Marble shown in the path of totality. Blue Marble is built from scenes captured by MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), while Black Marble is based on observations by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) day-night band.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
The Snæfellsjökull volcano on the western end of the peninsula is covered in ice and last erupted about 1,800 years ago. It is the highlight of a national park of the same name, where people are expected to visit to view the eclipse. The stratovolcano even has a literary claim to fame: in Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth, characters venture underground through its crater, later emerging in an eruption of Stromboli, in Italy. In 2025, a broader area of the peninsula was designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve, containing over 70 percent of Iceland’s flora and an agglomeration of volcanic landscapes, wetlands, and grasslands.
From Iceland, the eclipse shadow, or umbra, progresses across the North Atlantic and reaches northern Spain shortly before sunset. It runs east-southeast across the country, much like the Ebro River (Río Ebro), seen in the Landsat image below.
The Ebro River, meandering across northern Spain in this image acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 on July 21, 2026, is in the path of totality of the August 2026 solar eclipse.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
The upper Ebro emerges from rugged terrain in Parque Natural de Montes Obarenes-San Zadornil, where it carves canyons and gorges through the eastern foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains. It then meanders through La Rioja, a region known for its vineyards. About 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, the river reaches a delta on the Mediterranean coast between Barcelona and Valencia.
Based on satellite measurements of cloud cover in August over several decades, viewers in Spain have a higher likelihood than those in Iceland of getting a clear look at the eclipse. And despite limited viewing opportunities in the path of totality, the rest of Europe, parts of Africa, Canada, and the northern and northeastern U.S. will experience a partial eclipse.
Shatel Bhakta, principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base Program, gives a presentation during NASA Stories at the Ion in Houston on July 30, 2026.
Credits: NASA/Sumer Loggins
Shatel Bhakta, principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base Program, gives a presentation during NASA Stories at the Ion in Houston on July 30, 2026.
NASA/Sumer Loggins
As NASA prepares to return astronauts to the lunar surface for longer stays and increasingly complex operations, building the Moon Base will require new ideas, advanced technologies, and expertise across many fields.
During NASA Stories at the Ion on July 30, Shatel Bhakta, principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base Program, presented “Building the Moon Base: Challenges and Opportunities at the Lunar South Pole.” He discussed the work required to establish a sustained human presence at the Moon.
Through its growing partnership with Rice University and the Ion, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston hosts recurring talks connecting agency experts with entrepreneurs, researchers, students, and industry leaders. The series gives Houston’s innovation community a closer look at the people and ideas shaping the future of exploration.
Shatel Bhakta, principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base Program, presents during NASA Stories at the Ion. At left is Laura Neder, head of platform for the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Ion District.
NASA/Sumer Loggins
Laura Neder, head of platform for the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Ion District, welcomed attendees and introduced Monte Goforth, acting director of Business Development and Technology Integration at Johnson. Goforth delivered opening remarks on the value of sharing NASA’s work beyond the agency and bringing people together to support future exploration before introducing Bhakta.
Bhakta outlined how NASA is working toward long-duration human exploration of the lunar South Pole through the agency’s Moon Base Program.
As part of that effort, NASA is taking a step-by-step approach to Moon Base development. Early robotic missions and technology demonstrations will help NASA gather data about the lunar environment, test systems, and reduce risks before expanding infrastructure and human operations.
“This is probably going to be the most challenging endeavor NASA has ever undertaken,” Bhakta said.
Meeting that challenge will require collaboration between NASA and its commercial and international partners to develop solutions for operating in extreme environmental conditions.
Unlike the Apollo landing sites, areas near the lunar South Pole contain steep slopes, deep craters, and lighting conditions that change throughout the year. The Sun remains low on the horizon, creating shifting shadows that can complicate navigation and leave solar panels without sunlight for extended periods, increasing the need for energy storage and other power sources.
Because of the region’s rugged terrain, crews, rovers, and other surface systems may not always have a clear line of sight to Earth. NASA will need communications infrastructure to relay signals across the lunar South Pole.
Bhakta explained that Moon Base may not be a single cluster of connected structures. Terrain, lighting, power, and landing constraints could require habitats and other systems to be distributed across the lunar surface.
Attendees listen as Shatel Bhakta, principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base Program, discusses the challenges of establishing a sustained human presence at the Moon.
NASA/Sumer Loggins
Lunar regolith, or Moon dust, remains one of the greatest challenges. Without mitigation, the sharp and clingy substance could damage equipment and spacesuits while posing health risks to astronauts. Its electrostatic properties can also change depending on lighting and environmental conditions.
Understanding how lunar regolith behaves will be essential to ensuring crews can safely live and work on the lunar surface.
Some permanently shadowed regions near the lunar South Pole may not have received direct sunlight for billions of years and may contain water ice and other volatile materials. These resources could support future exploration, but using them will require new mobility, power, and processing systems.
The Moon will also serve as a proving ground for missions farther into the solar system. Operating on the lunar surface will help NASA learn how crews, equipment, and infrastructure perform away from Earth before future human missions to Mars.
As NASA develops these capabilities, Bhakta explained that keeping the Moon Base architecture adaptable will require understanding how individual systems connect and work together.
“Don’t deal with the technology directly,” Bhakta said. “Deal with the interfaces.”
From left, Monte Goforth, acting director of Business Development and Technology Integration at NASA’s Johnson Space Center; Shatel Bhakta, principal systems engineer for NASA’s Moon Base Program; and Laura Neder, head of platform for the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Ion District, pose during NASA Stories at the Ion.
NASA/Sumer Loggins
Building the Moon Base will take more than engineers and scientists. NASA will need communicators, business professionals, researchers, and people from many other fields to help solve problems and share the agency’s work.
“There are many ways to contribute,” Bhakta said. “Don’t be afraid that your skill set does not fit in.”
Moon Base build-up will offer multiple entry points for industry and international collaborators to participate, innovate, and contribute. From early demonstrations to long-term surface operations, there are multiple solicitations currently open.
A Microsoft está testando uma novidade no seu navegador Edge que facilitará a vida de usuários da Apple: a possibilidade de se cadastrar e fazer login em um perfil do browser com uma Conta Apple.
Conforme observado pelo usuário @Leopeva64 no X, a novidade já está disponível nos canais Beta e Canary do Edge para desktop e pode ser ativada por meio dos recursos experimentais (flags) tanto no Mac quanto no Windows.
In Edge Canary for desktop there are a couple of new flags to enable support for signing in with an Apple account. Microsoft added support for Google accounts some time ago and has now added support for Apple accounts: https://t.co/34BBm0b3Wipic.twitter.com/BNMrpB8pkO
Mas o que isso significa, na prática? Que você pode pular algumas etapas no processo de criação de uma conta para usar no navegador caso ainda não tenha uma conta da Microsoft, usando o mesmo email e outros dados da Conta Apple.
O usuário também poderá fazer login com facilidade no navegador apenas clicando no botão para logar com a Apple — como já acontece com outras plataformas.
Essa é uma expansão de um movimento que começou há poucos meses, quando o mesmo usuário descobriu a possibilidade de se cadastrar e fazer login com o Google no mesmo canal de testes do Edge (agora já disponível).
A novidade chega para tornar o uso do navegador mais prático, eliminando a obrigatoriedade da criação de uma nova conta do zero para quem já é usuário dos serviços da Apple (ou do Google).
Login
