Deep Field
Starting
Every three hours this site reads 51 feeds from NASA, ESA and the observatories, files what comes back into eleven subjects, and works out the rest for itself — what is overhead, what you could see through what you own, and from where on Earth.
Launch & Flight
Four months after Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad, the company… The post Blue Origin Advances LC-36 Rebuild for Year-End New Glenn Return to…
The Moon
The Moon is effectively absent — 2% lit and lost in the Sun's neighbourhood. These are the darkest nights of the month and the only ones on which the faintest half of the catalogue is worth attempting at all.
Planets and the Sun
Mercury, Venus and Saturn are in the evening sky after sunset; Mars and Jupiter come up before dawn. The Orionids are running, peaking in ten days — about 7 an hour under a decent sky, rather than the 20 the almanacs print for perfect conditions and a radiant overhead. Kp has reached 5.3 in the last day — unsettled, and worth a look north if you are far enough from the equator.
Worth going out for
A globular cluster in Pegasus, near the meridian around midnight and straightforward in 10×50 binoculars from a Bortle 4 or better. The core of this one has fallen in on itself, and the stars at the centre are packed so tightly that we still cannot say whether what holds them is a black hole or simply an enormous crowd.
mag 6.2 · 21.1 mag/□″ · 18′ · RA 21h 30m
1968 Apollo 7 flies the redesigned command module — Eleven days in orbit, the whole crew with head colds, and none of them flew again. More from this date →
Computed from the clock, and true from anywhere on Earth. Anything that depends on your latitude is on the Overhead page rather than guessed at here.
Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 October 11 – Ice… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy…
Through photographs, spoken observations, drawings, and annotations, the Artemis II crew created a unique scientific record—one that is now available to the…
Scientists in Vienna have achieved a major breakthrough in timekeeping by creating the world’s first self-stabilizing nuclear clock, a technology that could…
Potential ‘Second generation’ planet detection around a dying stellar white dwarf opens a whole new chapter of exoplanetary science.
Astronomers have discovered a bizarre star system about 300 light-years from Earth where a small star is slowly devouring a nearby brown…
Giovanni Passalacqua from Ragusa, Sicily, Italy A waning crescent Moon hangs less than 3° from Jupiter in western Leo before dawn on…
As part of the agency’s Inspiration Tour flyover, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will pilot one of three F-5 fighter jets to kick…
In the pursuit of space exploration, NASA has developed a number of innovations that today we depend on in our daily lives.
On Oct. 10, 1846, William Lassell peered through his 20-foot reflector in Liverpool, England.
Visible planets and night sky guide. The most fascinating of the bright planets — Mars — is getting brighter as it approaches…
There’s lots of things you can do with balloons. Children’s birthday parties come to mind, as do retirement parties.
ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot has arrived back in Europe, landing in Cologne, Germany, following her return to Earth with Crew-12 after 237…
Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 October 10… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of…
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying satellites for the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter…
"We’ve made it clear that NASA will never give up its presence in low Earth orbit."
NASA has taken the next step in the process of developing a new all-glass telescope for the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna)…
Also covered by NASA
NASA test pilot Nils Larson recently received a top honor from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots for making the first flight…
A Jupiter-sized world just 7.5 light-years away is cloudy, chemically complex and, it turns out, more like home than anyone expected.
NASA is advancing American leadership in space by taking the next step toward a future where commercial space stations lead the way…
Life and Habitability Goal: Determine the astrobiological potential of Mars and the processes that govern the preservation of organic and physical biosignatures…
NASA has selected a mission proposal that will peer below a volcanic pit on the Moon to find out whether it opens…
A strange chemical signature in old Hubble observations may point to a planet that formed after its star had already died.
APOD · NASA — public domain ·
APOD · NASA — public domain ·
NASA ·
APOD · NASA — public domain ·
Falcon 9 Block 5 · SpaceX
Add to calendarDaylight at the pad Visible close in as a bright point and a contrail; nothing at distance.
Space Launch Complex 4E
Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA
Go
Falcon 9 Block 5 · SpaceX
Add to calendarTwilight — the spectacular case The ground is dark and the vehicle climbs into sunlight. This is the launch that makes a glowing jellyfish across half a continent, and it is worth going outside for.
Space Launch Complex 40
Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA
Go
Falcon 9 Block 5 · SpaceX
Add to calendarDaylight at the pad Visible close in as a bright point and a contrail; nothing at distance.
Space Launch Complex 4E
Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA
Go
H3-24 · Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Add to calendarFull darkness at the pad A bright moving star and the engine plume. Spectacular near the pad, subtle at distance.
Yoshinobu Launch Complex LP-2
Tanegashima Space Center, Japan
Go
Space Launch Complex 41
Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA
TBD
Every story is filed by subject and every subject publishes its own Atom feed. Take the two you care about and ignore the rest — that is the whole idea.
Everything above is what happened, gathered from 51 feeds and credited to whoever reported it. Every headline here links straight back to the publication that wrote it, because a summary that replaces the click is a summary that has taken something.
Everything else is worked out here. The subjects are ordered by the part of the spectrum each is really observed in — radio at the red end for the satellites overhead, ultraviolet at the violet end for the early universe — and coloured to match, which is the one organising idea the site has. A story is filed by a hand-built vocabulary for each subject, weighted by how decisive a term is: event horizon settles the question, orbit barely counts. Anything that does not clearly belong anywhere stays untagged rather than being pushed somewhere to fill a gap.
The rest of the site is not news at all, and is the part worth staying for.
Deep Field is one person's side project. This website has no paywall, no newsletter capture and no tracking beyond what the ad network sets. It costs about the price of a coffee a week to run.
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