hayabusa2 – welcome to somewhereville (.com)

Above: The Butterfly Nebula, located about 3400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, is one of the best-studied planetary nebulas in our galaxy. This stunning nebula was previously imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Now, Webb has captured a new view of this nebula. Text from www.esa.int. Image available at www.almaobservatory.org.

The most recent issue of Free Astronomy Magazine (November-December 2025) is available for your reading and downloading pleasure in English, Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese at www.astropublishing.com (and facebook).

Closing out 2025 with "The Planet Issue," including the +6,000 now-confirmed extra-solar planets and two deep dives into TRAPPIST-1 (d and e).

Somewhere in my astronomy book collection is my first-print edition of the Peterson Field Guide to Star and Planets (right), containing an actual paper clipping from the Syracuse Herald-Journal (that old) about the discovery of the first exo-planet to be somewhat confidently detected – 51 Pegasi b – back in 1995.

My, how the times have changed.

Above: Hayabusa2 at Ryugu – September 23, 2018: Image captured immediately before hop of Rover-1B. 2018-9-23 09:46 (JST). (Image credit: JAXA)

The November-December issue of Free Astronomy Magazine is available for your reading and downloading pleasure.

To the digest of NASA/ESA articles, excellent updates for a slew of extra-solar research, and general all-around fantastic aggregation of relevant images to make you wish you'd gotten a tablet with higher resolution, this issue wades Andromeda's-shackled-ankle-deep into recent events at the Sunspot Solar Observatory on/at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico. Depending on your interpretation of events (and, possibly, your choice of late-night radio listening), you may or may not be satisfied with the description and resolution of the circumstances in the article or in the several follow-up news articles concerning the closing-up of the investigation.

Please download, read, and pass along. Also, check out the many back issues at www.astropublishing.com