Glowing gecko and Hurricane Ian — October’s best science images

The sky’s the limit. Every six months, NASA’s NEOWISE spacecraft completes one trip halfway around the Sun, taking images in all directions. These images are combined to make a mosaic image of the entire sky, like the one shown above. By observing the whole sky, the mission can search for distant galaxies, or survey groups of cosmic objects. Astronomers recently combined 18 NEOWISE all-sky maps to make time-lapse images revealing how distant features change position or brightness. “If you go outside and look at the night sky, it might seem like nothing ever changes, but that’s not the case,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEOWISE at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Stars are flaring and exploding. Asteroids are whizzing by. Black holes are tearing stars apart. The universe is a really busy, active place.”