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July 10 in spaceflight
Wikipedia records 1 spaceflight and astronomy event on July 10. Below are the pictures NASA published on July 10 in 6 different years — each one taken or released on this exact date.
Recorded events
IN THE RECORD1ENTRY
Spaceflight and astronomy entries from Wikipedia's record of this date, oldest first — from 1962 onward.
Pictures from this date
PUBLISHED6IMAGES
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for July 10, one per year. Some are public domain and some belong to the photographer — each says which.
Published on July 10
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, for this calendar date in each of the last several years.
2026
Western Moon, Eastern Sea
The Mare Orientale, Latin for Eastern Sea, is one of the most striking large scale lunar features. The youngest of the large lunar impact basins it's very difficult to see from an earthbound perspective. Still, captured on July 7 during a period of favorable tilt, or libration of the lunar nearside, the Eastern Sea can be found at the upper right in this sharp telescopic view. In the image, the large lunar mare is extremely foreshortened and stretches along the Moon's western edge. Formed by the impact of an asteroid over 3 billion years ago and nearly 1000 kilometers across, the impact basin's concentric circular features are ripples in the lunar crust. But they are a little easier to spot in more direct images of the region taken from lunar orbit. So why is the Eastern Sea at the Moon's western edge? The Mare Orientale lunar feature was named before 1961. That's when the convention labeling east and west on lunar maps was reversed.
© The Mare Orientale — used with the credit NASA publishes
2025
Lynds Dark Nebula 1251
Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, LDN 1251 is also less appetizingly known as "The Rotten Fish Nebula." The dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image. Distant background galaxies also lurk in the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse. This alluring telescopic frame spans almost three full moons on the sky. That corresponds to over 25 light-years at the estimated distance of LDN 1251.
© Cristiano Gualco — used with the credit NASA publishes
2024
A Sagittarius Triplet
These three bright nebulae are often featured on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula above center, and colorful M20 below and left in the frame. The third emission region includes NGC 6559, right of M8 and separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. Over a hundred light-years across the expansive M8 is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae. But for striking contrast, blue hues in the Trifid are due to dust reflected starlight. The broad interstellar skyscape spans almost 4 degrees or 8 full moons on the sky.
© Andy Ermolli — used with the credit NASA publishes
2023
Stars, Dust and Nebula in NGC 6559
When stars form, pandemonium reigns. A textbook case is the star forming region NGC 6559. Visible in the featured image are red glowing emission nebulas of hydrogen, blue reflection nebulas of dust, dark absorption nebulas of dust, and the stars that formed from them. The first massive stars formed from the dense gas will emit energetic light and winds that erode, fragment, and sculpt their birthplace. And then they explode. The resulting morass can be as beautiful as it is complex. After tens of millions of years, the dust boils away, the gas gets swept away, and all that is left is a bare open cluster of stars.
© Adam Block, Telescope Live — used with the credit NASA publishes
2022
In the Center of the Cat's Eye Nebula
Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known. Spanning half a light-year, the features seen in the Cat's Eye are so complex that astronomers suspect the bright central object may actually be a binary star system. The term planetary nebula, used to describe this general class of objects, is misleading. Although these objects may appear round and planet-like in small telescopes, high resolution images with large telescopes reveal them to be stars surrounded by cocoons of gas blown off in the late stages of stellar evolution. Gazing into this Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing more than detailed structure, they may be seeing the fate of our Sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.
© Raul Villaverde — used with the credit NASA publishes
2021
Mercury and the Da Vinci Glow
On July 8th early morning risers saw Mercury near an old Moon low on the eastern horizon. On that date bright planet, faint glow of lunar night side, and sunlit crescent were captured in this predawn skyscape from Tenerife's Teide National Park in the Canary Islands. Never far from the Sun in planet Earth's sky, the fleeting inner planet shines near its brightest in the morning twilight scene. Mercury lies just below the zeta star of the constellation Taurus, Zeta Tauri, near the tip of the celestial bull's horn. Of course the Moon's ashen glow is earthshine, earthlight reflected from the Moon's night side. A description of earthshine, in terms of sunlight reflected by Earth's oceans illuminating the Moon's dark surface, was written over 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. Waiting for the coming dawn in the foreground are the Teide Observatory's sentinels of the Sun, also known as (large domes left to right) the THEMIS, VTT, and GREGOR solar telescopes.
© Gabriel Funes — used with the credit NASA publishes
What happened on July 10
Sources and licences
Event text and thumbnails come from Wikipedia and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Images are drawn only from Wikimedia Commons, which does not accept non-free content — each thumbnail links to its file page, where its licence and author are recorded.
Launch records are from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2. This archive is still being mirrored, so some days are incomplete. Pictures are NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day; NASA imagery is generally not subject to copyright, but individual APOD entries are frequently the property of the photographer, and each caption says which applies.
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Cosmos — Carl Sagan
Still the best single argument for why any of this matters, and it leaves the arithmetic in. For a reader who wants the science, not just the awe.
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Pale Blue Dot — Carl Sagan
The case for leaving Earth, written by someone unsentimental about how hard that is. Suits readers who want the argument rather than the poster.
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Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
Hard-SF problem solving in The Martian's key — for anyone who liked the engineering more than the peril. The only novel on this list.
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