Why is Venus surrounded by a bright ring? Sometimes called a ring of fire, this rare ring is caused by the Sun’s light being visible all around an object. Usually seen around the Moon during an annular solar eclipse, the ring of fire is also visible when either Venus or Mercury cross the face of […]
Comet PanSTARRs, C/2017 T2, shared this stunning telescopic field of view with galaxies M81 and M82 on May 22/23. Of course, the galaxies were some 12 million light-years distant and the comet about 14 light-minutes away, seen in planet Earth’s sky toward the Big Dipper. A new visitor from the Oort Cloud, this Comet PanSTARRs […]
The stars of the globular cluster NGC 6441 sparkle peacefully in the night sky, about 13,000 light-years from the Milky Way’s galactic center. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-6KG
Still bathed in sunlight the International Space Station (ISS) arced through this Manhattan evening sky on May 30. Moving left to right, its bright trail was captured in this composite image with a series of 5 second long exposures. Stars left short trails and lights were reflected in still waters looking toward the north across […]
Lightning flashes from a storm cloud to strike the ground. Such bolts represent only a small part of the overall phenomenon of lightning. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-6K3
Sharp telescopic views of NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes.
The samples Apollo 11 brought back to Earth from the Moon were humanity’s first from another celestial body. The upcoming Perseverance rover mission will collect the first samples from another planet.
A small glacier in the Arctic region of Norwegian archipelago Svalbard
Every time Venus passes the Earth, it shows the same face. This remarkable fact has been known for only about 50 years, ever since radio telescopes have been able to peer beneath Venus’ thick clouds and track its slowly rotating surface. This inferior conjunction — when Venus and Earth are the closest — occurs today. […]
Humanity is under attack. The attack is not from large tentacle-flailing aliens, but from invaders so small they can barely be seen, and so strange they are not even clearly alive. All over planet Earth, the human home world, DNA-based humans are being invaded by the RNA-based SARS-CoV2. The virus, which creates a disease known […]