Late Night Vallentuna
Bright Mars and even brighter Jupiter are in close conjunction just above the pine trees in this post-midnight skyscape from Vallentuna, Sweden. Taken on August 12 during a geomagnetic storm, the snapshot records the glow of aurora borealis or ...
Meteors and Aurora over Germany
This was an unusual night. For one thing, the night sky of August 11 and 12, earlier this week, occurred near the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Therefore, meteors streaked across the dark night as small bits cast off from Comet ...
Giant Jet from the International...
What's that on the horizon? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early last month, astronaut Matthew Dominick saw an unusual type of lightning just beyond the Earth's edge: a gigantic jet. The powerful jet appears ...
Perseid Meteors over Stonehenge
What's happening in the sky above Stonehenge? A meteor shower: specifically, the Perseid meteor shower. A few nights ago, after the sky darkened, many images of meteors from this year's Perseids were captured separately and merged into ...
Animation: Perseid Meteor Shower
Where do Perseid meteors come from? Mostly small bits of stony grit, Perseid meteoroids were once expelled from Comet Swift-Tuttle and continue to follow this comet's orbit as they slowly disperse. The featured animation depicts the entire ...
The Light, Dark, and Dusty Trifid
Messier 20, popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of ...
A Perseid Below
Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan's perspective on board the International ...
Periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle
A Halley-type comet with an orbital period of about 133 years, Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is recognized as the parent of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The comet's last visit to the inner Solar System was in 1992. Then, it did not become ...
Milky Way Behind Three Merlons
To some, they look like battlements, here protecting us against the center of the Milky Way. The Three Merlons, also called the Three Peaks of Lavaredo, stand tall today because they are made of dense dolomite rock which has better resisted ...
Storm Cloud Over Texas
What makes this storm cloud so colorful? First, the cloud itself is composed of millions of tiny droplets of water and ice. Its bottom is almost completely flat -- but this isn't unusual. Bottom flatness in clouds is generally caused by ...
