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 ...
Milky Way Over Tunisia
That's no moon. On the ground, that's the Lars Homestead in Tunisia. And that's not just any galaxy. That's the central band of our own Milky Way galaxy. Last, that's not just any meteor. It is a bright fireball likely ...
Glory and Fog Bow
On a road trip up Mount Uludağ in Bursa province, Turkey these motorcyclists found themselves above low clouds and fog in late June. With the bright Sun directly behind them, the view down the side of the great mountain revealed a beautiful, ...
Mars Passing By
As Mars wanders through Earth's night, it passes about 5 degrees south of the Pleiades star cluster in this composite astrophoto. The skyview was constructed from a series of images captured over a run of 16 consecutive clear nights ...
Comet Olbers over Kunetice Castle
A visitor to the inner solar system every 70 years or so Comet 13P/Olbers reached its most recent perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on June 30 2024. Now on a return voyage to the distant Oort cloud the Halley-type comet is recorded here ...
Leopard Spots on Martian Rocks
What is creating these unusual spots? Light-colored spots on Martian rocks, each surrounded by a dark border, were discovered earlier this month by NASA's Perseverance Rover currently exploring Mars. Dubbed leopard spots because of their ...
Arp 142: Interacting Galaxies from Webb
To some, it looks like a penguin. But to people who study the universe, it is an interesting example of two big galaxies interacting. Just a few hundred million years ago, the upper NGC 2936 was likely a normal spiral galaxy: spinning, creating ...
Milky Way over Uluru
What's happening above Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site, Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat surroundings. Composed of sandstone, Uluru has slowly formed ...
Saturn at the Moon's Edge
Saturn now rises before midnight in planet Earth's sky. On July 24, the naked-eye planet was in close conjunction, close on the sky, to a waning gibbous Moon. But from some locations on planet Earth the ringed gas giant was occulted, ...
