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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, whom Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river. Also known as Westerhout 5 (W5), the Soul Nebula houses several open clusters of stars, ridges and pillars darkened by cosmic dust, and huge evacuated bubbles formed by the winds of young massive stars. Located about 6,500 light years away, the Soul Nebula spans about 100 light years and is usually imaged next to its celestial neighbor the Heart Nebula (IC 1805). The featured image, taken from near Nashville, Tennessee, USA, is a composite of 234 hours of exposures made in different colors: red as emitted by hydrogen gas, yellow as emitted by sulfur, and blue as emitted by oxygen. Explore the Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Jeffrey Horne

Soaked in rain Cyclamen coum sown between the roots of an Alder (Alnus) Focus stack of 10 photos.

Famberhorst, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Tim Oun on Unsplash

Midi Observatory, Bagnères-de-Bigorre, France

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the future. Andromeda (M31) is similar in size and shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. On the right is a red sprite, a type of lightning that lasts a fraction of a second and occurs above violent thunderstorms. Red sprites were verified as real atmospheric phenomena only about 35 years ago. The tree in the center is a boab, which may live for as long as a thousand years. Boab trees grow naturally in Australia and Africa and are known for being able to store large amounts of water: up to 100,000 liters. The featured image was captured last month near Derby in Western Australia.

Photo by JJ Rao

Short-nosed unicornfish (Naso brevirostris), Red Sea, Egypt. This species has a maximum published total length of 60 centimetres (24 in). It occurs in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. Adults feed mainly on gelatinous zooplankton, while juveniles mainly feed on benthic algae. The switch from grazing to preying on gelatinous zooplankton coincides with the development of the bony protuberance.

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 -1900) German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and a Latin and Greek scholar.

Great Blue Herons can be 3-4 feet tall, and this one was standing very still as he fished in the lagoon. His focus and stately posture gave me ample opportunity to get a clear shot of his facial features and feathers.

Dulcey Lima on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is known as the Geminids -- because shower meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Gemini. Three dimensionally, however, sand-sized debris expelled from the unusual asteroid 3200 Phaethon follows a well-defined orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the constellation of Gemini. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris appears in Gemini. Featured here is a composite of many images taken over the past few days through dark skies from Slovakia and capturing the snow-covered peaks of the Belianske Tatra mountains Numerous bright meteor streaks from the Geminids meteor shower are visible. Orion is visible above the horizon, while the bright star nearest the radiant is Castor. APOD Review: RJN's Night Sky Network Lecture

Photo by Tomáš Slovinský

A 2-week-old baby hamster with red eyes. Today is voice actress Haruna Ikezawa's birthday. She voiced Laruna Haruna, the owner of the titular hamster, in the 2000 anime adaption of Hamtaro.

Augustus Binu : flickr : Instagram, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.