Magazine Posts

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.

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.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What would it be like to fly over the largest moon in the Solar System? In 2021, the robotic Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede and took images that have been digitally constructed into a detailed flyby. As the featured video begins, Juno swoops over the two-toned surface of the 2,000-km wide moon, revealing an icy alien landscape filled with grooves and craters. The grooves are likely caused by shifting surface plates, while the craters are caused by violent impacts. Continuing on in its orbit, Juno then performed its 34th close pass over Jupiter's clouds. The digitally-constructed video shows numerous swirling clouds in the north, colorful planet-circling zones and bands across the middle -- featuring several white-oval clouds from the String of Pearls, and finally more swirling clouds in the south.

WAB BDhe 4/4 railcar no. 115 with a Bt control car headed down from Kleine Scheidegg to Wengernalp, Switzerland.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On December 5, 2022, a camera on board the uncrewed Orion spacecraft captured this view as Orion approached its return powered flyby of the Moon. Beyond one of Orion's extended solar arrays lies dark, smooth, terrain along the western edge of the Oceanus Procellarum. Prominent on the lunar nearside Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms, is the largest of the Moon's lava-flooded maria. The lunar terminator, the shadow line between lunar night and day, runs along the left of this frame. The 41 kilometer diameter crater Marius is top center, with ray crater Kepler peeking in at the edge, just right of the solar array wing. Kepler's bright rays extend to the north and west, reaching the dark-floored Marius. By December 11, 2022 the Orion spacecraft had returned to its home world. The historic Artemis 1 mission ended with Orion's successful splashdown in planet Earth's water-flooded Pacific Ocean. Watch: The Geminid Meteor Shower

Pribalkhashskiy sanctuary, Kazakhstan.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

In a Finnish myth, when an arctic fox runs so fast that its bushy tail brushes the mountains, flaming sparks are cast into the heavens creating the northern lights. In fact the Finnish word "revontulet", a name for the aurora borealis or northern lights, can be translated as fire fox. So that evocative myth took on a special significance for the photographer of this northern night skyscape from Finnish Lapland near Kilpisjarvi Lake. The snowy scene is illuminated by moonlight. Saana, an iconic fell or mountain of Lapland, rises at the right in the background. But as the beautiful nothern lights danced overhead, the wild fire fox in the foreground enthusiastically ran around the photographer and his equipment, making it difficult to capture in this lucky single shot.

Photo by Dennis Lehtonen

Wild red-chested cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius) at Kibale Forest National Park, Uganda.

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