Magazine Posts

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.

Jaakko Kemppainen on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River. Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531, a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen nearly edge-on, in this sharp image spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. The NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.

Photo by Vikas Chander

Mountaineers descending into Chola Valley, 5,200 metres (17,100 ft) a. s. l., in good weather conditions, with a panoramic view over snow-capped Himalayan peaks to the south of the Great Himalayan Range in Mahalangur Himal, Nepal, Himalayas. Today is International Mountain Day.

Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.