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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

clipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the new and full phases of the Moon, separated by just over 14 days, create a solar and a lunar eclipse. But only rarely is the alignment at both new moon and full moon during a single eclipse season close enough to produce a pair with both total solar and lunar eclipses. More often, partial eclipses are part of any eclipse season. But, the last eclipse season of 2026 did produce this fortnight-separated pairing of a total solar eclipse on August 12 (top) and an almost total lunar eclipse on the night of August 27/28. At New Moon, the solar eclipse was captured at Peñafiel, Spain near the begining of totality in this HDR composite image, revealing a flash of Bailey's beads and a golden solar corona. At the following Full Moon, the deep partial lunar eclipse was recorded from Sèvres, France. Also an HDR composite, the image shows this partial eclipse at closer to half its 93 percent maximum phase, so about half the visible lunar disk appears darkened and reddened within Earth's umbral shadow. The coming eclipse season will see an annular solar eclipse on 2027 February 6 paired with a penumbral lunar eclipse on February 20/21. Growing Gallery: Lunar Eclipse of 2026 August 28 APOD's main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Photo by Gwenaël Blanck

Flower bud of a Succisa pratensis. Focus stack of 36 photos. The main flower is about 11 mm in diameter.

Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Welcome to Kudos365 Weekly History Challenge. Test your history  knowledge and see how many of the history questions you can answer correctly. A new updated History Challenge is released every Saturday.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

At the latitude of ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, about 25 degrees south, Earth's rotation moves the planet's surface eastward at over 1,500 kilometers per hour. And while that's faster than the speed of sound at sea level, the motion is imperceptible. Still, that motion can be revealed in the apparent rotation of the night sky by photographing star trails. This star trail image was composed from a digital stack of 300 consecutive 25-second exposures made with a camera fixed to a tripod to trace the star trail arcs. The graceful arcs are concentric and centered at the south celestial pole, the southern hemisphere extension of Earth's axis of rotation into space. One of the observatory's operating 1.8 meter auxiliary telescopes, AT 3, appears beneath the south celestial pole, faintly illuminated in the foreground of this well-planned scene from a rotating planet. Growing Gallery: Lunar Eclipse of 2026 August 28 APOD's main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Photo by Osvaldo Castillo

Circaetus gallicus (Short-toed snake eagle) in Bhigwan, Maharashtra, India.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What a sight to behold, when a night sky became filled with colors that appeared to rain over the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland. This image was taken in a single 5 second exposure by the photographer in April 2025. Seeing an aurora is on many people's bucket lists. But it is not easy. It requires high solar activity, dark and clear skies, and usually a viewing location at high latitude. That makes the northern lights more easily seen than the corresponding southern lights, simply because there is less landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, especially around the Antarctic Circle. Auroras are caused by charged particles from the solar wind that are captured by the Earth's magnetosphere and guided by the magnetic field to a region close to one of the poles, where they collide with gas particles in the atmosphere. Different colors indicate interactions with different gases at different altitudes, like oxygen (red and green) and nitrogen (blue and pink). APOD's main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Photo by Victor Lima Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Lake Coldai, an alpine lake beneath the Dolomites near village Alleghe, Italy. Today is World Lake Day, designated by the United Nations to raise awareness about the importance of lakes and to promote their sustainable management.

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