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Chris on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Orion is rarely seen like this. To achieve this majestic vista, you need a camera capable of taking such long duration exposures that faint features in the night sky become revealed. Iconic nebulas that appear include the Orion Nebula, the Flame Nebula, and Barnard's Loop. For contrast, it also helps to have a volcano on the foreground, in this case the Teide volcano on Tenerife on the Canary Islands of Spain. But if you want your Teide volcano snow-covered, you also need good timing -- because that only happens, typically, for a few days each year. Good timing also includes waiting for Orion to appear just behind Teide, which occurred late last year after sunset. The featured image is the result of a series of images taken consecutively with the same camera from the same location. Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (after 1995)

Photo by Marcin Rosadziński

Operating an aerial camera Wild Heerbrugg from a biplane Häfeli DH-5 (military) for aeronautical photogrammetry. Image captured in 1930.

UnknownUnknown / Bundesamt für Landestopografie, Office fédéral de topographie, Ufficio federale di topografia, Federal Office of Topography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Tomas Sobek on Unsplash

"Off-track crossover hiking (tramping) trip from Borland Valley to Manapouri. Fiordland National Park, New Zealand. We found these guys just before dropping back into the bush. Keas are very smart, cheeky birds"

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why are there huge, unusual masses inside the Earth? No one is sure. By noting how earthquakes rumble through our planet's interior, humanity has discovered two deep structures that appear to have unusual temperatures and/or chemical compositions. One hypothesis holds that the superplumes are sunken debris left over from the Earth-shattering collision that created Earth's Moon about 4.5 billion years ago. A competing hypothesis is that they are graveyards for old tectonic plates that slowly slid under each other over the past few billion years. No matter their origin, the superplumes are thought to affect Earth’s surface volcanism, possibly creating, for example, island chains such as Hawaii. Also known as large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs), Earth's superplumes are visualized in the featured animation.

Watch NASA's Astronomy Video of the Day

Platypus or Duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) near Scottsadale, Tasmania, Australia.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Keith Champaco on Unsplash

"My friend from Australia was visiting and I promised him I would take him to one of my favorite beach spots. Little did he know that this particular spot is known for sea turtles hanging out on the beach. We named her Brooke –– meet Brooke".

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Dust pillars are like interstellar mountains. They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are slowly being eroded away by a hostile environment. Visible in the featured picture by the Hubble Space Telescope is the end of a huge gas and dust pillar in the Trifid Nebula (M20), punctuated by a smaller pillar pointing up and an unusual jet pointing to the upper left. Many of the bright dots are newly formed stars. A star near the small pillar's end is slowly being stripped of its accreting gas by radiation from a tremendously brighter star situated off the top of the image. The jet extends nearly a light-year and would not be visible without external illumination. As gas and dust evaporate from the pillars, the hidden stellar source of this jet will likely be uncovered, possibly over the next 20,000 years. Explore the Universe: Random APOD Generator