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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.

               "NIght"

The night has a thousand eyes,
     And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
      With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
    And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
    When love is done.

Francis William Bourdillon (1852 - 1921) was a British poet, translator and a bibliophile. Bourdillon is known for his poetry, and in particular, for the single short poem "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes". He had many poem collections and essays published, including three smaller volumes of verse published anonymously at Oxford between 1891 and 1894.

Photo credit: RezaAskarii

Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance has assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula, it lies some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years "tall," the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33, first identified on a photographic plate taken in the late 19th century. B33 is visible primarily because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glow of emission nebula IC 434. Hubble space telescope images from the early 21st century find young stars forming within B33. Of course, the magnificent interstellar cloud will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years. But for now the Horsehead Nebula is a rewarding though difficult object to view with small telescopes from planet Earth.

Photo by George Chatzifrantzis