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Silhouettes at the Fort of Santo Antônio da Barra, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. It was constructed to guard the entrance to the Bay of All Saints, during the time of the Portuguese Empire.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

It was December and the sky lit up like a Christmas tree. Shimmering, the vivid green, blue, and purple auroral colors that formed the tree-like apparition were caused by high atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen reacting to a burst of incoming electrons. Collisions caused the orbital electrons of atoms and molecules to jump into excited energy states and emit visible light when returning to their normal state. The featured image was captured in Djúpivogur, Iceland during the last month of 2023. Our Sun is currently in its most energetic phase of its 11-year cycle, with its high number of active regions and sunspots likely to last into next year. Of course, the Sun has been near solar maximum during this entire year, with its outbursts sometimes resulting in spectacular Earthly auroras. Image Processors: Take NASA's Astrophoto Challenge

Photo by Jingyi Zhang

Carved wooden bench, furniture, textile crafts, lanterns and suspended mobile sculptures, at the wooden Heuan Chan heritage house, stilt building with wooden ceiling, Luang Prabang, Laos.

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

William Blake - (1757 – 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Although Blake was largely unrecognized during his life, he is now considered an influential figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, but he is now held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. Read more

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy, about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas called the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform and shows patchiness even near our Sun. It can be quite difficult to detect the local ISM because it is so tenuous and emits so little light. This mostly hydrogen gas, however, absorbs some very specific colors that can be detected in the light of the nearest stars. A working map of the local ISM within 20 light-years, based on ongoing observations and particle detections from the Earth-orbiting Interstellar Boundary Exporer satellite (IBEX), is shown here. These observations indicate that our Sun is moving through a Local Interstellar Cloud as this cloud flows outwards from the Scorpius-Centaurus Association star forming region. Our Sun may exit the Local Cloud, also called the Local Fluff, during the next 10,000 years. Much remains unknown about the local ISM, including details of its distribution, its origin, and how it affects the Sun and the Earth. Unexpectedly, IBEX spacecraft measurements indicate that the direction from which neutral interstellar particles flow through our Solar System is changing. APOD Year in Review: Night Sky Network Presentation for 2024

Wild alpha male chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) at Kibale forest National Park, Uganda.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A year in sunsets, from April 2023 to March 2024, track along the western horizon in these stacked panoramic views. The well-planned sequence is constructed of images recorded near the 21st day of the indicated month from the same location overlooking Cairo, Egypt. But for any location on planet Earth the yearly extreme northern (picture right) and southern limits of the setting Sun mark the solstice days. The word solstice is from Latin for "Sun" and "stand still". On the solstice date the seasonal drift of the Sun's daily path through the sky appears to pause and reverse direction in its annual celestial journey. Of course the Sun reaches a stand still on today's date. The 21 December 2024 solstice at 09:21 UTC is the moment of the Sun's southernmost declination, the start of astronomical winter in the north and summer in the south.

Photo by Wael Omar

The Padum-Pibiting Road from Karsha to Padum (elevation 3,500 m (11,500 ft)) which is nestled at the base of the Zanskar range. The mountains of this Trans-Himalayan range tower 2,400 m (7,900 ft) above Padum. Zanskar, Ladakh, India.

This Photo was taken by Timothy A. Gonsalves. Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author. I would much appreciate if you send me an email tagooty@gmail.com or write on my talk page, for my information. Please contact me before commercial use. Please do not upload an edited image here without consulting me. I would like to make corrections only at my own source to ensure that the changes improve the image and are preserved.Otherwise you may upload an edited image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On the night of December 15, the Full Moon was bright. Known to some as the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon, it was the closest Full Moon to the northern winter solstice and the last Full Moon of 2024. This Full Moon was also at a major lunar standstill. A major lunar standstill is an extreme in the monthly north-south range of moonrise and moonset caused by the precession of the Moon's orbit over an 18.6 year cycle. As a result, the full lunar phase was near the Moon's northernmost moonrise (and moonset) along the horizon. December's Full Moon is rising in this stacked image, a composite of exposures recording the range of brightness visible to the eye on the northern winter night. Along with a colorful lunar corona and aircraft contrail this Long Night Moon shines in a cold sky above the rugged, snowy peaks of the Italian Dolomites.

Photo by Giorgia Hofer