“Scanning The Skies For Galaxies, Canadian Astronomer Paul Hickson And Colleagues Identified Some 100

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius Aurora over Kirkjufell, Iceland captured by the always awe-inspiring Sean Parker.

The Galactic Core over Sharkfin Cove, CA.

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A spectacular video showing climbers going through Mt. Rainier. (Video)

I’d love to be here. 

It’s peak Dry Season in South Florida, but Wet Season is right around the corner. The afternoon thunderstorms, or Florida mountains, are forming and will soon be widespread. 

Myakka River State Park, FL

Horsehead Nebula 

Next level backyard astrophotography!

“Amateur astrophotographer David Ellison captured this image **from his backyard** in Chattanooga, Tenn. Located approximately 1,500 light years from Earth in the constellation Orion, the Horsehead Nebula is simple to spot due to its unique shape resembling a horse’s head. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). This image is a narrow band photograph of four hours of exposure using a QSI camera and a 4-inch telescope. The star seen just above the Flame nebula is Alnitak. Goodnight, Earthlings! Credit and Copyright: David Ellison.“

Just so you know, you can always watch the Earth live from the ISS. Its really relaxing to me (the music they play is soothing too)

Artist’s impression of the exotic binary star system AR Scorpii

This artist’s impression shows the strange object AR Scorpii. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio.

Credit: M. Garlick/University of Warwick, ESA/Hubble

Milky Way over Paranal

A trail of lights leads the way towards Cerro Paranal, atop which sits ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Looming over the flagship observatory, the familiar glow of the Milky Way, studded by dark dust lanes, appears to touch the telescopes. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are also visible in the lower left of the image.

Credit: ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com)

Three Bands of Light

The faint light extending up from the horizon just below centre of this photo is known as zodiacal light, caused by sunlight scattering from cosmic dust in the plane of our Earth’s orbit. A second band of light can be seen at the horizon on the lower left. This red light is airglow, produced by the Earth’s atmosphere. Airglow is caused by processes taking place in the upper atmosphere, including cosmic rays, recombining photoionized atoms, and various chemical reactions between oxygen, nitrogen, hydroxyl, sodium, and lithium atoms. The third and final band is the Milky Way, our home galaxy, high in the sky. This band consists of billions of stars of all kinds. Many of them are hidden to the human eye behind large layers of interstellar dust, giving the Milky Way its characteristically mottled look.

Credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2016 September 6 

The Whirlpool Galaxy and Beyond 

Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper’s bowl, until you get to the handle’s last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you might find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier’s famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (left), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the human eye, the above long-exposure, deep-field image taken earlier this year shows much of the faint complexity that actually surrounds the smaller galaxy. Thousands of the faint dots in background of the featured image are actually galaxies far across the universe.