Spooky Sun

From NASA:

Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face on Oct. 8, 2014. The image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which watches the sun at all times from its orbit in space.

The active regions in this image appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy. They are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. This image blends together two sets of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths at 171 and 193 Ångströms, typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance.

A Brief History of Everything

A mind-boggling summary by astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City:

Night Skies

Soundtrack is lousy, but the star trails are pretty cool.


T-RECS - Night Skies from T-Recs (Timelapse Recordings) on Vimeo.

How Big Is It?

For all you size queens out there, from the American Museum of Natural History:



Honk to Andrew Sullivan

The Eye of God

A new photograph of the Helix Nebula, taken by the European Southern Observatory on a moutaintop in Chile. It's 700 light years away, in the constellation Aquarius. More details at Wikipedia. Click on the photo for a realllllly big view.