The Faint Rings Of Uranus, Shot In 1986, Are Made Of Countless Fragments Of Water Ice Containing Radiation-altered

Video Clip SS2935432 (Supercell Thunderstorm, timelapse)

Timelapse footage of a Supercell thunderstorm with multiple lightning flashes. 

A supercell is a large rotating storm system that often produces heavy rain, hail and sometimes tornadoes. The supercell is centred on a very powerful updraft, which lifts warm, moist air to high altitude. It cools as it rises, condensing and falling as precipitation. 

The base of the cloud is marked by a shelf cloud extending forwards, and a low wall cloud at the updraft/downdraft interface. This supercell was filmed in Kansas, USA, in June 2015. Such storms are most common in this region in spring and early summer.

Supercells are often put into three classification types: Classic, Low-precipitation (LP), and High-precipitation (HP). LP supercells are usually found in climates that are more arid, such as the high plains of the United States, and HP supercells are most often found in moist climates. 

Supercells can occur anywhere in the world under the right pre-existing weather conditions, but they are most common in the Great Plains of the United States in an area known as Tornado Alley and in the Tornado Corridor of Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil.

© Roger Hill / Science Source

Hubble sees a cosmic caterpillar by Hubble Space Telescope / ESA

“This is a small example from an ambitious all-sky photographic survey completed during the mid to late 20th century. Every piece of sky was photographed on large glass plates. This astrophotography provided a catalog for astronomers to use in seeking out targets and planning observations. It is also an archival snapshot of the entire sky. Over 1,000 of these photographic plates were later digitized into a database used to aim Hubble.” (from the book Hubble’s Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images)

A moon halo created by ice crystal in the air

Interstellar dust of the Horsehead Nebula as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope and KUEYEN telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble, ESO

Big Dipper

Starquakes

Sometimes a neutron star will undergo a glitch, a sudden small increase of its rotational speed or spin up. Glitches are thought to be the effect of a starquake—as the rotation of the neutron star slows, its shape becomes more spherical. Due to the stiffness of the “neutron” crust, this happens as discrete events when the crust ruptures, creating a starquake similar to earthquakes. After the starquake, the star will have a smaller equatorial radius, and because angular momentum is conserved, its rotational speed has increased.

Starquakes occurring in magnetars, with a resulting glitch, is the leading hypothesis for the gamma-ray sources known as soft gamma repeaters.

Recent work, however, suggests that a starquake would not release sufficient energy for a neutron star glitch; it has been suggested that glitches may instead be caused by transitions of vortices in the theoretical superfluid core of the neutron star from one metastable energy state to a lower one, thereby releasing energy that appears as an increase in the rotation rate. (source)

Astronomy vignettes. Learning about our world. 1932.  

New from Tornado Titans!

From @btsullivan91 - A stunning sunset mothership supercell over Roswell, New Mexico last night! The storm produced a powerful dust storm and destructive hail up to 3 inches in diameter! #newmexico #nmwx #storm #ufo #nature #skyporn #cloudporn #sunset #sun #sky #weather https://instagr.am/p/CPddgEGrFIW/