The Moon Is Beautiful

My first photo of the Milky Way. (It was actually my 26th attempt. Practice makes perfect.) #bluemountains #astrophotography 🌠 (at Blue Mountains National Park)

“The Day the Earth Smiled.” The wide-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. July 19, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute [838x958] by trismegisto97

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What glows there? The answer depends: sea or sky? In the sea, the unusual blue glow is bioluminescence. Specifically, the glimmer arises from Noctiluca scintillans, single-celled plankton stimulated by the lapping waves.

The plankton use their glow to startle and illuminate predators. This mid-February display on an island in the Maldives was so intense that the astrophotographer described it as a turquoise wonderland.

In the sky, by contrast, are the more familiar glows of stars and nebulas. The white band rising from the artificially-illuminated green plants is created by billions of stars in the central disk of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Also visible in the sky is the star cluster Omega Centauri, toward the left, and the famous Southern Cross asterism in the center.

Red-glowing nebulas include the bright Carina Nebula, just right of center, and the expansive Gum Nebula on the upper right.

📷: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava, Sovena Jani

2 years ago I took my first photo of the Milky Way - I still get giddy when looking up at the endless blanket of stars. [3975x5962] [OC] by Jorgey94

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Dark Tower in Scorpius

Milky Way at Boddington, Western Australia

Nikon d5500 - 50mm - ISO 4000 - f/3.2 - Foreground: 7 x 15 seconds - Sky: 26 x 30 seconds - iOptron SkyTracker - Hoya Red Intensifier filter

Milky Way Falls

It can be the driest place on planet Earth, but water still flows in Chile’s Atacama desert, high in the mountains. After discovering this small creek with running water, the photographer returned to the site to watch the Milky Way rise in the dark southern skies, calculating the moment when Milky Way and precious flowing water would meet. In the panoramic night skyscape, stars and nebulae immersed in the glow along the Milky Way itself also shared that moment with the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies the Large and Small Magellanic clouds above the horizon at the right. Bright star Beta Centauri is poised at the very top of the waterfall. Above it lies the dark expanse of the Coalsack nebula and the stars of the Southern Cross. Credit: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

29 years ago today, the greatest picture of all time was taken. by Eisenkugeln

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Footprint Nebula