Little Planet Aurora
25.11.2023

Immersed in an eerie greenish light, this rugged little planet appears to be home to stunning water falls and an impossibly tall mountain. It's planet Earth of course. On the night of November 9 the nadir-centered 360 degree mosaic was captured by digital camera from the Kirkjufell mountain area of western Iceland.

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras
3.02.2015

What are those red streaks in the sky? While photographing unexpected auroras over a distant thunderstorm, something extraordinary happened: red sprites. This brief instance of rarely imaged high-altitude lightning flashed so bright that it was witnessed by several people independently.

Icelandic Legends and Aurora
8.12.2015

Legends collide in this dramatic vista of land, sea, and sky. The land is Iceland, specifically VМk М MЩrdal, a southern village known for its beautiful black sand beaches. The sea, the Atlantic Ocean...

APOD: 2023 March 27 Б Aurora Over Arctic Henge
27.03.2023

Reports of powerful solar flares started a seven-hour quest north to capture modern monuments against an aurora-filled sky. The peaks of iconic Arctic Henge in Raufarhцfn in northern Iceland were already aligned with the stars: some are lined up toward the exact north from one side and toward exact south from the other.

Aurora Slathers up the Sky
29.07.2017

Like salsa verde on your favorite burrito, a green aurora slathers up the sky in this June 25 snapshot from the International Space Station. About 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth, the orbiting station is itself within the upper realm of the auroral displays.

Meteors and Auroras over Iceland
13.12.2021

What's going on behind that mountain? Quite a bit. First of all, the mountain itself, named Kirkjufell, is quite old and located in western Iceland near the town of Grundarfjцrцur. In front...

APOD: 2023 December 12 Б Aurora and Milky Way over Norway
12.12.2023

What are these two giant arches across the sky? Perhaps the more familiar one, on the left, is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. This grand disk of stars and nebulas here appears to encircle much of the southern sky.

APOD: 2024 August 14 Б Meteors and Aurora over Germany
14.08.2024

This was an unusual night. For one thing, the night sky of August 11 and 12, earlier this week, occurred near the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Therefore, meteors streaked across the dark night as small bits cast off from Comet Swift-Tuttle came crashing into the Earth's atmosphere.

Eagle Aurora over Norway
23.10.2016

What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days before this 2012 image was taken, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth.

The Dancing Auroras of Saturn
27.09.2010

What drives auroras on Saturn? To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies.