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Mt. Hood and a Lenticular Cloud

Image Credit & Copyright: Ben Canales

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Earth at Twilight

Image Credit: ISS Expedition 2 Crew, Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, NASA

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/04/05/pictures-of-the-week-march-30-april-5/#ixzz2PiydTDJR

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Sakurajima Volcano with Lightning

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Rietze (Alien Landscapes on Planet Earth) 

Explanation: Why does a volcanic eruption sometimes create lightning? Pictured above, the Sakurajima volcano in southern Japan was caught erupting in early January. Magma bubbles so hot they glow shoot away as liquid rock bursts through the Earth’s surface from below. The above image is particularly notable, however, for the lightning bolts caught near the volcano’s summit. Why lightning occurs even in common thunderstorms remains a topic of research, and the cause ofvolcanic lightning is even less clear. Surely, lightning bolts help quench areas of opposite but separated electric charges. One hypothesis holds that catapulting magma bubbles or volcanic ash are themselves electrically charged, and by their motion create these separated areas. Other volcanic lightning episodes may be facilitated by charge-inducing collisions in volcanic dust. Lightning is usually occurring somewhere on Earth, typically over 40 times each second.

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Comets Lemmon and PanSTARRS Peaking

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (ESO)

(vía Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor’s Picks)

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Miass River Sunrise

Image Credit & Copyright: Marat Ahmetvaleev

Miass River Sunrise 
Image Credit & Copyright: Marat Ahmetvaleev

Explanation: Each day on planet Earth can have a serene beginning at sunrise as the sky gently grows bright over a golden eastern horizon. This sunrise panorama seems to show such a moment on the winter morning of February 15. In the mist, a calm, mirror-like stretch of the Miass River flows through the foreground along a frosty landscape near Chelyabinsk, Russia. But the long cloud wafting through the blue sky above is the evolving persistent train of the Chelyabinsk Meteor. The vapor trail was left by the space rock that exploded over the city only 18 minutes earlier, causing extensive damage and injuring over 1,000 people. A well-documented event, the numerous webcam and dashcam video captures from the region soon contributed to a reconstruction of the meteor’s trajectory and an initial orbit determination. Preliminary findings indicate the parent meteoriod belonged to the Apollo class of Earth crossing asteroids.

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Snow Moon for a Snowy Planet

Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand

Snow Moon for a Snowy Planet 
Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand

Explanation: The alarmingly tall inhabitants of this small, snowy planet cast long shadows in bright moonlight. Of course, the snowy planet is actually planet Earth and the wide-angle mosaic, shown as a little planet projection, was recorded on February 25 during the long northern night of the Full Snow Moon. The second brightest celestial beacon is Jupiter, on the right above the little planet’s horizon. Lights near Östersund, Sweden glow along the horizon, surrounding the snow covered lake Storsjön. The photographer reports that the journey out onto the frozen lake by sled to capture the evocative Full Snow Moon scene was accompanied by ice sounds, biting cold, and a moonlit mist.

Fly Me to the Moons 
Image Credit & Copyright: Greg Gibbs (Capturing the Night

Explanation: Sometimes the Moon is a busy direction. Last week, for example, our very Moon passed in front of the planet Jupiter. While capturing this unusual spectacle from New South Wales, Australia, a quick-thinking astrophotographer realized that a nearby plane might itself pass in front of the Moon, and so quickly reset his camera to take a continuous series of short duration shots. As hoped, for a brief instant, that airplane, the Moon, and Jupiter were all visible in a single exposure, which is shown above. But the project was not complete — a longer exposure was then taken to bring up three of the Jupiter’s own moons: Io, Calisto, and Europa (from left to right). Unfortunately, this triple spectacle soon disappeared. Less than a second later, the plane flew away from the Moon. A few seconds after that, the Moon moved to cover all of Jupiter. A few minutes after that, Jupiter reappeared on the other side of the Moon, and even a few minutes after that the Moon moved completely away from Jupiter. Although hard to catch, planes cross in front of the Moon quite frequently, but the Moon won’t eclipse Jupiter again for another three years.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

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Asperatus Clouds Over New Zealand

Image Credit & Copyright: Witta Priester