Tagged: sky

Annular solar eclipse at Horseshoe Bend

The image above captures the remarkable experience of viewing the annular solar eclipse of May 20, 2012 at Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River in Northern Arizona. Horseshoe Bend is a looping meander entrenched into the bedrock. Like all such meanders, this one formed when the underlying land was uplifted by tectonic forces. The uplifting acted to bring new life to the Colorado River, providing added power to cut through the Jurassic sandstone. An additional bit of fun in this image is the hundreds of photographers all taking in both the eclipse and the extraordinary view. They can be seen (center right and left) lining the canyon rim, with a 1,000 ft (305 m) drop to the Colorado River below.

Tornado and rainbow over Kansas

tornado. During 2004 in Kansas, storm chaser Eric Nguyen photographed this budding twister in a different light — the light of arainbow. Pictured above, a white tornado cloud descends from a dark storm cloud. The Sun, peeking through a...

Airglow, Gegenschein, and Milky Way

As far as the eye could see, it was a dark night at Las Campanas Observatory in the southern Atacama desert of Chile. But near local midnight on April 11, this mosaic of 3 minute long exposures...

Volcano and Aurora in Iceland

Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. In Iceland in 1991, the volcano Hekla erupted at the same time that auroras were visible overhead. Hekla, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, has erupted at least 20 times over the past millennium, sometimes causing great destruction.

A triangular shadow of a large volcano

Why does the shadow of this volcano look like a triangle? The Mount Teide volcano itself does not have the strictly pyramidal shape that its geometric shadow might suggest. The triangle shadow phenomena is not unique to the Mt. Teide, though,...