Supernovas

From The Christian Science Monitor, a selection of photographs of supernovas.

Supernovas

Moon photographs

From Slate a selection of moon photographs.

Hello, Moon

Sun - 360

A BBC video on NASA's new panoramic images of the sun.

Aurora Borealis

Some new photographs from Nat Geo of the aurora borealis.

New Aurora Pictures: First Big Show of 2011

Solstice\Eclipse Images

This is a fill in the blank quiz:
Below is a photograph of the eclipsing moon above the _______________.

If you don't know the answer, it is one of the photographs on the blog post from Boston.com linked to below, and the caption tells what it is. I have to admit that I did not recognize it until I read the caption, even though I have photographed this before.

A chilly solstice (and lunar eclipse)

Lunar Eclipse

For all of those—like me—who slept through last night's lunar eclipse here is a video.

Perseid Meteor Shower

I live in the city where there is too much light to see meteors, but here are some pictures from the Guardian that are pretty spectacular.

Perseid meteor shower puts on a spectacular show

War & Peace & the Hubble Telescope

This post is somewhat of a mashup.

I finished reading War & Peace on my flight to Chicago. I read it in about two months, which I think is pretty good. If it were not for my Kindle, I could never have read such a big book.

So to commemorate that here is one of my favorite passages from the book. This has nothing at all to do with the plot of the book, or Tolstoy's philosophies on how one should interpret history. It is just a passage that I like.

The stars, as if knowing that no one could see them now, frolicked in the black sky. Now flaring up, now going out, now quivering, they busily whispered among themselves about something joyful. but mysterious.

Tolstoy wrote this almost 150 years ago. Since then we have gained the ability to see the stars in ways the Tolstoy could hardly have imagined. The Hubble Telescope marked 20 years in orbit last April, and we now have images of the stars that would have amazed him. So I am concluding this post with a video of the some of the best images from the Hubble.