Latest Posts by jmsconn - Page 2

Satellites source

Venus and the Sisters (pleiades)

Image Credit: Fred Espenak (Bifrost Astronomical Observatory) more images: instagram @astronomy.blog

Mammoth Hot Springs Mammoth Hot Springs - Impressed by the rock formations and their colors – white, yellow, gold, and orange! All these colors are due to the presence of bacteria and algae that flourish in the extremely hot waters of the springs. Over thousands of years they have formed terraces called travertine formations - Rain waters seep into the rocks, and once they reach a certain depth, they are heated by the action of boiling magma. They rise back to the surface of the earth. The waters at Mammoth Hot Springs are not expelled into the air. They cross the rocks up and deposit limestone sediments on the surface. The warm waters slowly flow from one basin to another, forming terraces as shown in the picture. It flows over some white limestone and orange travertine deposits. Mammoth Hot Springs is “journey to the center of Earth”, but outdoors!

Neptune ♡

This color image, produced from a distance of about 16 million kilometers, shows several complex and puzzling atmospheric features. Credit: NASA/JPL

This is a photo of the small island of Litla Dimun which is situated between Suouroy and Stora Dimun in the Faroe Islands. It is the smallest of the Islands being less than 100 hectares (250 acres) in size and it is uninhabited. The island is often covered by lenticular clouds. Lenticular clouds, also known as altocumular standing lenticularis clouds, are formed when a current of moist air is forced upwards as it travels over elevated land. This elevation and subsequent decrease in temperature causes the moisture in the air to condense and form a cloud. Lenticular clouds appear to be perfectly stationary but in fact this is not the case. These clouds only appear stationary because the flow of moist air continually resupplies the cloud from the windward side even as water evaporates and vanishes from the leeward side. Lenticular clouds can look like they are hovering for hours or days, until the wind or weather changes and the clouds disperse. They also look like a hat! -Jean Photo courtesy of Caters news agency.

In early 2001 during a launch of Atlantis, the Sun, Earth, Moon, and rocket were all properly aligned for this photogenic coincidence.

Image Credit: Pat McCracken, NASA