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Last month, photographer Alex Cherney photographed aurora australis igniting the Australian night. This breathtaking red aurora was caused by particles from January's solar storms exciting oxygen in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Explains Cherney of the shooting conditions: More »
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If you've ever visited California's Yosemite National Park, then you have an appreciation for how absurdly majestic its scenery is. You also know how difficult it can be to encapsulate that majesty when describing it to others; somehow, adjectives like "breathtaking" don't even begin to describe it. More »
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Ice-fishing may seem like a waiting game, but in Finland, it's a dynamic, gorgeous process. Here's a sublime short film about three scuba divers on a fishing expedition under Lake Saarijärvi near the town of Vaala. It may take you a second to figure out what's going on here. More »
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Here's a reminder that a lot of tiny dead microorganisms can create an absolutely gag-worthy mess. Earlier this week, the British seaside town of Cleveleys was frosted with a thick coating of oceanic foam that resembled snow, but was in all likelihood a frothing mix of deceased algae. Explains The Guardian: More »
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Many people refer to it incorrectly as its "dark" side, but the far side of our moon actually receives about as much light, on average, as the side facing Earth... you'd just never know it, because the Moon's rotation is such that the same side is perpetually facing us (the result of a phenomenon known as tidal locking). More »
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For the first time ever, BBC nature photographers have captured footage of an underwater brine icicle (also known as a "brinicle") slowly expanding underneath the ice of Antarctica's Little Razorback Island. Woe to be a starfish or urchin that encounters this briny deathtrap! More »
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You're looking at a section of the first image to be compiled from measurements made by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard NPP — NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite. (In case you were wondering, "NPP" is the drastically shortened acronym for the agency's National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project). More »
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If ever there existed some sort of critical threshold of awesome that nature photos were required to abide by, I'm pretty sure this picture would blow it right out of the sky. (Click here for a hi-res version.) More »
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In an effort to return Washington's White Salmon River to local wildlife, engineers blew a hole in the long-standing Condit Dam. Explains photographer Andy Maser, who shot this dramatic detonation: More »
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Here's your first look at a ginormous crack in Western Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, which is a staggering 18 miles long, 240 feet wide and up to 190 feet deep. The crack appears to be widening, and will send off a 300 square mile iceberg in the next few months, according to NASA. Once that happens, the ice shelf that forms the sea-facing side of the glacier will have retreated to its furthest point since researchers started measuring in the 1940s. More »
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This stunning depiction of some of the world's most impressive geographical features is from a copy of General Atlas of the World (do yourself a favor and click here for the uncropped, hi-res version. Seriously, do it now.) More »
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What you're seeing here is the photographic time-lapse of the Arctic summer as photographed in Iceland this past June. More »
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Check out the latest installment in photographer Dustin Farrell's three-part Landscapes series, a collection of jaw-dropping time-lapse videos of the southwestern United States. More »
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Feast your eyes on this stunning map of the Lower Mississippi's evolving floodplains, lifted from cartographer Harold Fisk's 1944 report, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River. More »
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If you're a fan of the Blue Planet and Planet Earth documentary series, then there's a good chance you've already heard about the forthcoming collaboration between the BBC and the Discovery Channel, Frozen Planet. More »
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Feast your eyes on this otherworldly looking image of a moonset, captured for National Geographic by nature photographer Peter Essick (click on the top image for the wallpaper version). More »
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With all the light pollution that most of us encounter on a nightly basis, it can be easy to forget why we call our galaxy "The Milky Way." More »
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NASA has released a map charting the movement of massive ice sheets on the continent of Antarctica. By compiling these maps into animations like the one shown above, researchers can, for the very first time, examine how the outward flow of the continent's ice sheets could help us predict future rises in sea level. More »
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This amazing video reveals how easy it is for a storm to wipe out Phoenix, Arizona, one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the United States. According to Russia Today: More »
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This footage was shot by acclaimed Norwegian photographer and filmmaker Terje Sørgjerd, and offers a virtually untouched (no HDR, composite, or photoshop here, folks), time-lapse look at an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon that you can only see at extreme latitudes. More »
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This video of the Grimsvotn volcano was captured by Jon Gustafsson on behalf of the Helicopter Service of Iceland. The music by Veigar Margeirsson is just the gravy on this spectacle. More »
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Early this morning, Italy's Mount Etna erupted, spewing lava and ash high into the air. Most of the lava flowed into uninhabited areas and no humans were harmed. An airport in Catania shut down when its runway was covered in lava. Here's an amazing video of the eruption, from the BBC. More »
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Off the Canadian Arctic coast, an archipelago of islands is rapidly losing the sheets of ice that once blanketed them. A group of scientists today published a long-range study of what this means, and documented the changing landscape. More »
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Check out the stark difference between these two satellite images, taken on March 19, 2010 and March 19, 2011. The left image shows much more ozone (in red) over the Arctic than the right image. What's happened? More »
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As winter coats Japan, snow and rime ice cover the trees, creating armies of monsters and snow giants that loom over the landscape. And in some of these photos, they look ready to trudge to life. More »
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This is the most fiery moment the Kirishima volcano group has experienced since 1959 — the eruption, starting yesterday, sent a plume of ash 1,500 feet into the air. More insane volcano footage below. More »
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Mount Etna is one of the most beautiful peaks in the Mediterranean — but it's as deadly as it is beautiful. Check out this picture of lava coating the slopes and ash spurting into the sky. Photo by AP. More »
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Check out this stunning image of an aurora as seen in Tromsø, Norway. The solar wind combines with moonlight and snow for a once-in-a-lifetime view. Even more spectacular views might arrive today, when stronger solar winds hit our magnetic field. More »
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This land formation is an example of what happens when natural and unnatural geological features come together. And if you think that looks strange, check out the rest of our gallery. More »
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The shape of early 21st century civilization stands out in bright golden lights, in new images from the International Space Station. You can make out the shape of Europe and Africa. Below, see the cities and highways in the desert. More »
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No, it's not CGI, and it's not a picture from the surface of Venus. This photograph of the Fly Geyser, by Stephen Oachs, was taken near Nevada's Black Rock Desert. More »
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It's a planetary disturbance so massive, it looks like the whole atmosphere is churning. This is Hurricane Danielle, photographed by astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock aboard the International Space Station. And click through for his picture of Hurricane Igor. More »
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This morning, satellites passing over the Atlantic got several incredible shots of category 4 hurricane Igor, whose cloudless eye is 20 nautical miles wide. What makes Igor such a massive, strong hurricane? Infrared measurements revealed the answer. More »
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In 2000, the European Space Agency sent four spacecraft into the magnetosphere, to study how the magnetic field around the planet works. For a decade, the craft have analyzed the aurora, solar winds, and more. How do they do it? More »
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You can practically see your house in this ultra-crisp image of our homeworld, newly uploaded by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, if you live in the Western Hemisphere. Something about the beautiful air currents and lush greenery looks terribly fragile. More »
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Yesterday a total solar eclipse fell across the South Pacific, bringing thousands of tourists and scientists to Easter Island to witness it. We've got pictures from this historic and vaguely spooky event. More »
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Off the Namibian coast, where the desert winds blow steams of dust out to sea and most of the world's diamonds are found, there's a bright blue hydrogen sulfide bloom in the water. More »
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The forbidding slopes of Klyuchevskaya are covered in snow and barren rock. And at its peak, a volcanic eruption continues to spew ash and rock into the atmosphere. More »
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A newly-discovered cloud formation, first identified last year, has appeared again this week after a massive storm over Missouri. The clouds, called "Undulatus asperatus," create a roiling, churned pattern that looks almost like the wake from a ship. More »
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