Photograph by NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team In some areas, winds tend to blow in roughly the same general direction all year. The Grand Erg Oriental, a sprawling sea of sand dunes in the Saharan Desert, is not one of them. The winds in northeastern Algeria tend to be complex and changing.…
Reddit user odstane recently shared a series of photos of his backyard frozen pond. The frozen water created some interesting patterns drawing comparisons to a Japanese rock garden or the contour lines on a map (used to show elevation). If any of our knowledgeable readers can explain why this occurs (in simple terms!), let…
Photograph by Joseph DeBenedictis (@Joseph_Video on Twitter) Western New York is currently experiencing a historic snowstorm with another 2 – 3 ft of snow expected to fall in the Buffalo area by late Thursday. Driven by the lake effect, a massive snowstorm dumped upwards of 60 inches (152 cm) on parts of Western New…
Residents in the Sverdlovsk region of Russia witnessed a huge fiery flash in the sky on 14 November 2014 around 6:39 pm local time. Thankfully the prevalence of dash cams meant there was plenty of amateur footage to capture the event. I’ve included a second video below for another view of the fiery phenomenon.…
Photograph by Anders Carlsson In this fantastic capture we see a snow-covered ski lift at the top of Åreskutan in central Sweden. Åreskutan is a 1,420 metres (4,660 ft)-high mountain at Åre in Jämtland, Sweden. It is one of the better-known mountains in Sweden and the mountain massif features the largest ski resort area…
During Expedition 40 in the summer of 2014, NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman — along with European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst — explored the phenomenon of water surface tension in microgravity on the International Space Station. The crew “submerged” a sealed GoPro camera into a floating ball of water the size…
Photograph by NASA In this incredible aerial photograph by NASA, we see an overhead view of the Sarychev Peak Volcano erupting on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is a stratovolcano covering almost the entirety of Matua Island in the Kuril Islands of Russia. It is a young, highly symmetrical stratovolcanic cone. During this particular…
Photographer Wes Eisenhauer was filming a timelapse of the Milky Way Galaxy on the night of 16 October 2014 when he captured an incredible fireball in the sky. The phenomenon is referred to as a bolide which is a very bright meteor of an apparent magnitude of −14 or brighter.
Photograph by question_ev3rything on reddit Spotted in Guangzhou, China is this resilient tree, whose roots have grown in and around the surrounding sidewalk blocks. The photo was taken by reddit user question_ev3rything who posted the image to the mildlyinteresting subreddit. via question_ev3rything on reddit