The Invisible Galaxy

NGC 2070 // 30 Doradus // Tarantula Nebula

The Lightning tonight is unreal

落書き | 雨陌 [pixiv] 

Galileo’s Europa Remastered

Cloud Mountain // Joni Niemelä

Snowed // Dirk Dallas

On its last day, the Rosetta space probe captured this view of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from an altitude of about 16 kilometers above the surface during the spacecraft’s final descent on September 30, 2016.

(ESA)

Lightning Appreciation Post:

There are nearly 500 lightning strikes every second around the world.

Only about 100 of these strike the earth, the others are between and within the clouds themselves.

Lightning is very visible from space (last gif from Astronaut Reid Wiseman)

Besides regular storms (thunder storms, hurricanes, etc.) lightning can be found in volcanoes (gif 3) and even intense forest fires.

In conclusion: nature is fucking awesome!

The World’s Smallest Snowman stands less than 3 microns tall.  The snowman was fabricated from three 0.9 micron silica spheres stacked with the use of electron beam lithography.  The eyes and mouth were cut with a focused ion beam while the arms and nose were sculpted with platinum.