Posts by 

Deborah Byrd

A giant magnetic bridge between galaxies

Known as the Magellanic Bridge, it's a huge stream of neutral gas stretching 75,000 light-years between the 2 Magellanic Clouds, which orbit our Milky Way.

There’s always one out there

Sometimes, in night photography, a little light is a good thing. Selfie and aurora over New Zealand caught in late April by The Darker Arts.

Rainbow from Shiprock, New Mexico

Shiprock is a beautiful rock formation, rising some 1,583 feet (483 meters) above the high-desert plain of the Navajo Nation in San Juan County, New Mexico.

Your rocket is waiting

Okay, it's not a rocket. It's a lighthouse in Grand Haven, Michigan. But with a little imagination ...

What’s the weather like on Proxima b?

The nearest known exoplanet - orbiting the star Proxima Centauri - is only 4.2 light-years away. Does it have liquid water? An atmosphere? Weather? Scientists just announced the first tentative steps to explore those possibilities.

The oldest signs of life on land yet

Fossils found in Australia - in ancient hot spring deposits - have pushed back the earliest known evidence for land-based microbial life to 3.48 billion years.

Circumzenithal arc over Surrey, England

Circumzenithal arcs look like upside-down rainbows, but they're caused by ice crystals, not rain. They're sometimes seen with sundogs, and even full halos around the sun or moon.

The Big Dipper’s deep sky

Many people recognize the Big Dipper in the northern sky. Here are 10 deep-sky Messier objects - 8 galaxies, a planetary nebula, and a double star - in and around the Big Dipper.

Crossed contrails, with shadows

Striking contrail shadow image from the magical sunset skies of northern New Mexico.

Twilight dream

"Have you ever woken up from a dream and the view was still there?"