A composite image - made of photos acquired over 500 days - showing the waxing and waning of Venus, and the changing size of the planet's visible disk, as it orbits the sun one step inward from Earth.
See the layers of dust set against this South Carolina sunset? That dust came from Africa's Sahara Desert. It traveled across the Atlantic Ocean this month to cause dusty skies across the U.S. South and into Texas.
Masses of dusty air form over the Sahara Desert and move westward across the tropical North Atlantic frequently from spring to fall. A particularly large swath of dust is headed our way now. Watch for hazy skies in the Caribbean by this weekend, and possibly into the U.S. by next week.
A bright meteor is called a fireball. This one creates a backdrop to clouds of smoke from an actual fire that - as of Saturday - had burned some 9,000 acres and was only 10% contained, according to Inciweb.
This faint comet - Comet C/2019 U6 (Lemmon) - is headed toward its perihelion, or closest point to the sun, on June 18. It's currently visible from the Southern Hemisphere, via strong binoculars, with a dark sky.