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We've been marveling at the full moon these last couple of nights. Sometimes the wild animals take this opportunity to do some night-time hunting and fishing.
This is a trout the mink caught under the full moon a couple of years ago. We found it in the yard and didn't know how it got there until we figured out we had mink:
From the Astronomy Today website.
Here is the Milky Way over Monument Valley.
My uncle lives in that area, and it has always been a magic place to me.
Here's another picture from the same website. The description says it was taken 'last month' (it was posted on July 25) - they must have had a bigger winter than the rest of the country even dreamed about to still have this much snow in June.
Why is this aurora strikingly pink? When photographing picturesque Crater Lake in Oregon, USA last month, the background sky lit up with auroras of unusual colors. Although much is known about the physical mechanisms that create auroras, accurately predicting the occurrence and colors of auroras remains a topic of investigation. Typically, it is known, the lowest auroras appear green. These occur at about 100 kilometers high and involve atmospheric oxygen atoms excited by fast moving plasma from space.
The next highest auroras -- at about 200 kilometers up -- appear red, and are also emitted by resettling atmospheric oxygen. Some of the highest auroras visible -- as high as 500 kilometers up -- appear blue, and are caused by sunlight-scattering nitrogen ions.
When looking from the ground through different layers of distant auroras, their colors can combine to produce unique and spectacular hues, in this case rare pink hues seen above. As Solar Maximum nears over the next two years, particle explosions from the Sun are sure to continue and likely to create even more memorable nighttime displays.
