2021 May 7

On July 2 denizens of planet Earth could stand in the Moon's dark umbral shadow during South America's 2019 total solar eclipse.

Some night skies are serene and passive -- others shimmer and flash. The later, in the form of auroras and meteors, haunted skies over the island of Kvaløya, near Tromsø Norway on 2009 December 13.

A crescent Moon is about to sink under the western horizon in this sea and night skyscape.

There's even a California in space. Drifting through the Orion Arm of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, this cosmic cloud by chance echoes the outline of California on the west coast of the United States.

Not the Hubble Space Telescope's latest view of a distant planetary nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled even casual U.S. west coast skygazers on October 7.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch dazzled viewers along the U.S. west coast after sunset on October 7.

Every step caused the sand to light up blue. That glow was bioluminescence -- a blue radiance that also lights the surf in this surreal scene captured last month at Meyer's Creek Beach in Oregon, USA.

What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of meteorological doom.