Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has faded since its urban-bright display in mid-October, but it is still a great target for night sky photographers. Wioleta Gorecka photographed the comet on Oct. 26th, 2024 from Vik, Iceland at the same time auroras were coloring the nighttime sky in the Arctic Circle with pinks and red (courtesy spaceweather.com).

A geomagnetic storm reached Earth on Tuesday night, July 30th, leading to the appearance of the northern lights over Canada. JPSS satellites utilized the "day/night" band to capture the aurora borealis seen in this composite image. Credit: NOAA/CIRA

A very strong explosion occurred from the Stromboli volcano in Sicily on Thursday, July 11th and a massive ash plume rose from the summit area and drifted over the southeastern part of the island. Stromboli is one of the most active volcanoes in the world – renowned for its regular, but normally minor, eruptions that send lava oozing from vents inside its crater. It has been active for thousands of years. The minor eruptions which are often visible from the island and surrounding sea have given rise to its nickname of the “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean.”  Credit Image: Francesca Utano, volcanodiscovery.com

A very large sunspot region unleashed a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that impacted the Earth's atmosphere on Friday night and Saturday (May 10th/11th, 2024). In fact, this was one of the strongest solar storms in many years and it resulted in northern lights being visible in some unusual places such as Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Kyle Nulla Cognomen sends this picture from Las Vegas, Nevada. "What a gorgeous view of the desert sky illuminated by aurora," he says. "I could see the reds and greens with my naked eye!" {Courtesy spaceweather.com}

Sunspot AR3664 has grown so large, it now rivals the great Carrington sunspot of 1859. To illustrate their similarity, spaceweather.com has added Carrington's famous sketch (to scale) to a NASA photo of today's sun. Sprawling almost 200,000 km from end to end, AR3664 is 15 times wider than Earth.

On September 1st, 1859, a ferocious solar storm took place that impacted much of the planet. This ferocious solar storm is now known as the “Carrington Event”, named after the British astronomer, Richard Carrington, who witnessed the largest solar flare from his own private observatory which caused a major coronal mass ejection (CME) to travel directly toward Earth.

Hundreds of people in Indonesia had to be evacuated from their homes in the North Sulawesi province as the Ruang volcano continues its days-long eruption. The volcano has been seen filling the sky with red ash as the country's volcano monitoring agency reports hundreds of deep volcanic earthquakes. Indonesia's National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure, known as BNPB, said in a news release on Wednesday that volcanic activity has increased, prompting officials to raise the alert level to three – the second-highest warning level in their monitoring system. Video taken by the agency showing massive red bursts filling the sky as lightning flashes within it. (Photo courtesy Mark Margavage, X; news info courtesy CBS)

These wave clouds were created by an atmospheric phenomenon known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and were seen over the Catoctin Mountains in northern Maryland on Sunday, March 3rd, 2024. (Photo courtesy Joe Bastardi, Twitter)

A photograph of a “tornado warned” supercell in Yorkville, Illinois on Tuesday evening, February 27th, 2024. Severe weather broke out across northern Illinois just ahead of a powerful cold frontal system. Photo courtesy Charles Peek (Twitter)

Villarrica is one of Chile's most active volcanoes; eruptions have been recorded since the conquest of Chile and the founding of the city of Villarrica in 1552. This image of a perfect lenticular cloud over the top of the volcano was taken during the middle of October (2023).

A close-up satellite image of California on Tuesday, July 18th, 2023, reveals some interesting features. A fog bank can be seen just off the coast over the cool waters of the eastern Pacific. This fog bank was “retreating” at mid-day on Tuesday as daytime heating was having an impact on relative humidity levels. In addition, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California is still in evidence as we head into the second half of July. This is despite the fact that hot weather has encompassed the Golden State in recent days. (Note -there are a few clouds over the snowpack region). This past winter season of 2022-2023 brought record snowfall amounts to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Image courtesy NOAA/NESDIS/GOES-West (GEOCOLOR Composite)

Wildfires in Quebec, Canada are leading to smoke-filled skies in the Northeast US and Mid-Atlantic region. The overall wind flow in the northeastern states is NW-to-SE and this is carrying the smoke from southeastern Canada into the US. The smoky skies are leading to deep red/orange sunrises and sunsets as well as a “milky” appearance to the atmosphere. Image from June 6th, 2023

An interesting curved “rope cloud” feature (center of image) formed in a thunderstorm complex over the Gulf Stream region of the western Atlantic Ocean on Sunday, May 15th, 2023. Image courtesy University of Wisconsin/CIMSS

“Undulatus asperatus” clouds were seen over New Hampshire on Sunday, April 23rd ahead of an incoming storm system. These wavy clouds are usually below 7,000 feet and associated with a thick layer of turbulence. Asperitas is a cloud formation first popularized and proposed as a type of cloud in 2009 by Gavin Pretor-Pinney of the Cloud Appreciation Society. Added to the International Cloud Atlas as a supplementary feature in March 2017, it is the first cloud formation added since “cirrus intortus” in 1951. Photo courtesy WMUR; info courtesy Wikipedia

This snapshot taken from a video features 3 people shoveling snow off the roof of a house after the latest storm generated several more feet of snow in the Donner Pass region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This winter season is very likely going to be the snowiest ever recorded in this higher-elevation region of eastern California. (Photo courtesy Twitter (Weather Nation), March 14th, 2023).

California has been getting pounded by storm-after-storm this winter season of 2022-2023 and it has virtually ended the drought in that part of the western US. These storms have filled California's Lake Oroville with more than 526 billion gallons of water—nearly half of its capacity—between 12/21 and 3/8, bringing it up 168 feet.

This photograph of an unusual lenticular cloud took place near Bursa, Turkey on January 20th, 2023. Bursa — where the cloud was seen — is about 50 miles south of Istanbul, across the Sea of Marmara. What made the cloud in Bursa especially aesthetically pleasing was the time of day it formed — shortly before sunrise. Its altitude, probably around 10,000 to 20,000 feet, allowed it to catch sunlight and be illuminated before the sun actually poked over the horizon and bathed the city in amber warmth.

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis, meaning “shaped like a lentil” in Latin) mostly develop among the crests and valleys of mountainous terrain. They are associated with waves in the atmosphere that form when moist air flow is forced up, over and partway down a mountaintop. Photo/information courtesy Washington Post (Capital Weather Gang); Hafize Aktas/Reuters.