Label: Cool Photo

August 7, 2012

We usually do "Cool Photo of the Week" only during the school year, but this photograph is too spectacular to pass up.

This is a shot of a huge storm on the surface of the sun. The storm is 93 thousand miles high (about 150 thousand kilometers). The tornado-like plasma twister is about 10 to 12 times taller than the diameter of planet Earth. That’s right - it is spurting 12 Earths high!

The huge sun storm, called a prominence, spiraled up from the surface of the sun on July 12, split into 4 strands and twisted into a knot before fading away. The entire storm lasted just a few hours.

You can read lots more about the star at the center of our solar system in my book THE SUN. Find it at your local library this summer!

Photo: NASA/SDO/GSFC

June 12, 2012

Our "Cool Photo of the Week" is of a chameleon climbing on a Bird of Paradise flower. Isn’t this a magnificent array of colors, textures and shapes?

Photo: Sebastian Duda

June 5, 2012

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" is something that you do not see very often - a rainbow in the sky as lighting strikes after a storm in Haikou, China. 

Photo: China Daily via Reuters

May 29, 2012

Caleb and Candra Pence had just said "I do" and were taking photographs when a tornado touched down miles away from their outdoor wedding ceremony in Harper, Kansas. The tornadoes were eight miles away, heading the other direction, so no one at the wedding was in danger.

"It’s just Kansas, it’s just who we are, it’s like wheat fields, cowboys and tornadoes; what more can you ask for?" said the groom’s mother, Carla Pence.

That is one unusual wedding picture, which is why it is our Cool Photo of the Week!

Photo: Cate Eighmey

May 22, 2012

Today’s "Cool photo of the week" is, of course, of Sunday’s Solar Eclipse. Readers in the western part of the US and Canada were in the right place to see the spectacular annular eclipse. "Annular" means "shaped like a ring," which is exactly how it appeared.

A solar eclipse happens when the moon is aligned directly between Earth and the Sun, blocking out all but an outer circle of light.

Photo: Getty Images

Diagram: NASA

May 15, 2012

Saturn has many moons - 53 that have been discovered and named, nine more "provisional moons" which have been detected but only assigned a number until more is known about them. 

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" is of two of Saturn’s moons. The small one is one of Enceladus, ice-covered and just 300 miles (483 kilometers) wide, and covered by ice. It is dwarfed by one of the big Saturnian moons, the 3,200 mile (5,150 kilometer) wide Titan. The streak across the middle of the photograph is one of the planet’s giant rings.

Cool photo, don’t you think? It was taken by the Cassini orbiter, an unmanned spacecraft which continues to help us learn more about this gas giant.

Photo: NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major

An updated version of Seymour Simon’s SATURN, with the latest information from the Cassini mission, will be published for Amazon’s Kindle Fire this September.

May 1, 2012

NASA has released this photograph of a flaming meteor that unleashed a powerful sonic boom last week, rattling houses in California and Nevada. The meteor broke up as it traveled through our atmosphere, releasing the same amount of energy as if there had been a 5-kiloton explosion!

A sonic boom is an explosive sound caused by the shock wave of an object traveling faster than the speed of sound. The explosion was big enough to rattle windows, causes many Californians to think they had had an earthquake.

"An event of this size might happen about once a year," said Don Yeomans from NASA. "But most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area, so getting to see one is something special."

Who can tell me why most of these meteor explosions happen over the ocean, rather than over land where we can see them? Hint: Think about the big, blue ball that is our Earth…...

Answer: Brian B., one of our readers, was onto the right idea. Most meteors explode over the ocean because oceans make up 71% of Earth’s surface. That means that most atmospheric events are likely to happen over the ocean, simply because there is so much of it.

Photo: Lisa Warren / NASA-JPL via AP

April 24, 2012

Scientists studying Orcas in the seas off eastern Russia have spotted an all-white killer whale, and have named him "Iceberg." 

Baby white orcas have been spotted in the past, including in Iceberg’s pod, but no one has ever seen one that grew to adulthood. Iceberg was photographed while he was swimming with 12 members of his pod off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

"In many ways, Iceberg is a symbol of all that is pure, wild and extraordinarily exciting about what is out there in the ocean waiting to be discovered," said Erich Hoyt, co-director of the Far East Russia Orca Project. "The challenge is to keep the ocean healthy so that such surprises are always possible."

Photo: E. Lazareva/FEROP via AFP 

April 17, 2012

When we celebrate Earth Day, we are also recognizing the beauty of the plants and animals that share our planet with us.

Students often ask me how I get all my photographs of big, dangerous animals.

Sometimes, it is just as tricky to get a photo of a tiny, harmless animal like this one. The photographer who shot this was a scientist exploring life in the ocean deep, and she (wearing a wet suit to keep her warm) was also swimming in the frigid waters underneath the Arctic ice pack ice. Brrrrrrrrrrr! 

Photo: Elisabeth Calvert/NOAA

Take a digital photo showing an Earth treasure around your school or home that makes you appreciate our planet. Click on Send Us Photos/Video (in the yellow bar at the top of every page) and follow the instructions to upload it to the website. We will publish your Earth Day photos and videos on Seymour’s blog, and each person or class that uploads a photo will be entered into the drawing to win a personally autographed book from Seymour Simon!

April 3, 2012

Here’s a photograph that makes me think of the beauty and wonder of Earth. This rabbit is munching on snowdrops, which are usually one of the first flowers to appear in the spring - often even poking their heads through the snow!

A snow drop plant looks like three drops of milk hanging from a stem, which is where the flower gets its Latin name Galanthus, meaning "milk-white flowers."

Photo: Patrick Pieul/EPA

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