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Milky Way Over Goblins

Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN

A diffuse Milky Way cuts the night sky in half above the barren landscape of Goblin Valley State Park in Utah.

Partly hidden behind a river of gas and dust is the brightly burning core of our home galaxy, just visible near the horizon in this image. It lies more than 26,000 light-years away from Earth.

Stretching more than 100,000 light-years across, our Milky Way galaxy is home to some 200 billion stars. On Earth, we see the center of the galaxy from the vantage of one of its outer spiral arms.

—Andrew Fazekas

Published October 11, 2013

Cosmic Wings

Photograph by Sanjana Greenhill, National Geographic Your Shot

Like giant ghostly wings, green auroras fly across the sky in this mountain scene taken near Anchorage, Alaska, on October 10.

These brilliant auroras were triggered by a coronal mass ejection that hit our planet early Thursday morning. A coronal mass ejection is a cloud of superheated gas and charged particles hurled off the sun.

When such an ejection hits the Earth, the solar particles can interact with charged particles caught in our planet's magnetic field to produce the northern and southern lights.

Published October 11, 2013

Warming Up

Photograph by Vinay Balla, National Geographic Your Shot

Beneath a canopy of stars, Indonesian villagers huddle around the flames of a campfire on a cold night in Java, in this striking October 8 photograph submitted to National Geographic Your Shot.

While the Milky Way glows bright in the pristine skies, two volcanic mountains, Mount Bromo (smoking on the left) and Mount Batok loom in the distance.

Published October 11, 2013