Buzz
Some gaze at the sky. Some satellites observe from above. Together, they’ve recorded extraordinary and rare occurrences through the lens of a camera.
The events vary from the charming, such as a moon attempting to obscure the largest planet in our solar system, to the unprecedented fire and hurricane seasons vying for dominance. There’s also the ISS stealing the spotlight during a total eclipse and vibrant rainbow halos encircling a helicopter.
10. Jupiter’s Dark Spot
Jupiter is famous for its Great Red Spot, a colossal storm that surpasses Earth in size. But a black spot? In 2019, NASA captured just that. However, it wasn’t a new storm; it was a quirky solar eclipse.
One of Jupiter’s moons, Io, is roughly the same size as Earth’s moon. Io passed directly between the Sun and Jupiter, and had Jupiter been Earth-sized, it would have created a total solar eclipse. But being the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter only experienced a small black dot cast by Io instead of complete darkness.
The stark shadow of the moon against Jupiter’s gentle hues created an unexpectedly beautiful photograph.
9. The Star Of Bethlehem
In December 2020, many sky-gazers were disappointed when thick clouds obstructed their view of a rare phenomenon. The 'Star of Bethlehem' wasn’t the famous Biblical star making a modern-day appearance. Instead, this stunning event featured two planets. Jupiter and Saturn aligned in such a way that they seemed incredibly close to one another and to Earth.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of photographs. Among the finest was taken by an amateur photographer using a telescope and a camera. What set this image apart from the others?
Despite the photographer’s relatively simple equipment, the rings of Saturn were surprisingly clear. Additionally, the photographer managed to capture four of Jupiter’s moons neatly lined up near the bottom-left corner of the image.
8. A Complete Rainbow Circle
Most full-circle rainbows are often misidentified. What people usually see are phenomena like sun halos or airplane glories. True rainbows occur when the Sun is behind you and you’re looking toward rain. However, full-circle rainbows have an extra condition: you need to be high up in the air to spot one, making them incredibly rare.
In 2013, the perfect conditions aligned. A helicopter was flying near the city of Perth when it flew between a rain shower and the sunset. That’s when a photographer aboard noticed the rare spectacle.
The rainbow wasn’t alone. Like most rainbows, it had a faint mirror image. In this instance, a second full-circle rainbow could be seen surrounding the first.
7. Rainbow Lightning
There’s something even more uncommon than full-circle rainbows. Unfortunately, rainbow lightning isn’t a spectacle of multi-coloured lightning bolts darting across the sky. At first glance, the reality seems far more ordinary. A simple photo of a rainbow with lightning in front of it—what’s so special about that?
It takes an immense amount of luck to capture both phenomena at once.
Both rainbows and lightning rely on raindrops, but in different ways. When raindrops pull negative charges to the bottom of a cloud and the earth becomes positively charged, the conditions are ideal for lightning. However, to create a rainbow, the raindrops must bend and scatter light. Even when both of these conditions align, it’s rare for rainbows and lightning to appear together.
The photographer also needed to be in the perfect spot at the perfect time. Captured in Arizona in late 2016, he watched a storm with the Sun behind him. The angle of the setting Sun scattered sunlight through the rain, forming a rainbow. At that moment, a negatively charged cloud and the positively charged earth collided, producing a lightning bolt that resulted in an unforgettable image that took the internet by storm.
6. The Moon’s Shadow and a Hurricane
One of the most remarkable satellite images of 2019 was captured by GOES-West. This weather satellite was renowned for its sharp images, and in July, it focused its cameras on the Pacific Ocean. Why? Because something spectacular was unfolding in this stretch of sea.
Hurricane Barbara was heading toward the United States. As the first major hurricane of the year, it could be seen swirling in the northern hemisphere. But what made the image truly unique was a dark shape floating to the south, almost directly beneath Barbara.
This was the Moon’s shadow, cast upon Earth during a solar eclipse.
5. STEVE And NEOWISE (Plus Two Friends)
In July 2020, Donna Lach stood near her farm in Manitoba, Canada, hoping to capture two celestial phenomena at once—the aurora lights and comet NEOWISE. The latter had become one of the year’s astronomical sensations, with its double tails visible to anyone with a good pair of binoculars.
Lach got far more than she expected. The aurora lights glowed like green mist in the night sky, and NEOWISE dutifully made its appearance. But they weren’t alone. To Lach’s delight, STEVE also made an appearance. The acronym stands for Strong Thermal Emissions Velocity Enhancement. Despite the long name, the origin of STEVE (which resembles a purple aurora) remains a mystery.
Lach captured over 600 photographs. The trio of phenomena already made the images rare, but to her astonishment, a fourth surprise appeared. For a brief moment, a meteorite streaked across the top-left corner of the image, burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. NEOWISE curved toward the horizon on the right, while STEVE and the aurora lights hung in the middle.
4. Starlink Photobombed NEOWISE
Comet NEOWISE captured the attention of both photographers and astronomers. Not only did it pass extremely close to Earth with its two tails, but there was another reason it was truly unique—no one alive today will ever see it again. NEOWISE has such a long orbit that its next visit to Earth will be 7,000 years from now.
As you can imagine, astronomers were eager to capture close-up images of NEOWISE.
When astrophotographer Daniel Lopez took a time-lapse shot of NEOWISE, he caught the comet in all its glory, with its bright tails on full display. However, the shot wasn’t perfect—white streaks ran through the image. It wasn’t due to faulty equipment or shooting stars. The streaks were caused by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites passing by at the exact wrong moment.
3. The ISS Eclipse
When the solar eclipse took place in 2017, not many people knew what Joel Kowsky, a NASA photographer, was up to. Kowsky had traveled to Banner, Wyoming, to capture the event. However, his goal wasn’t to simply take another shot of the Moon blocking the Sun. He was aware that the International Space Station (ISS) would be passing directly in front of the Sun at the exact moment of the eclipse.
Photographing the ISS crossing the eclipse was an unprecedented feat, one that had never been done before.
But this was far from easy. The ISS, about the size of a football field, zooms through space at an astonishing 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km/h). To capture this fast-moving object, Kowsky set his camera to shoot at an impressive rate of 1,500 photos per second.
The effort paid off. One of the most impressive outcomes was a composite image showing the ISS in different positions as it traversed across the Sun.
2. Two Devastating Seasons
The year 2020 brought unprecedented weather chaos to America. Cyclones threatened from the east and the Gulf Coast, while at the same time, the West Coast was engulfed in flames.
The wildfires ravaged a staggering 3.6 million acres (1.4 million hectares) of land in California. Not to be outdone, the hurricane season brought devastating floods and generated so many storms that the government ran out of names for them.
NASA satellites captured these two natural disasters colliding. A striking series of images showed how a dense smoke blanket swept across the entire country from west to east. Meanwhile, several storms, including Hurricane Paulette, lingered along the coastline. Paulette, powerful enough to prevent the smoke from reaching the Atlantic, only allowed the smoke to move out to sea after its demise the next day.
1. Six Celestial Phenomenon
Creating this photograph took most of January. In 2015, an observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert used a series of images and long-exposure techniques to capture six celestial phenomena in one shot. While it may not be as spontaneous as the appearance of STEVE with its companions, the final result was still breathtaking.
Comet Lovejoy appeared as a vibrant green glow near the center. To the right of the comet, the Seven Sisters star cluster and the California Nebula, a red streak of gas, were visible. A meteorite entered the atmosphere on the left. Below, a green haze near the horizon signaled the gathering of oxygen in the upper atmosphere. Finally, a thick blanket of low-altitude clouds stretched out like a dense carpet beneath the green haze.
