Tag Archives: photobombs

To study the sun, scientists use a specialized telescope called a coronagraph. This instrument mimics a solar eclipse by using a occulting disk to block out the sun’s bright light. By doing this, astronomers can study the fainter solar atmosphere, the sun’s corona, that’s hard to see when viewing the entire sun. However, recently, a coronagraph used by the National …

Photographer Joshua Thum captured a shot of the mystery spiral glowing above Wisconsin’s Yerkes Observatory while trying to snap “shooting stars” from the Perseids meteor shower. (Image credit: Joshua Thum) While searching for “shooting stars” from the Perseid meteor shower, stargazers across large parts of the U.S. were recently treated to a stunning surprise: a giant spiral of ghostly white …