Tuesday Telescope: A time-lapse from orbit reveals treasures below

Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder. I did not expect to feature NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers in the Tuesday Telescope so soon, but a recent photo she shared is just sublime. (In case you missed it, we wrote about her photo of lightning from space about a month ago.) This week Ayers has a time-lapse sequence she captured from the Cupola as the International Space Station soared near Central and South America. "Soooooo much going on in this picture," Ayers wrote on the social media site X. "You can see Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, with South America off in the distance." The most distinct feature is a lightning strike near Panama City. This illuminates the clo ... Read full article.