SOLAR ECLIPSE IMAGES AVAILABLE NOW: Today's solar eclipse is over, and the photos are flooding in to our gallery. Sky watchers in Europe saw a very deep partial eclipse and totality, while some in the USA witnessed a shallow partial eclipse.

On the island of Sardinia, Christian Goltz watched the crescent sun sink into the Mediterranean:

"Sunset eclipses are magical--especially with a sea view!" says Goltz.

We're still waiting for images of totality with Spanish landscape in the foreground--the weirdest sunset in many years. Stay tuned!

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GREAT PERSEIDS TONIGHT: Why is this year's Perseid meteor shower so good? Two words: New. Moon. When the shower peaks on the night of Aug. 12-13, there won't be a single photon of moonlight to spoil the show.

The shower is already underway. NASA all-sky cameras have detected more than a dozen fireballs every night this week. This morning, Troy Bryan saw this one with hisown eyes over Scottsbluff, Nebraska:

"After the fireball passed by, we could see its debris twisting in the upper atmospheric winds (inset)," says Bryan.

When the shower peaks tonight, meteor rates will surge with as many as 100 sightings every hour ranging from faint streaks to exploding fireballs.

The source of the shower is giant comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Its nucleus is 26 km wide--more than twice the size of the object that wiped out the dinosaurs. Every 133 years it swings through the inner solar system, laying down a fresh ribbon of dust for Earth to plow through each August.

Observing tips: Get away from city lights and look up during the hours between local midnight and dawn. That is when the shower's radiant in the constellation Perseus climbs high overhead. Give your eyes 30 minutes to adapt to the darkness, and enjoy the show!

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IRON METEORITE RING: The iron in this meteorite ring has an interesting history. Thousands of years ago it skipped across the top of Earth's atmosphere, creating a field of fragments in China almost 500 km long. This month, we sent it back again:

The ring flew to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon, above 99.4% of the atmsphere where it once skipped in a glancing blow to our planet.

You can have it for $219.95. This fragment comes from the Altai Mountains in China, and is known as an "Aletai meteorite." Widmanstätten patterns on the ring confirm its celestial origin, and an accompanying full-color greeting card shows the ring in flight.

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GIVE THE GIFT OF THE PERSEIDS: Do you have a friend or loved one who doesn't know when to look at the sky? Give them a gift subscription to our new Backyard Astronomy Alert Service. Our promise: We will never let them miss another meteor shower or solar eclipse!

THE BEST PERSEID SHOWER IN YEARS: Why is this year's Perseid meteor shower so good? Two words: New. Moon. When the shower peaks on the night of Aug. 12-13, there won't be a single photon of moonlight to spoil the show.

The shower is already underway. Sky cameras operated by NASA and others have detected more than a dozen fireballs every night this week. Here's one over Missouri:

"This was a very bright early Perseid meteor entering the atmosphere about 4 days before the expected maximum," says photographer Dan Bush. "This clip is from the same night as the bright 'point-source' meteor described below."

When the shower peaks, meteor rates will multiply 10-fold, with as many as 100 sightings every hour ranging from faint streaks to exploding fireballs.

The source of the shower is giant comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Its nucleus is 26 km wide--more than twice the size of the object that wiped out the dinosaurs. Every 133 years it swings through the inner solar system, laying down a fresh ribbon of dust for Earth to plow through each August.

Observing tips: Get away from city lights and look up during the hours between local midnight and dawn. That is when the shower's radiant in the constellation Perseus climbs high overhead. Give your eyes 30 minutes to adapt to the darkness, and enjoy the show!

RARE 'POINT METEOR': The Perseid meteor shower is underway, but this was no Perseid. On Aug. 9th, Dan Bush's night-sky camera in Albany, Missouri, recorded a rare 'point meteor':

"This was a first for me in my 45 years of meteor watching," says Bush. "This meteor was coming directly at me! Notice how the meteor doesn't appear to be moving in any direction except straight at the camera."

This is by definition a 'point meteor': A rare visual phenomenon where a meteor appears as a stationary flash instead of a long streak. The path of the disintegrating meteoroid is, by chance, aligned perfectly with the observer.

"It came from the constellation Aquarius," says Bush. That means it was probably a 'sporadic' meteor--a random meteoroid not associated with any organized comet debris stream like the Perseids.

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CAMPO DEL CIELO METEORITE PENDANT: This meteorite came from space. We sent it back again. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon, more than 109,620 feet above the Sierra Nevada near Bishop, CA:

You can have it for $349.95. Encased in a sterling silver cage, this is a genuine iron-nickel Campo del Cielo meteorite from Argentina. It landed on Earth 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, and made the return trip on Aug. 1, 2026. This pendant comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight.

The students are selling space pendants to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.

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