Milky Way over Yellowstone
Image Credit & Copyright: Lori Jacobs
Explanation: The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The pool of vivid blue water, about 10 meters across, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Steam rises off the spring, heated by a magma chamber deep underneath known as the Yellowstone hotspot. The steam blurs the image of Venus, making it seem unusually large. Unrelated and far in the distance, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy rises high overhead, a band lit by billions of stars. The featured picture is a 3-image panorama taken last August. If the Yellowstone hotspot causes another supervolcanic eruption as it did 640,000 years ago, a large part of North America would be affected.
黃石公園上空的銀河
影像提供與版權: Lori Jacobs
說明：銀河並非由蒸騰的湖泊產生的。這灘寬約10米的碧藍水體，是位在美國．懷俄明州．黃石國家公園內的石英溫泉。而在稱為黃石熱點的地下深層巖漿庫的加熱下，蒸氣從石英溫泉湖面蒸騰出來。影像背景遠處與蒸氣無關的高懸銀河系中央盤面，則是由數十億顆恆星之星光匯集而成。這幅拼接了3張照片的全景主題影像，攝於去年10月。如果像在640,000年前，黃石熱點造成另一個超級火山爆發，大片的北美洲地區會受到影響。