Lunar occultation of Venus

Overall, about 1 kg of material is escaping our atmosphere every second. Every day, around 90 tonnes of material escapes from our planet’s upper atmosphere and streams out into space. Although missions such as ESA’s Cluster fleet have long been investigating this leakage, there are still many open questions. How and why is Earth losing its atmosphere?

For those in the west of the British Isles, magnitude-4.2 star θ Aquarii slips behind the darkened limb of the 2-day-old Moon soon after 7:15 pm — an event visible in binoculars.

Data captured by NASA’s Magellan Venus probe in 1991 shows what appears to be lava flows from an active vent on the side of a huge volcano known as Maat Mons.