{"id":900785,"date":"2026-10-31T06:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T06:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/900785\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T06:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T06:50:09","slug":"apod-2026-october-31-night-on-a-spooky-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/900785\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 October 31 \u2013 Night on a Spooky Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation: <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/solar-system\/sinister-solar-system\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">What spooky planet is this?<\/a> Planet Earth on a dark and stormy night, of course. The ghostly scene was <a href=\"https:\/\/twanight.org\/gallery\/night-on-a-spooky-planet\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">photographed at Hverir<\/a>, a geothermally active area found along northeastern Iceland&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Krafla\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">volcanic landscape<\/a>. Triggered by <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/sun\/solar-storms-and-flares\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">solar activity<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/centers-and-facilities\/johnson\/halloween-aboard-the-international-space-station\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">geomagnetic storms<\/a> have unleashed energetic particles trapped in Earth&#8217;s magnetic field. Penetrating the planet&#8217;s upper atmosphere at high latitudes, the particles create <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/sun\/auroras\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">auroral displays<\/a> in the starry night sky. Ghostly towers of steam and gas are venting from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oWjdXf67dLQ\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">local fumaroles to dance<\/a> against the eerie, greenish northern lights. For now, auroral activity on planet Earth remains in a high state as the Sun is only in early phases of decline from the peak of its <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solar_maximum\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">solar activity cycle<\/a>. And soon, other ghostly apparitions may dance in your neighborhood. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/centers-and-facilities\/johnson\/halloween-aboard-the-international-space-station\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Happy Halloween<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture: <a href=\"https:\/\/\/Users\/jtbonnel\/Desktop\/apodT\/ap261101.html\">Sunday&#8217;s Childe<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation: What spooky planet is this? Planet Earth on a dark and stormy night, of course. The ghostly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[337743,79,193],"class_list":["post-900785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apod","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}