Planets Over Egyptian Pyramid

Explanation: The parade continues. In the pre-dawn sky, the planets Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn have been visible. The planets were captured over the Step Pyramid of Djoser in the featured image taken last month. One of the oldest pyramids in Egypt is located in the Saqqara necropolis and was built in the 27th century BC. A foreground image was taken during the evening blue hour and a background image was taken the following morning. The morning planet line-up is slowly changing. At the end of last month, planets Jupiter and Venus switched places, and at the end of this month, planets Jupiter and Mars will switch places. All of these worlds continue to circle the Sun as they have for billions of years before the Pyramid of Djoser was built.

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Explanation: Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. This deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in fainter, gigantic, bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past.