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Picture of the day

Flying over the Philippine Sea, an astronaut looked toward the horizon from the International Space Station and shot this photograph of three-dimensional clouds, the thin blue envelope of the atmosphere, and the blackness of space.The late afternoon sun brightens a broad swath of the sea surface on the right side of the image. In the distance towards the horizon, a region-wide layer of clouds mostly obscures islands in the northern Philippines (at image top right). Looking toward the sun to capture an image is a special technique used by astronauts to accentuate the three dimensions of landscapes and cloudscapes due to shadows cast by these features. Two large thunderclouds rise next to one another (at image lower right). These have long tails, also known as anvils from their shape, that stretch nearly 100 km to the south. Anvils form when thunderstorm clouds rise high into the atmosphere and reach a “capping layer,” often thousands of meters (tens of thousands of feet) above sea level. Capping layers stop the upward growth of a cloud, deflecting air currents horizontally to form anvils.

Media of the day

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A film, filmed by Robert W. Paul, from 1896 of women and men on bikes in Hyde Park, which is one of London's largest parks and one of the Royal Parks, famous for its Speakers' Corner.

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Picture of the Year

Results of the annual Wikimedia Commons image competition - Picture of the Year 2016 - are available.

View results »

Winner: Jubilee and Munin, Ravens of the Tower of London.
Second place: Wild elephants walking up a road in the area of Khao Yai National Park
Third place: Male Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) chasing a bearded seal.

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If you are browsing Commons for the first time, you may want to start with Featured pictures, Quality images or Valued images.

You can also see some work created by our highly skilled contributors in Meet our photographers and Meet our illustrators. You may also be interested in Picture of the Year.

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