Night sky of Mount Everest

Very few sights could make mighty Mount Everest seem insignificant, but this could be one of them - an awe-inspiring image of the stars in the night sky casting their glow from inconceivable distances onto the world's highest peak. The photograph shows the constellation Auriga looming above Everest, seen to the left of its smaller Himalayan neighbour Lhotse, while in the foreground stands a stupa - a Buddhist monument. The celestial scene was pictured late last month near Namche Bazar, Nepal, above the gateway to the mountain range.Almost directly over Everest is the dazzling star Capella. While in astronomical terms it is relatively close to our own solar system, its distance is still a mind-boggling 42.2 light years - that's 248 trillion miles - making Everest's five-mile height seem minuscule. Though to our eyes it appears as a single star - the third brightest in the Northern sky - Capella is actually a complicated system of four stars revolving in two binary pairs. Auriga means 'charioteer' and to the ancient Greeks it represented either the lame god Hephaestus or his son, the inventor of the four horse chariot which earned him a place of honour in the sky.
Also visible in the photograph is Aldebaran, the 'bull's eye' of the constellation Taurus, and above it the famous 'seven sisters' of the Pleiades. What might appear to be a fallen star nestling in the folds of the mountains is in fact the brightly lit monastery of Tengboche.