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James Holmes, the gunman behind the Dark Knight massacre in Colorado last July, has reportedly turned Muslim and prays five times a day. The killer showed off a lengthy, thick beard during a court appearance earlier this month, and a prison source has claimed it is a symbol of his new-found faith. The source said Holmes has turned to Islam as a way of justifying his horrific murder spree in an Aurora, Colorado cinema on July 20 which left 12 people dead and 58 people wounded.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- It took almost three years for the case to reach trial. That trial played out over the course of three months. The jury needed just 6.5 hours to render a verdict. James Holmes has been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Explanation: The setting had been picked out -- all that was needed was an aurora. And late last August, forecasts predicted that an otherwise beautiful night sky would be lit up with auroral green. Jumping into his truck, the astrophotographer approached his secret site -- but only after a five hour drive across the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan. What he didn't know was that his luck was just beginning. While setting up for the image, a proton arc -- a rare type of aurora -- appeared. The red arc lasted only about 15 minutes, but that was long enough...

Explanation: It has been one of the better skies of this long night. In parts of Antarctica, not only is it winter, but the Sun can spend weeks below the horizon. At China's Zhongshan Station, people sometimes venture out into the cold to photograph a spectacular night sky. The featured image from one such outing was taken in mid-July, just before the end of this polar night. Pointing up, the wide angle lens captured not only the ground at the bottom, but at the top as well. In the foreground is a colleague also taking pictures. In the distance, a...

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (CBS4)– Gunman James Holmes was found guilty in the Aurora theater shooting that left 12 people dead and dozens more injured, putting the death penalty option at the center of the courtroom. The jury began delivering their verdict at 4:15 p.m. Thursday. Holmes was found guilty in the following 24 counts for first-degree murder and first-degree murder extreme indifference in the deaths of Jonathan Blunk, Alexander J. Boik, Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden, John Larimer, Jessica Ghawi, Matthew McQuinn, Micayla Medek, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, Alex Sullivan, Alexander Teves, Rebecca Wingo.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. —Jurors have reached a verdict in the trial of Colorado theater shooter James Holmes. The panel made its decision Thursday after deliberating for a day and a half. A court spokesman saID the verdict will be read at 5:15 p.m. today. Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the July 20, 2012, shootings that killed 12 people and injured 70 others. If the jury convicts Holmes, the trial will enter a sentencing phase with testimony about whether he should be sent to prison for life or sentenced to death. Jurors make that decision. If they...

Verdict reached in Aurora Theater Murder Trial - To be read at 2:00 MDT

Explanation: Not fireworks, these intense shimmering lights still danced across Earth's night skies late last month, seen here above the planet's geographic south pole. The stunning auroral displays were triggered as a coronal mass ejection blasted from the Sun days earlier impacted the magnetosphere, beginning a widespread geomagnetic storm. The six fisheye panels were recorded with digital camera and battery in a heated box to guard against -90 degree F ambient temperatures of the long winter night. Around the horizon are south pole astronomical observatories, while beyond the Aurora Australis stretch the stars of the southern Milky Way.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has been in an ongoing legal battle for years now trying to sue Lucky Gunner, an ammunition supplier, and hold them responsible for James Holmes shooting up the Aurora movie theater. How they managed that mental leap was always a bit of a mystery, but they’ve been able to tie up Lucky Gunner in court for quite a while over it. This week a judge had apparently heard enough and declared the action to be little more than a publicity stunt and a nuisance suit, ordering the Brady Center to pay the...

A trio of young thugs attempted to rob three men moving furniture into a condo in Aurora, Colorado Friday night. Two of the men accosted handed over their wallets. The third pulled his legally-concealed weapon and opened fire, hitting all three suspects: One robbery suspect died on the way to the hospital. A second robbery suspect suffered serious injuries. A third fled, but walked into to Aurora South Medical Center where he was arrested. The shooter had a concealed to carry weapons permit and put the gun down when he saw officers arriving. Brauchler says ColoradoÂ’s self-defense law allows the...

Explanation: Why do some auroras pulsate? No one is sure. Although this unusual behavior has been known for a long time, the cause remains an active topic of research. Featured here is a dramatic video that captured some impressive pulsating auroras in mid-March over Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland. The 48-second video is shown is not time-lapse. The real-time pulsations are exemplified by sequences where the astrophotographer is visible moving about in the foreground. A close inspection of the enigmatic flickering sky colors reveals that some structures appear to repeat, while others do not. The quick rapidity of the pulsations seen...

~snip~ Maddow opened her show with heart-rending footage of the Aurora trial. She highlighted the testimony of Brenton Lowak, whose friend Jessica Ghawi -- a 24-year-old aspiring sports reporter -- died in the shooting. ~snip~ The parents unsuccessfully sued the retailers who made the firearm that killed their daughter. Colorado state law requires that plaintiffs who sue the manufacturers of gun products pay the companies' legal fees if they lose. “That’s not a typo,” Maddow said, adding, “The mother and father of the victim who died in the Aurora mass shooting have just been ordered to pay a quarter-million dollars...

Explanation: Sometimes the sky lights up unexpectedly. A trip to northern Norway to photograph auroras was not going as well as hoped. It was now past midnight in Steinsvik, Troms, in northern Norway, and the date was 2014 February 8. Despite recent activity on the Sun, the skies were disappointing. Therefore, the astrophotographer began packing up to go. His brother began searching for a missing lens cap. When the sky suddenly exploded with spectacular aurora. Reacting quickly, a sequence detailing dramatic green curtains was captured, with the bright Moon near the image center, and the lens-cap seeking brother on the...

The Phillips were not just grieving parents when they brought suit against Lucky Gunner, Sportsman's Guide, and the other defendants. They were paid employees of the Brady Campaign!

AURORA, Colo. – A suburban Denver 4-year-old came home from school disappointed, with untouched Oreos and a note from her teacher. Denver news station KMGH-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1P6770A ) that preschooler Natalee Pearson told her mom Friday that she wasn't allowed to eat the cookies in her lunchbox.

Colorado’s whitewashing of Aurora Wilkins’s murder seems like the sort of thing people of conscience would find unacceptable. Yet here we are, accepting it. On March 18, Dynel Lane savagely attacked Michelle Wilkins, butchering her to get at Aurora. Ms. Lane had been telling people she was pregnant when she wasn’t, and now she wanted a young corpse that she could pass off for a miscarriage so that she could avoid the impending awkwardness of a prenatal checkup. After luring Ms. Wilkins to her home, Dynel proceeded to stab her repeatedly with a knife. Dynel then left Michelle for dead...

Explanation: It appeared, momentarily, like a 50-km tall banded flag. In mid-March, an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection directed toward a clear magnetic channel to Earth led to one of the more intense geomagnetic storms of recent years. A visual result was wide spread auroras being seen over many countries near Earth's magnetic poles. Captured over Kiruna, Sweden, the image features an unusually straight auroral curtain with the green color emitted low in the Earth's atmosphere, and red many kilometers higher up. It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates, but it might involve an unusual blue aurora at an...

Explanation: On the night of March 17/18 this umbrella of northern lights unfolded over backyards in Vallentuna, Sweden about 30 kilometers north of Stockholm. A result of the strongest geomagnetic storm of this solar cycle, auroral displays were captured on that night from back and front yards at even lower latitudes, including sightings in the midwestern United States. A boon for aurora hunting skywatchers, the space storm began building when a coronal mass ejection, launched by solar activity some two days earlier, struck planet Earth's magnetosphere. So what's the name of the backyard observatory on the right of the wide...

A severe solar storm smacked Earth with a surprisingly big geomagnetic jolt Tuesday, potentially affecting power grids and GPS tracking while pushing the colorful northern lights farther south, federal forecasters said. So far no damage has been reported. Two blasts of magnetic plasma left the sun on Sunday, combined and arrived on Earth about 15 hours earlier and much stronger than expected, said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. This storm ranks a 4, called severe, on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 1-to-5 scale for geomagnetic effects. It is the strongest solar storm...

Photo taken March 17, 2015 near Beaverton, Ontario (~80km north of Toronto).