Five bright comets are approaching Earth soon, with Comet Lemmon leading the way. Astronomers predict it could become visible to the naked eye under dark skies.
"I have never seen a disaster of such a magnitude. It was terrible, much bigger than the Bhopal gas tragedy," Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shirvaj Singh Chouhan, who arrived at the airport along with 167 stranded pilgrims in a special plane, told reporters.
With questions being raised whether large-scale deaths in Uttarkhand could have been averted, the MeT department today said it had issued "timely" warnings of heavy rains and landslides while the state government claimed there was not enough prior indication of a "crisis of this magnitude".
Here is a factbox showing the 10 strongest earthquakes recorded since 1900, by order of magnitude as Indonesia issued a tsunami warning after a huge 8.7 magnitude earthquake struck off its westernmost province of Aceh on Wednesday.
A new aftershock of 6.0 magnitude has rattled northeast Japan.