THE BAHAMAS FROM SPACE Photograph by NASA In this breathtaking photograph we see the Bahamas from orbit on January 13, 2013. The photo was taken by a member of Expedition 34 aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 34 consisted of six crew members who were on the ISS from 18 November 2012…
AURORA ASTRALIS FROM SPACE Photograph by NASA/JSC/Joe Acaba The Expedition 32 crew onboard the International Space Station, flying an altitude of approximately 240 miles (386 km), recorded a series of images of Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, on July 15, 2012. NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, flight engineer, recorded the…
LANDING FROM SPACE Photograph by NASA/Carla Cioffi Poof! The Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 32 Commander Gennady Padalka of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Russian Flight Engineer Sergei Revin in a remote area near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on Monday, September 17, 2012. Padalka,…
THE FATHER OF ROCKET SCIENCE Photograph by NASA Wernher von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, in the United States.…
THE SOMBRERO GALAXY Photograph by NASA/ESA & the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the Universe’s most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising…
THE SPACE ‘SELFIE’ Photograph by NASA International Space Station astronaut, Aki Hoshide (Japan), recorded this striking image while helping to augment the capabilities of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station (ISS). Visible in this outworldly assemblage is the Sun, the Earth, two portions of a robotic arm, an astronaut’s spacesuit, the deep darkness…
SATURN’S POLAR VORTEX Photograph by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute The center of this vortex was imaged in unprecedented detail by the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. These clouds lie at the center of the unusual hexagonal cloud system that surrounds the north pole of Saturn. The sun rose on Saturn’s north pole just…
AURORA OVER WHITEHORSE Photograph by David Cartier Sr On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did…
Across four decades since 1972, Landsat satellites have continuously acquired space-based images of the Earth’s land surface, coastal shallows, and coral reefs. The Landsat Program, a joint effort of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was established to routinely gather land imagery from space. The result of…
A COMPLEX PLANETARY NEBULA Photograph by NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team According to Wikipedia, a planetary nebula is an emission nebula consisting of an expanding glowing shell of ionized gas ejected during the asymptotic giant branch phase of certain types of stars late in their life. The term for this class of objects is…