Menkhib and the California Nebula

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, features one of the bright stars in the constellation Perseus, named Menkhib (at upper left near the red dust cloud), surrounded by the large star-forming California Nebula, running diagonally through the...

Hellas Planitia

This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter covers a small portion of the northwest quadrant of Hellas Planitia on Mars. With a diameter of about 1,400 miles and a depth reaching the lowest...

Freedom 7

On May 5, 1961, at 9:34am EST NASA astronaut Alan Shepard launched about his Mercury Redstone spacecraft, nicknamed Freedom 7, to become the first American in space. In this image, fellow astronaut Gus Grissom wishes a suited Alan Shepard a safe flight just before...

Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Infrared

On Sat., April 17, 2010, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) instrument aboard NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft obtained this false-color infrared image of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. A strong thermal source (denoted in red) is visible at the...

Visions of Future Past

The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft is the subject of this long exposure, and is seen as it is rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Friday, Dec. 18, 2009. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Expedition 22 NASA Flight Engineer...

Stellar Nursery in the Rosette Nebula

This image from the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory shows the cloud associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation. Herschel collects the infrared light...

Guenter Wendt and the Apollo 11 Crew

Within the White Room atop the gantry on Launch Complex 39 Pad A, the Apollo 11 astronauts egress from the Apollo spacecraft after participation in the Countdown Demonstration Test. In the foreground of the photograph is Astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Pad leader Guenter Wendt...

Double Trouble in Twin Black Holes

This image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the central region of the starburst galaxy M82 and contains two bright X-ray sources of special interest. New studies with Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton show that these two sources may be intermediate-mass black...

Building Planets

This artist’s animation illustrates a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our Sun. Asteroids are chunks of rock from “failed” planets, which never managed to coalesce into full-sized planets. Asteroid belts can be...