Astronaut Don Pettit, on board the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 30/31 tweeted this photo from space. He described it as: “Pac-man in Brazil as seen from ISS http://pic.twitter.com/0tP9EgoP.”
64
Cloud Bank Rolling across Lake Michigan
Copyright: Amy & Jim Ferris
An Arcus cloud is a low, horizontal cloud formation. Roll clouds and shelf clouds are the two types of arcus clouds. A shelf cloud is usually associated with the leading edge of thunderstorm outflow; roll clouds are usually formed by outflows of cold air from sea breezes or cold fronts in the absence of thunderstorms.
Breathtaking View of Earth Taken by Russian Satellite
Think of it as an amped up version of the iconic “Blue Marble” image. A new photo of Earth from space highlights the striking beauty and intensely rich colors of our home planet.
The photo was taken by a Russian weather satellite, called Elektro-L No.1, which flies in a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (35,700 kilometers) above the Earth’s equator.
The image was posted by James Drake on the Planet Earth website. Drake obtained the photo from the Russian Federal Space Agency’s Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring, which manages the Elektro-L No. 1 spacecraft, after he expressed interest in animating and publishing them.
Star Factory Blazes Bright in Stunning New Photo
Huge, glowing clouds of gas and dust that will one day collapse to form massive new stars take center stage in a new photo from a European space telescope.
The image, snapped by the European Space Agency’s Herschel space observatory, shows Cygnus-X, an extremely active star-forming region about 4,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan).
The Herschel observatory sees extremely well in far-infrared wavelengths, allowing scientists to seek out and study stellar nurseries like Cygnus-X — places where dense clumps of gas have been gently heated by stars.
In the new photo, bright white areas highlight areas where large stars have recently formed out of such clouds, researchers said. These clumps are particularly evident in the right-hand side of the image, which shows a chaotic network of filaments.
Milky Way above the Grand Bénare, Reunion Island
by Luc Perrot
When Percival Lowell first looked at Mars through his telescope in the 1890s, he saw some remarkable patterns: connecting lines crisscrossing the surface, linking distant ends of the planet in a seemingly non-natural way. Lowell subscribed to Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s interpretation that the lines were canals deliberately constructed by intelligent beings to transport water. And he felt the need to spread the word, writing an increasingly bold trilogy as his convictions deepened: Mars, Mars and Its Canals, and Mars As the Abode of Life.
Several decades later, the Mariner 4 spacecraft flew past the Red Planet, snapping pictures like a speeding paparazzo. The results were disappointing: the grainy photographs showed craters frozen in time, evidence of a brutal bombardment in the planet’s past. And there certainly weren’t any well-constructed canals.
These two examples represent the stark extremes of our perception of Mars, from a world of actively changing surfaces to one of a static, frozen wasteland. Subsequent missions have pointed to a reality that is somewhere in between, but recent findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission offer unprecedented resolution on dynamic sand dune activity.
Software engineers and image analysts based at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, examined pictures from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. This camera is a 30 cm-per-pixel powerhouse that, ironically, is better than publically available images of our own planet. (According to Caltech, images of Earth-based targets taken at a similar resolution are classified information.)
The team looked at HiRISE images taken 105 days apart within the 300 square kilometer Nili Patera dune field and used an advanced processing program to detect subtle changes in dune shape and coverage. To their surprise, they saw movement – up to 4.5 meters – and not just in isolated cases. In fact, according to software engineer Francois Ayoub, who contributed to the study, “in the footprint covered by our analysis, all of the dunes imaged are active. No dune seems static.”
Omega Centauri
by Tunc Tezel
In a single-exposure telephoto image, Omega Centauri, a globular cluster of several million stars and the largest of its own in our galaxy soars above a dark forest in Turkey.
Sunspot Sunrise
The sight of the majestic Sunspot AR 1476 was great as the Sun was rising alogside the Basilica of Superga (located in a hill in the surroundings of Turin, Italy).
Sunset Clouds
June Lake, California
by Don Anderson
10 Years of Aqua Satellite’s Incredible Images of Earth From Space
The view of Earth from space has transformed our understanding of, as well as our admiration for, the planet. The data and images collected by Earth-observing satellites have been used in thousands of scientific papers, helped us better respond to natural disasters, improved weather and climate forecasts, enlightened us about our impact on Earth and captivated us with beauty.
One of the stars of NASA’s fleet of satellites is Aqua. The satellite is named for its ability to measure water vapor in the atmosphere, water in the oceans, as well as ice and snow. When it was launched on May 4, 2002, scientists expected it to work for three to five years. But its six instruments have been functioning perfectly for 10 years, gathering 29 million gigabytes of data in that time.
One of the most useful and impressive instruments aboard Aqua is the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, which measures visible and infrared radiation, and produces truly amazing, incredibly beautiful images of Earth. We’ve chosen some of our favorite MODIS images for this gallery in celebration of a decade of work. With funding for Earth-observing satellites on the decline, let’s hope Aqua keeps going for 10 more years.
Lovejoy & Galaxies
Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) is photographed in the morning sky above Andes, near Santiago de Chile.
Midnight in Paris
This single-exposure image has captured the setting moon over the Arc de Triomphe (Etoile) and the well-known Champs-Elysees avenue.
Southern Tip of Sweden
by P-M Heden
The band of the Milky Way is seen above the southern coast of Sweden. Stars of the Summer Triangle are photographed over this seaside known as Sandhammaren beach in Scania. The light dome of nearby town Ystad is visible on the right (west) while it’s dark toward the Baltic Sea (south).
