Space Photos This Week: Soul Nebula, Aurora, More

Aurora Ahoy

Photograph courtesy NASA

For his one-thousandth tweet from space, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi sent his followers a picture taken as the International Space Station was about to fly through an aurora at 17,400 miles (28,000 kilometers) an hour on April 5, 2010.

When the space shuttle Discovery docks with the space station this week, Naoko Yamazaki will join Noguchi aboard the station, marking the first time two Japanese astronauts have served together on the craft.

Published April 6, 2010

A "Warm" Look at Orion

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Orion Nebula glows pale blue tinged with rust in a new infrared picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope released April 1, 2010. The star-forming nebula sits in the sword of the famous constellation of Orion, the Hunter. (See a "spring colored" version of the picture made with additional infrared data.)

Spitzer will be studying changes in the Orion Nebula's stars as part of its "warm" mission, which started when the craft's liquid coolant ran out in May 2009. Some instruments won't operate without being chilled, so mission managers are adjusting how they use Spitzer's equipment.

Published April 6, 2010

Space Station on the Moon

Photograph courtesy Fernando Echeverria via NASA

Looking like a fly on the camera lens, the International Space Station makes a bright white dot against the moon in a picture taken from Kennedy Space Station in Florida on April 5, 2010.

The shot was captured moments before the space shuttle Discovery launched into the predawn skies on its 13-day mission to the space station carrying a new module filled with supplies.

Published April 6, 2010

Half-and-Half Nebula

Image courtesy ESO

In infrared light the nebula known as Gum 19 appears bright on one side and dark on the other, because hydrogen gas on the right is being heated and charged by radiation from a supergiant blue star inside.

Unseen in the new picture—released March 31, 2010, by the European Southern Observatory—new stars are forming in the boundary between light and dark.

Published April 6, 2010