Space Pictures This Week: Thor's Helmet, Milky Moon, More

Milky Moon

Photograph by Christoph Malin, TWAN

The Milky Way and the setting moon shine together in the night sky over La Palma, part of the Spanish Canary Islands, in a newly released picture taken last August.

The stitched panorama also shows the golden glow of city lights as well as the silhouette of Italy's Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, one of many observatories perched on La Palma's volcanic peaks. (Watch a time-lapse of the night sky shot from La Palma.)

Published May 4, 2012

Dusty Homecoming

Photograph courtesy Carla Cioffi, NASA

An aerial view shows the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft landing in a remote Kazakhstan field on April 27.

The Russian craft was returning from the International Space Station, bringing crew members Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov, and Anatoly Ivanishin home after almost six months in space.

Published May 4, 2012

Orion's Glow

Image courtesy Igor Chekalin and T. Stanke et al, ESO/APEX/DSS2

The orange glow from faint heat coming from a string of dust clouds reveals where stars are forming near Orion's belt, as seen in a new picture from the European Southern Observatory.

Captured by the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope in Chile, the image uses submillimeter wavelengths, which can pick up the gentle glow of the otherwise dark, cold clumps of dust. The observations were then laid on top of a visible-light view of the region, to show where the dust clouds reside in the sky.

Published May 4, 2012

Sunny South

Image courtesy Jesse Allen, LANCE/Terra/MODIS/NASA

Clear, sunny skies cast glacial valleys in sharp relief in a newly released satellite picture of the Antarctic Peninsula.

NASA's Terra satellite snapped the image in late April, when temperatures rose well above freezing. The relatively warm conditions were driven in part by downslope winds known as Chinook or foehn winds, which are channeled through the icy valleys, according to NASA.

Published May 4, 2012

"Blue" Lagoon

Image courtesy SSRO/PROMPT/CTIO

For Northern Hemisphere sky-watchers, the Lagoon nebula—aka NGC 6523—is a showpiece of the summer sky.

Although the Lagoon doesn't rise very high when seen from most Southern Hemisphere locations, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile was able to capture this newly released view of the swirling cloud of dust and gas.

The picture, which combines 20 hours' worth of data collected over several days, shows the red-hued Lagoon looking a bit bluer than normal, due to the telescope's viewing angle.

Published May 4, 2012

Lunar Highs and Lows

Image courtesy Arizona State University/NASA

Crater, or peak?

This black-and-white mosaic is one part of a stereo pair captured recently by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Scientists use such pictures to create 3-D models of the moon's surface.

The resulting images help make it clear that this feature is a depression—a relatively young, unnamed impact crater that's 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) wide.

Published May 4, 2012

Mysterious Monoceros

Image courtesy T.A. Rector, UAA, and N.S. van der Bliek, NOAO/NSF

If you love unusual star birth, than this is the nebula you're looking for.

Called Monoceros R2, the interstellar cloud of gas and dust glows deep red in this recently released image due to its abundant ionized hydrogen. The picture was made using data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Although this cloud lies close to the Orion nebula, another region of star birth, Monoceros R2 isn't forming stars at the same rate or of the same heft as its neighbor, and astronomers aren't sure why.

Published May 4, 2012

More of Our Favorite Space Pictures >>

Image courtesy Earth to Sky, Bishop, California

Published May 4, 2012