Space Pictures This Week: Mickey Mouse Craters, More

Blastoff

Photograph courtesy DLR

The German Aerospace Center's unmanned SHEFEX II spacecraft takes off from the Andøya Rocket Range in Norway on June 22. Ten minutes later the 43-foot-tall (13-meter-tall) rocket landed safely west of Spitsbergen, Norway.

As it re-entered the atmosphere, SHEFEX (SHarp Edge Flight EXperiment) endured temperatures over 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 degrees Celsius), and its 300 sensors sent measurement data to a ground station.

"The SHEFEX II flight takes us one step further in the road to developing a space vehicle built like a space capsule but offering the control and flight options of the space shuttle much more cost-effectively," project manager Hendrik Weihs said in a statement.

(See "SpaceX Launches for Space Station-Like 'Winning the Super Bowl.'")

Published June 28, 2012

Glorious View

Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS/NASA

A rainbow-like optical phenomenon known as a glory glimmers atop clouds in a satellite image taken from over the Pacific Ocean on June 20.

Glories, which usually appear as concentric rings of color in front of mist or fog, form when water droplets within clouds scatter sunlight toward a light source—in this case, the sun.

The most vivid glories form when an observer looks down on thin clouds with droplets between 10 and 30 microns wide, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

(Also see: "Pictures: First Quadruple Rainbow Ever Caught on Camera.")

Published June 28, 2012

Dwarf Galaxy

Image courtesy ESA/NASA

Lacking the sweeping arms of spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way, the dwarf galaxy DDO 82 (pictured in a recent Hubble Space Telescope image) looks like a cloud of vapor.

Located in the constellation of Ursa Major, about 13 million light-years away, DDO 82 is a Magellanic spiral galaxy, named after the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.

(See "Dwarf Galaxy Found Secretly Feasting on Smaller Dwarf.")

Published June 28, 2012

Mickey Mouse Craters

Image courtesy CIW/JHUAPL/NASA

Disney hasn't opened a theme park on Mercury (yet). But NASA says these craters on the planet—shown in a MESSENGER-spacecraft picture released June 3—bear a "striking" resemblance to Mickey Mouse.

(See "Mercury 'Hollows' Found—Pits May Be Solar System First.")

Published June 28, 2012

"Vast Beauty"

Photograph by Russ Benning, Your Shot

The "vast beauty" of the Milky Way shines over Queensland, Australia, in a picture submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot photo community by Russ Benning.

"The shot was taken as an experiment, but I am very happy with the result," Benning write in his submission.

From end to end, the Milky Way's starry disk spans 120,000 light-years. (See a map of the Milky Way.)

Published June 28, 2012

More of Our Favorite Space Pictures

Photograph by Max Edin, Your Shot

Published June 28, 2012