Tuesday, May 1, 2012: A Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft returning Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank, and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin touches down in a remote area outside of the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on Friday, April 27, 2012. NASA astronaut Burbank, Russian cosmonauts Shkaplerov and Ivanishin were returning from more than five months onboard the International Space Station, where they served as members of the Expedition 29 and 30 crews.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, May 2, 2012: Camilla Corona SDO, mascot of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, went on another of her amazing adventures, this time flying to the edge of space in March 2012, during the most intense radiation storm since 2003. Camilla flew with the aid of a balloon sent up by Bishop Union High School's Earth to Sky student group in Bishop, California. Camilla, the plucky adventurer, reached an altitude of 120,000 ft where she was exposed to high-energy solar protons. While it might look like Camilla is shrieking in terror, it’s all right — she always looks like that.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, May 3, 2012: Astronomers discovered an aging star blowing a lot of dust (orange dot at upper left) using images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in 2010. The newfound dusty star, called WISE J180956.27–330500.2, was not seen by an all-sky survey in 1983, but astronomers report the star has brightened by a factor of 100 since then. Stars like our sun age in this way, expanding into red giants and shedding dust later incorporated into new stars, planets, and in our solar system, living beings. Image released April 26, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Friday, May 4, 2012: Saturn's moon Dione appears to possess an area of wispy terrain at the lower left of this Cassini image. Actually, fractures on the trailing hemisphere of Dione cause the wispy appearance. The image was taken on Dec. 20, 2010, at a distance of approximately 67,000 miles (107,000 kilometers) from Dione. North is up.
— Tom Chao
Monday, May 7, 2012: Looking like a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” dramatic backlight illuminates a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle at Space Launch Complex-41 of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket successfully launched the Air Force's Advanced Extremely High Frequency 2 satellite (AEHF 2) satellite on May 4, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, May 8, 2012: Aqua satellite lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on May 4, 2002. Ten years later, it's far exceeded its expected three- to five-year mission. The six science instruments aboard the satellite have collected a remarkable 29 million gigabytes of data so far. Aqua satellite studies a broad range of natural hazards from severe storms to dust storms and haze to droughts and crop health. Aqua's MODIS instrument has detected more than 20 million actively burning fires to date. Researchers have published more than 2,000 papers based on Aqua data over the past decade.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, May 9, 2012: Cassini spacecraft swung by Saturn’s moon Janus on March 27, 2012. Deep shadows darken some of the moon’s large craters. The spacecraft got this shot at a distance of approximately 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) from Janus. Intriguingly, another moon of Saturn, Epimetheus, orbits close to Janus, and the two moons periodically change orbits, so that one becomes closer to Saturn, while the other floats further away.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, May 10, 2012: ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers took this photo of the Philippine archipelago while aboard the International Space Station. The spacecraft which brought him to the station, a Soyuz TMA-03M, docks to the station at the left of this photo.
— Tom Chao
Friday, May 11, 2012: Galaxy cluster Abell 1185 contains galaxies of various shapes and sizes drifting close to one another, putting each other at risk. Some galaxies have already been ripped apart in the maelstrom, spewing trails of matter. Abell 1185 is located approximately 400 million light-years away from Earth, and spans one million light-years. Image released April 30. 2012.
— Tom Chao
Monday, May 14, 2012: A computer-generated perspective view of Mars shows the transition between Acidalia Planitia and Tempe Terra regions. Researchers believe the foreground craters come from a younger phase in Mars history, judging from a lack of erosion and infilling seen in the background craters, considered to have once held liquid water.
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, May 15, 2012: Components of the James Webb Space Telescope undergo testing in the thermal vacuum test chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Here, the Optical Telescope Element Simulator (OSIM), wrapped in a silver blanket on a platform, descends into the Space Environment Simulator vacuum chamber via crane to see if it will withstand the cold temperatures of space. Image released April 30, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, May 16, 2012: 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.” Looks more like pie charts to us.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, May 17, 2012: Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 interact with each other in this dramatic photograph. Whether the two galaxies will collide and merge is not yet known, but the mutual gravitation attraction has already created a bridge of stars. This pas de deux of the two galaxies, known jointly as Arp 271, will continue for tens of millions of years, creating new stars. Located 90 million light-years away towards the constellation of Virgo (the Virgin), Arp 271 stretches about 130,000 light-years across.
— Tom Chao
Friday, May 18, 2012: A Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur launch site at 07:01:23 AM Moscow Time on May 15, 2012. The spacecraft brings three spaceflyers to complete the six-person crew of Expedition 31. The crew of Soyuz TMA-04M consists of Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka (commander) and Sergei Revin (flight engineer) and US astronaut Joseph Acaba (flight engineer).
— Tom Chao
Monday, May 21, 2012: Skywatcher Thomas Warloe took this photo of the annular solar eclipse from Fountain Valley, CA, on May 20, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Monday, May 21, 2012: Bonus Extra Image of the Day! Skywatcher Amy Van Artsdalen sent this image taken from Susanville, CA, showing the "ring of fire" during the annular solar eclipse on May 20, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, May 22, 2012: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off at 3:44 a.m. EDT on May 20, 2012, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket is carrying the Dragon unmanned cargo capsule to the International Space Station.
— Tom Chao
Wedneday, May 23, 2012: Galaxy NGC 891 lies approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Andromeda. This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows the galaxy's northern half, with the central bulge outside the image on the bottom left. Filaments of dust and gas clearly extend outwards from the plane of the galaxy into the galaxy halo over hundreds of light-years, unlike our own Milky Way.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, May 24, 2012: Spiral galaxy ESO 498-G5 features spiral arms that wind all the way into the center, so ESO 498-G5's core looks like somewhat like a miniature spiral galaxy. Many other spiral galaxies possess elliptical star-filled centers, also called bulges. Astronomers refer to the spiral-like bulge of galaxies like ESO 498-G5 as disc-type bulges, or pseudobulges, while bright elliptical centres are known as classical bulges. ESO 498-G5 is located around 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Pyxis (The Compass).
— Tom Chao
Friday, May 25, 2012: Two of Saturn's moons affect the planet's rings visibly. Daphnis, at lower left, orbits in the Keeler Gap of the A right, creating waves in the edge of the gap. Pan, in the top right, orbits in the Encke Gap of the A ring, creating wakes that are seen in the ring below Pan in the image.The image was taken in visible light by Cassini spacecraft on June 3, 2010.
— Tom Chao
Monday, May 28, 2012: SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, made history on May 25, 2012, as its Dragon capsule became the first private spacecraft to be grappled by the International Space Station, seen here in a still image from NASA TV.
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, May 29, 2012: Star cluster M46 is a young celestial object only some hundreds of millions of years old, containing a large population of massive blue stars. M46 lies near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, and the star cluster is coincidentally joined in this photo by a star in the foreground, NGC 2348, a much older star already at the stage of planetary nebula.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, May 30, 2012: The antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope stand against the the Milky Way, in this photo taken on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile's Atacama region. The constellations of Carina (The Keel) and Vela (The Sails) glow in this picture. The Milky Way shines from middle top left to middle bottom right. The bright orange star in the upper left is Suhail in Vela.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, May 31, 2012: SpaceX's Dragon capsule was grappled by the Canadarm2 of the International Space Station on May 25, 2012. The photograph was posted on the Internet by Dutch astronaut André Kuipers aboard the station.
— Tom Chao
For older Image of the Day pictures, please visit the Image of the Day archives. Above: NGC 2467.
