Best Space Photos of the Week - June 9, 2012

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Spectacular Moon Photo Caught Over Chile

Amazing Space Views of ESO's Very Large Telescope (Photos)

Photos: Orbital Sciences New Minotaur V Rocket Revealed

With its drag chute fully deployed, space shuttle Discovery lands on Kennedy's brightly lighted Shuttle Landing Facility runway 15, completing the 9-day, 19-hour, 13-minute and 1-second STS-96 mission. Main gear touchdown was at 2:02:43 a.m. EDT June 6, l

The Space Legacy of Shuttle Discovery

Close-up of Jupiter's Great Red Spot as seen by a Voyager spacecraft.

Photos: Most Powerful Storms of the Solar System

Photos: Private Space Capsule Launch Test - Copenhagen Suborbitals

Aurora over Washington State with Rotating Flashlight

Spectacular Northern Lights Pictures from July Solar Storm

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Transit of Venus 2012 in Pictures (Gallery)

Credit: NASA/SDO

On June 5-6 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event--the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event happens in pairs eight years apart which are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years. The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117. [Full Photo Gallery]

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NASA Video Reveals Huge Asteroid Vesta's Complex Surface

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI

A new video from NASA's Dawn mission reveals the complex surface of the protoplanet Vesta. [Full Story]

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Space Shuttle Enterprise's Sea Trek to NYC Museum (Photos)

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Intrepid Museum tweeted this photo of the shuttle Enterprise on June 6, 2012. The museum wrote: "A better shot of the craning process #intrepidshuttle http://pic.twitter.com/ZBWFSQqF." [Full Photo Gallery]

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Venus and Hubble Space Telescope Cross Sun Together in Spectacular Picture

Credit: Thierry Legault

Photographing Tuesday's historic Venus transit of the sun is special enough on its own, but one space photographer managed to get NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in the frame as well.[Full Story]

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Venus and Jupiter Shine Over Sweden's Night Lights

Credit: P-M Heden / The World at Night

The city lights of Stockholm don’t outshine Venus and Jupiter when the duo meet in this celestial conjunction. [Full Story]

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'Space Program: Mars' - Artist Tom Sachs' Vision (Photos)

Credit: Genevieve Hanson, NYC

Installation view of "Space Program: Mars" by Tom Sachs at Park Avenue Armory in 2012. During the May 16 to June 1 exhibition, Sachs and his team offered real-time demonstrations of every phase of Mars exploration, from launch to landing and walking on the Red Planet. [Full Photo Gallery]

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Huge Cloud Hole Photographed by Satellite

Credit: NASA

NASA's Aqua satellite caught an arresting image of a strange, enormous weather system off the coast of Tasmania June 5, featuring a cloud hole wider than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) at one point. [Full Story]

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Skywatchers Snap Stunning Photo of Supernova's Shattered Remains

Credit: Bob and Janice Fera

Remnants of an exploded supernova appear as ghostly wisps in this skywatching photo of the Veil Nebula.[Full Story]

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Venus Transit 2012: Amazing Photos by Skywatchers

Credit: Roy MacLellan

Skywatcher Roy MacLellan sent this Venus transit photo taken on June 5, 2012. He writes: "Shot in Trenton, Ontario, Canada using a Nikon D2Xs with a 600mm lens." [Full Photo Gallery]

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Glow World

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

NGC 7026, a planetary nebula, lies just beyond the tip of the tail of the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan). Not actually a nebula, a planetary nebula represents a stage in the life of mid-sized stars like the sun, when the star’s nuclear fuel runs out and the outer layers of gas puff out. The gas is heated by the hot core of the star, and the gaseous envelope glows like a fluorescent light. [More Images]

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Gosh Yardang It!

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft obtained this view of Danielson (right) and Kalocsa craters in the Arabia Terra region of Mars. The image shows the yardangs — streamlined hills carved by wind — bisected by the darker dune field in Danielson crater. The alternating sedimentary layers of the crater floor suggests that periodic changes in the climate of Mars occurred, possibly due to changes in the planet’s rotation axis. [More Images]

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There’s a Little Black Spot on the Earth Today

Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, NASA, EUMETSAT, NERC Satellite Receiving Station, University of Dundee

Geostationary satellite MTSAT generated this image of the annular solar eclipse of May 20-21, 2012. The picture clearly shows the scale of the moon’s shadow on the Earth (just right of top center). This image was generated during a color test of the Visible Daily-Earth project by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo. Color correction was made based on NASA Visible Earth datasets. [More Images]

Best Space Photos of the Week - June 10, 2012