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Rock Me on the Water
Credit: NASA/Charisse Nahser
Friday, June 1, 2012: At sunrise, the high-fidelity space shuttle model sits aboard the barge that will transport it from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Johnson Space Center's visitor center in Houston. The model was installed at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in 1993. NASA moved it onto the water in order to begin building the facility to display shuttle Atlantis in 2013. Photo released May 24, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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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
Monday, June 4, 2012: 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.
— Tom Chao
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Glow World
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Tuesday, June 5, 2012: 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.
— Tom Chao
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The Rare Delight of the Sight of You
Credit: NASA/SDO, AIA
Wednesday, June 6, 2012: This image shows the Solar Dynamic Observatory's ultra-high definition view of the 2012 Venus Transit taken in the 304 angstrom wavelength of light. On June 5-6 2012, SDO is collecting images of one of the rarest predictable solar events: the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event happens in pairs eight years apart that are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years. The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117. NASA image captured June 6, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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New York, New York, Big City of Dreams
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Thursday, June 7, 2012: Like generations of immigrants before, shuttle Enterprise receives a welcoming salute from Lady Liberty, as the test shuttle floats up the Hudson River to its new home at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, on June 6, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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Gosh Yardang It!
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Friday, June 8, 2012: 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.
— Tom Chao
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Is This One of Harry Mudd's Androids?
Credit: Johnson Space Center (via Facebook)
Monday, June 11, 2012: NASA's Johnson Space Center posted this photo on Facebook, June 8, 2012. They wrote: "George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu) and Robonaut throwing the Vulcan salute during a recent visit to NASA Johnson Space Center."
— Tom Chao
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I'll Stretch You Out
Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
Tuesday, June 12, 2012: NGC 5754 is the large spiral galaxy seen face-on in this image. Nearby to the upper left, NGC 5752 interacts with NGC 5754, as seen by the long filaments being pulled away. Both galaxies are part of a quartet of galaxies known as Arp 297. NGC 5754 lies in the constellation Bootes, the Herdsman, at a distance of roughly 200 million light-years
— Tom Chao
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I'm an Outsider, Outside of Everything
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Wednesday, June 13, 2012: Saturn's small moon Epimetheus orbits beyond the planet's rings. Here, Cassini spacecraft spts the moon outside the thin F ring near the bottom center of this photo, on the far side of the rings. This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings. The image was taken in visible light on Dec. 30, 2011, at a distance of approximately 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometers) from Epimetheus.
— Tom Chao
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Let the Water Hold Me Down
Credit: NASA
Thursday, June 14, 2012: NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project (NEEMO) is a NASA mission based in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research station. Aquarius lies off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It sits next to deep coral reefs 62 feet (19 meters) below the surface. Here aquanauts test and develop surface operations for planetary sample return missions. Image released June 13, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity
Credit: Alex Adler/Part-Time Scientists
Friday, June 15, 2012: A simulated 5-day Mars mission took place in the Giant Ice Caves of Dachstein, Austria, created by the Austrian Space Forum and international research partners in April-May 2012. Here, a lunar rover created by the Part-Time Scientists, Asimov R3, undergoes testing in the King Arthur Dome. High humidity inside poses quite a challenge for the little rover.
— Tom Chao
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The Stars Surround You
Credit: ESO/S. Brunier
Monday, June 18, 2012: This amazing image seems to show the Milky Way streaming down not once, but twice, at ESO's Very Large Telescope on Chile's Cerro Paranal mountain. Actually, the photo shows a 360-degree panorama of the sky, so the two streams of stars are two halves of the band of the Milky Way arcing across the sky.
— Tom Chao
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How Delicate the Tracery of Her Fine Lines
Credit: NASA, DOE, International Fermi LAT Collaboration
Tuesday, June 19, 2012: Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope re-orients itself as it orbits the earth each 95 minutes, and also the axis of its orbit precesses (like a spinning top). Over time, the path of the Vela Pulsar traced by Fermi's complex movements stretches and twists into this delicate tracery. The image, centered of the Fermi's Large Area Telescope central view, shows Vela's position from August 2008 to August 2010. Vela Pulsar is a neutron star that spins 11 times a second, the brightest persistent source of gamma-rays in the sky.
— Tom Chao
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Give Me the Warm Power of the Sun
Credit: NASA
Wednesday, June 20, 2012: An Expedition 31 crew member on the International Space Station photographed the solar array panels of the station. Earth's horizon and the blackness of space are visible beyond. Photo taken June 2, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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Dark Was the Nebula
Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
Thursday, June 21, 2012: Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter took this photo of LDN 673, a dark nebula in the constellation Aquila, in April and May 2012.
— Tom Chao
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That Wave
Credit: Courtesy of Chabot Space & Science Center
Friday, June 22, 2012: This intriguing kinetic scupture hangs in the rotunda of Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA. Created by artist Reuben Margolin, the cardboard tubes of "Hexagonal Wave" slowly ripple outward in concentric circles, demonstrating how a wave propagates through space. For more information, including a video, visit
Margolin’s site. Photo dated January 20, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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A Big White Cloud Looking Right Down on Me
Credit: André Kuipers (via Flickr)
Monday, June 25, 2012: Astronaut André Kuipers took this photo from the International Space Station showing the Large Magellanic Cloud above the Earth. The LMC is a galaxy relatively close to our own Milky Way galaxy. Photo dated June 15, 2012.
— Tom Chao
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Lock on Target and Prepare to Fire
Credit: Babak Tafreshi/ESO
Tuesday, June 26, 2012: Yepun, a Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shoots a yellow laser beam into the sky. The beam creates a glowing spot — an artificial star — in the Earth’s atmosphere. Astronomers then use the Laser Guide Star to control the telescope’s deformable mirrors and remove the effects of atmospheric distortions, producing images almost as sharp as if the telescope were in space. The image also captures the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, nearby irregular dwarf galaxies, to the left and to the right of the laser beam, respectively.
— Tom Chao
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All the Colors
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Wednesday, June 27, 2012: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera captured this image of a region of Mars near Nili Fossae. Part of the ejecta from an impact crater is visible here. The impact broke up diverse rock types, mixing them together in a impressionistic swirl of colors, each representing a different type of rock. The enhanced-color image was obtained in March 2012.
— Tom Chao
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Shine On You Crazy Noctilucent Clouds
Credit: NASA
Thursday, June 28, 2012: Polar mesospheric clouds form between 47 to 53 miles (76 to 85 kilometers) above the Earth. The sun can illuminate these high clouds even when it is below the horizon, giving them the names of noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds. The crew of the ISS took this photo of polar mesospheric clouds on June 13, 2012, while flying over the Tibetan Plateau. Earlier on June 5, the crew made a time-lapse image sequence of polar mesospheric clouds, the first ever taken from orbit.
— Tom Chao
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Obscured by Cloud
Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
Friday, June 29, 2012: Dark nebula Barnard 169 floats between us and background stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Dense gas and dust in the nebula absorbs and scatters most starlight. Only the brightest stars can shine through. The nebula lies in the constellation of Cepheus. Image released June 2012.
— Tom Chao
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Image of the Day Archives
Credit: NASA, ESA and Orsola De Marco (Macquarie University)
