For older Image of the Day pictures, please visit the Image of the Day archives. Above: NGC 2467.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012: A cloud of hydrogen gas called RCW 88 is located about ten thousand light-years away from Earth. The cloud stretches about nine light-years across. It is made of glowing hydrogen gas that surrounds recently formed stars. New stars form from clouds of this hydrogen gas as they collapse under their own gravity. Some of the more developed stars are already visible through the cloud.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, August 2, 2012: NASA's has set up the Morpheus lander, a vertical test bed vehicle, at its launch position along the runway at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Morpheus will demonstrate new green propellant propulsion systems, autonomous landing and an Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology, or ALHAT, system. The SLF site will provide the lander with the kind of field necessary for realistic testing, being a rock and crater-filled plantary landscape. Image released July 31, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Friday, August 3, 2012: NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is expected to land on August 6, 2012 at 1:31 am EDT. This artist's illustration envisions the descent stage with Curiosity rover below one minute before touching down on the surface. The descent stage's rockets will decelerate the spacecraft after initial slowing by atmospheric friction and a parachute. Just after the instant depicted here, a "sky crane" will lower the rover to the surface using a bridle.
— Tom Chao
Monday, August 6, 2012: NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars the evening of August 5, 2012, PDT (morning of August 6 EDT). It almost immediately began sending pictures back to Earth, this one taken taken with the left-rear Hazard-Avoidance camera. A wheel and dust-cover spring appear in the lower-right corner. Part of the rover’s power supply appears in the upper-right corner. The camera looks directly into the sun, causing the top of the image to wash out. Curiosity is expected to send higher-resolution images later in the week when its mast is deployed with more sophisticated cameras. [See 1st Photos of Mars by Curiosity Rover (Gallery).]
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, August 7, 2012: The Russian Progress 47 unpiloted cargo spacecraft approaches the International Space Station for re-docking on July 28, 2012. The cargo ship temporarily undocked on July 22, 2012, to test the new Kurs-NA automated rendezvous system. A first attempt failed, but the craft re-docked on the second try. Some of the station’s solar array panels gleam in the foreground.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, August 8, 2012: STEREO (Behind) spacecraft caught this large solar prominence in extreme UV light, rising and breaking apart as it flew off into space on July 27-28, 2012. Soon after that, an active region near the sun’s edge spurted at least 10 flares in rapid succession.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, August 9, 2012: Adam Block photographed spiral galaxy NGC 5033 at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter of the University of Arizona. The galaxy lies approximately 50 million light years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. Astronomers classify it as a Seyfert galaxy, meaning it possesses an extremely bright nucleus, and spectra which have very bright emission lines of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. Image obtained May 2012.
— Tom Chao
Friday, August 10, 2012: Sir Richard Branson appears pleased as he holds up a model of Virgin Galatic's new air-launched satellite launch vehicle, LauncherOne, at its public introduction. He stands inside a full-sized replica of his company's SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, intended for space tourism, at Farnborough International Airshow, Hampshire, England. Branson is the founder of Virgin Galactic. Photo taken on July 11, 2012.
— Tom Chao
Monday, August 13, 2012: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took this close-up of the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula. The bright wispy structures signal an environment rich in ionized hydrogen gas. In reality these appear red, but the various and filters and exposures of this image make the gas appear green. These regions contain recently formed stars emitting powerful ultraviolet radiation ionizing the gas around them.
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, August 14, 2012: Night sky watcher Robb Rosenfeld took this photograph of a Perseid meteor with Venus, Jupiter, and the moon. He caught the scene on August 12, 2012, in Joshua Tree National Park, located in southern California east of Los Angeles.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, August 15, 2012: The balloon carrying the Red Bull Stratos capsule rises during the second manned test flight in Roswell, New Mexico, USA on July 25, 2012. In this mission, Austrian pilot Felix Baumgartner will attempt to break the record for freefall from highest altitude with a planned jump from 120,000 feet, now scheduled for fall 2012.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, August 16, 2012: Copenhagen Suborbitals private spaceflight company began the test of their Launch Escape System and the Tycho Deep Space capsule at 6 AM local time on Sunday, August 12, 2012. Here, the rocket and capsule (left of center) are seen sailing out on the Baltic Sea at sunrise, on the sea launch platform called Sputnik. Unfortunately, the test flight didn't end as planned, and instead the capsule splashed down hard and experienced damage.
— Tom Chao
Friday, August 17, 2012: Orion, the Hunter, shines high in the Chilean night sky over the antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Taken in the southern hemisphere, this image shows Orion in upside-down orientation as opposed to the usual northern hemisphere view. However, the three stars of Orion’s Belt are still clearly recognizable at center. In this photograph, the antennas were being tested at ALMA’s Operations Support Facility, located at the slightly lower altitude of 9500 feet (2900 meters) before being moved to the Chajnantor Plateau at 16,400 feet (5000 meters) elevation.
— Tom Chao
Monday, August 20, 2012: NASA's retired space shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis switched locations at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 16, 2012, during processing for the departure of each to their final destinations. Endeavour will end up in Los Angeles at the California Science Center, and Atlantis will move to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, August 21, 2012: Hazy air bearing dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa reaches the island of Hispaniola, containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic (center), and the Turks and Caicos Islands (at left by patch of turquoise water). The eastern tip of Cuba (foreground) remains clear. The dust in the image is almost 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from its likely source in northern Mali. This image was taken by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) in July 2012.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, August 22, 2012: Hubble Space Telescope produced this image of the globular cluster Messier 56 (M 56 or NGC 6779), which lies about 33,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Lyra, the Lyre. The cluster consists of many stars bound to each other by gravity.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, August 23, 2012: Huge loops of magnetic particles leapt out of the sun on arcing magnetic field lines, August 14-15, 2012. The Solar Dynamics Observatory caught this solar activity in the AIA 171 wavelength (but colorized red). An active region at left shows its own loops, in addition to streams of plasma jumping back and forth. Earth could easily fit inside any of these loops.
— Tom Chao
Friday, August 24, 2012: Robonaut posted this photo on Facebook while working on the International Space Station August 23, 2012. The robot, a joint project of NASA and General Motors, wrote: “Switch cover has been opened by my dexterous fingers." [See our full Robonaut gallery.]
— Tom Chao
Monday, August 27, 2012: This photo from the historic Apollo 11 moon mission shows astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, mission commander, standing on the moon, July 20, 1969. Armstrong was using a clothesline device to transport a contingency lunar sample into the Lunar Module (LM), nicknamed "Eagle," on the surface of the moon. Astronaut Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr. was in the Eagle to receive the sample. Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, passed away on August 25, 2012, at the age of 82. [See our gallery of Neil Armstrong photos.]
— Tom Chao
Tuesday, August 28, 2012: The Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO ) caught the sun throwing off coronal mass ejections August 20-22, 2012. This particular image shows one CME looking much like a light bulb. This frame was taken by SOHO's LASCO C3 instrument.
— Tom Chao
Wednesday, August 29, 2012: Astrophotographer Jeff Berkes caught this Perseid meteor over the Kilauea Volcano, on Hawaii's Big Island in 2010. [See more of Berkes' Amazing Night Sky Photos]
— Tom Chao
Thursday, August 30, 2012: A satellite image of Tropical Storm Isaac shows the massive scope of the storm, with arms extending from Texas in the west to the Carolinas in the east. NASA’s GOES-13 satellite obtained the image on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2012, at 10:25 a.m. EDT.
— Tom Chao
Friday, August 31, 2012: NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes, or RBSP, launched at 4:05 a.m. EDT on August 30, 2012, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Also in this photo, spotlights illuminate the clouds over Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. RBSP will explore changes in Earth's space environment caused by the sun, called "space weather."
— Tom Chao
