Image of the Day: April 2013

For older Image of the Day pictures, please visit the Image of the Day archives. Above: NGC 2467.

Monday, April 1, 2013: Commander Chris Hadfield tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on March 31, 2013. He wrote: "A Full Moon. It may not be made of chocolate, but it makes for a wonderfully natural Easter egg. pic.twitter.com/6v5n6oaGnn"

— Tom Chao

Tuesday, April 2, 2013: Stars in the southern night sky appear to trail over the Residencia “hotel” at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. A 30-minute exposure reveals the observed movement of the stars due to the rotation of the Earth. In the center lies the apparently still point of the south celestial pole. On the left, and at the top of the image, float the blurred Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, neighboring galaxies of the Milky Way. The dark glass dome below the circling stars makes up part of the roof of the Residencia building. Scientists and engineers working at the observatory have used this partially subterranean construction since 2002. To combat the extreme sun and low humidity at high altitude, the building offers an artificial oasis, with a small garden, a swimming pool that humidifies the air, a lounge, a dining room, and other recreational facilities.

— Tom Chao

Wednesday, April 3, 2013: This mosaic shows part of the Noctis Labyrinthus region, ‘Labyrinth of the Night,’ on Mars. The region lies west of the immense gash of Valles Marineris. Scientists think the uneven region may have developed by volcanic activity in the neighboring region of Tharsis, stretching the Martian crust and fracturing it. Bill Dunford composed the mosaic using scenes available in the Mars Express image archive.

— Tom Chao

Thursday, April 4, 2013: Astrophotographer Mike Taylor sent in a photo and wrote: “The Milky Way makes a dramatic background for Marshall Point Light in Port Clyde, Maine..” Photographed on March 18, 2013.

— Tom Chao

Friday, April 5, 2013: Canada's automated aurora camera tweeted this photo on April 1, 2013. AuroraMAX wrote: "Latest #photo of #aurora borealis above Yellowknife, NWT taken at 01:56 MDT on April 1, 2013. pic.twitter.com/wAxEnvlKrj"

— Tom Chao

Monday, April 8, 2013:Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter (University of Arizona) obtained this image of spiral galaxy NGC 3344 in March 2013. Spiral galaxy NGC 3344 stretches about half the size of the Milky Way, and the impressive-looking face-on galaxy lies 25 million light-years distant.

— Tom Chao

Tuesday, April 9, 2013:The National Aeronautics and Space Administration came into being on October 1, 1958. NASA announced the seven Project Mercury astronauts on April 9, 1959, only six months later. They are: (front, L to R) Walter H. Schirra, Jr., Donald K. Slayton, John H. Glenn, Jr., and Scott Carpenter; (back, L to R) Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Virgil I. Gus Grissom, and L. Gordon Cooper.

— Tom Chao

Wednesday, April 10, 2013: Hook-shaped J082354.96+280v621.6, or J082354.96 for short, is a starburst galaxy. The unusually high rate of star formation occurring within it gives rise to the starburst name.

— Tom Chao

Thursday, April 11, 2013: Color-coding shows the relative depth of two craters on Mars, in particular the depth of the central pits. The left-hand crater penetrates deeper than the right one, Arima crater. The Mars Express spacecraft captured the image of Thaumasia Planum region on January 4, 2013.

— Tom Chao

Friday, April 12, 2013: The solar array attached to the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station reflects bright sunlight on April 3, 2013. One of the Expedition 35 crew members took the photo as part of an External Survey from International Space Station windows, recently added to the crew's task list.

— Tom Chao

Monday, April 15, 2013: This panoramic photograph shows the Milky Way on a cold winter’s night with light snow on the ground at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. In this panorama, wide-angle projection distorts the ribbon of the Milky Way into an arc. On the left stands the ESO 3.6-metre telescope. On the far right rises the Swiss 1.2-meter Leonhard Euler Telescope, built and operated by the Geneva Observatory. The photo was taken by Alexandre Santerne, and released April 8, 2013.

— Tom Chao

Tuesday, April 16, 2013: A bright auroral display illuminates the sky over Norway near Tromsø on February 17, 2013.

— Tom Chao

Wednesday, April 17, 2013: The antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) stand beneath a brilliant night sky in Chile. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds hang majestically above. At 16,400 feet (5000 meters) on the Chajnantor Plateau, ALMA represents the world’s most powerful telescope for studying the universe at submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths. Christoph Malin, an ESO Photo Ambassador, painstakingly made the time-lapse video from which this still frame comes.

— Tom Chao

Thursday, April 18, 2013: Cassini spacecraft provides a look at some of Saturn's cloud patterns, shaped by wind and storms in Saturn's atmosphere. This view centers on 30 degrees north latitude, 42 degrees west longitude. North is up and rotated 44 degrees to the right. Cassini spacecraft obtained the image with its wide-angle camera on Dec. 24, 2012. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 440,000 miles (710,000 kilometers) from Saturn's surface.

— Tom Chao

Friday, April 19, 2013: Loops and arcs shoot from two active regions on the sun, April 8, 2013. The STEREO's (Ahead) spacecraft took the image in extreme UV light. The loops consist of plasma at temperatures up to a million degrees C., arcing along the lines of magnetic fields.

— Tom Chao

Monday, April 22, 2013: Happy Earth Day from SPACE.com! This image of Earth taken by a EUMETSAT weather satellite on Jan. 29, 2013, shows the three main types of storms, as classified by research meteorologists and climatologists. Just below center, one of the storm types — a tropical cyclone — spins in the Indian Ocean, showing a characteristic spiral shape and defined eye. To the right of the cyclone, below the Indian subcontinent, floats a small patch of bright white thunderstorms, another type of storm. Thunderstorm clouds have irregular shapes and towering cumulus clouds, creating a textured appearance on the tops of cloud layers. The third type of storm, extra-tropical (or mid-latitude) cyclones, produce weather ranging from mild rainstorms to violent blizzards, typically beginning in the middle or high latitudes. Extra-tropical cyclones stretch more broadly than tropical cyclones, and sprawl in comma shapes. Here one crosses over the Sinai Peninsula, and a much larger one extends from the very bottom in Antarctica towards the upper right, then bends back to the left in a boomerang shape.

— Tom Chao

Tuesday, April 23, 2013: With lights blazing dramatically from his chest, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet descends underwater during spacewalk training at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, TX. Training and support divers stand by, monitoring his movements. Astronauts use underwater training on a life-size mockup of the space station as one way to prepare for their mission. Floating underwater represents one of the best ways to train on Earth for weightlessness.

— Tom Chao

Wednesday, April 24, 2013: Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket launched from Pad-0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, April 21, 2013. The test launch, delivering a mass simulated payload to orbit, marked the first flight of Antares. Orbital joins another private spaceflight company, SpaceX, in shouldering the responsibility for launching cargo to the International Space Station. Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to provide at least eight resupply flights to the station using Antares rockets carrying Cygnus spacecraft.

— Tom Chao

Thursday, April 25, 2013: Planetary nebula NGC 2438 stands out brightly at top left, while at lower right the Calabash Nebula glows very faintly as a kind of upright light-bulb shape. The Calabash Nebula is nicknamed the "Rotten Egg Nebula" owing to a relatively large amount of sulphur. Image obtained Dec. 2012-Jan 2013.

— Tom Chao

Friday, April 26, 2013: Robonaut 2 always keeps his dukes up, and remains ready for a knock-down drag-out fight aboard the International Space Station. After a operational session of Robonaut 2 controlled by ground personnel, Expedition 35 Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy looks like he’s ready for fisticuffs in the Destiny Laboratory of the ISS. Robonaut 2 represents the first humanoid robot to trave into space and the first U.S.-built robot to visit the space station. (Could this be the origin of Hideo Knutt’s Boltadrome?)

— Tom Chao

Monday, April 29, 2013: A blast of particles flew out of the sun to the right on April 18-19, 2013. A coronal mass ejection (CME), associated with a solar flare, sent the cloud out from an active region at the sun’s edge. A secondary blast pointed a little lower followed. This still frame from a video combines images from three instruments. Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the sun’s blast. The frames combine with C2 (red) and C3 (blue) coronagraph images from SOHO. (Coronagraph images block out the sun to observe the corona. The strut that holds the disk that occults the Sun in C3 creates the diagonal black line.)

— Tom Chao

Tuesday, April 30, 2013: At the heart of the Virgo cluster of galaxies lies this gargantuan galaxy, Messier 86. The Virgo cluster represents the nearest large condensation of matter in the local universe. The cluster contains thousands of galaxies, from dwarfs to giant ellipticals such as Messier 86, which harbors hundreds of billions of stars.

— Tom Chao