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Image of the Day Archives
Credit: NASA, ESA and Orsola De Marco (Macquarie University)
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I'll Shoot the Moon Right Out of the Sky for You
Credit: Ryan Lorey/Fulton County & Beyond
Monday, July 1, 2013: Astrophotographer Ryan Lorey sent in a picture of a picture of the supermoon, as seen in a camera viewscreen. The photo was taken from Gloversville in eastern Upstate New York, June 23, 2013.
— Tom Chao
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Double Shot
Credit: ESA & NASA/SOHO
Tuesday, July 2, 2013: Two large coronal mass ejections (CMEs) erupted from the sun into space in less than a day, on June 23-24, 2013, as witnessed by the STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft. The front edge of the first CME showed a bending motion up and to the left. Before that CME drifted out of the field of view, a second CME, more bulbous in shape, headed down and to the right. These CMEs suggest that powerful and frequent solar storms will intensify as the sun likely nears its maximum period of activity.
— Tom Chao
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Shine It All Around
Credit: Luca Parmitano (via Twitter as @astro_luca)
Wednesday, July 3, 2013: ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano tweeted this photo of clouds seen from the International Space Station on June 17, 2013. He wrote: "And this is why they’re called noctilucent #Volare pic.twitter.com/qejtxc7Z6o" Noctilucent (or night-shining) clouds form high in the atmosphere, where they reflect sunlight even after the sun has set below the horizon.
— Tom Chao
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Fireworks Like a Charm
Credit: Giuseppe Petricca
Thursday, July 4, 2013: Happy Fourth of July from SPACE.com! Astrophotographer Giuseppe Petricca sent in a photo of fireworks launched from the the middle of the river Arno in Pisa, Italy, with the first quarter moon in the sky as well. The photo was taken on June 16, 2013, the patron saint's day in Pisa. [
Read the Full Story Here.]
— Tom Chao
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Skies Are Turning Red
Credit: Gregg Ruppel
Friday, July 5, 2013: Astrophotographer Gregg Ruppel of Ellisville, MO, sent in an image of emission nebula Sh2-115 made during the supermoon period of June 20-22, 2013. He writes: “The full moon is the bane of deep sky astrophotographers, so when the moon is full many of us turn to Ha [hydrogen-alpha] or other narrow band filters to record emission nebulae.... This HII area is just two degrees from the bright star Deneb and is designated Sh2-115 in the Sharpless catalog of emission nebulae. The small round nebulosity near the top right is cataloged as Sh2-116 but is actually a planetary nebula (also designated as Abell 71 and PK 85+4.1).”
— Tom Chao
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Canadian Stars
Monday, July 8, 2013: Astrophotographer John Chumack sent in a photo of the Milky Way above Rice Lake, Keene, Ontario, Canada, taken before moonrise on a night in June 2013.
— Tom Chao
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Giant Baby Attacks Telescope
Credit: ESO/J. Girard
Tuesday, July 9, 2013: A trick of perspective makes it seem as though this child is much bigger than this 1.8-meter Auxiliary Telescope, part of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. ESO Astronomer Julien Girard took this photo of his daughter Maëlle during a family day at Paranal Observatory.
— Clara Moskowitz
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Beyond the Rim of Sunlight
Credit: NASA
Wednesday, July 10, 2013: A patch of reflected sunlight gleams off the Earth's oceans in this view from the International Space Station by an Expedition 36 astronaut captured on July 4. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is seen docked at top, with a large mass of storm clouds over the Atlantic Ocean near Brazil and the Equator far below.
— Tariq Malik
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As High as the Highest Volcano
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Friday, July 12, 2013: This image captures hundreds of frozen lava flows that once ran down the flanks of Mars' impressive Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. The hundreds of narrow, individual lava flows contrast starkly with the smooth lava plains that surround the volcano. Olympus Mons stands about 13.7 miles high (22 km), more than double the height of Mauna Kea, the tallest volcano on Earth.
— Tom Chao
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Ghost in the Shell
Credit: Terry Hancock, Fred Herrmann and André van der Hoeven
Monday, July 15, 2013: In 1764, Charles Messier discovered this celestial object, M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, the 27th on Messier’s famous list, and the first planetary nebula to be included. The image shown here represents an international collaboration between Andre van der Hoeven in Holland, Fred Herrmann in Alabama and Terry Hancock in Fremont, Michigan. Almost 40 hours of data collected using different telescopes and CCD cameras combine in the final image. Says Hancock, "Using narrow band filters and very long exposures we were able to capture the outer hydrogen and oxygen shell of M27, which is not normally visible in amateur images."
— Tom Chao
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(Not) True Colors
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell
Tuesday, July 16, 2013: Ligeia Mare represents the second largest known body of liquid on Saturn's moon, Titan, shown here in a false-color image obtained by NASA's Cassini mission. Ligeia Mare contains liquid hydrocarbons, such as ethane and methane, and makes up one of the many seas and lakes located in Titan's north polar region. The image consists of a false-color mosaic of synthetic aperture radar images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft between February 2006 and April 2007. In this image, liquids, dark to the radar, appear black and the solid surface of Titan, which appears bright to the radar, appears yellow. Image released May 22, 2013.
— Tom Chao
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Quiet Spot
Credit: NASA/SDO
Wednesday, July 17, 2013: One of the largest sunspot groups of this solar cycle rotated across the sun July 3-11, 2013, but remained surprisingly quiet in terms of solar activity. This still came from a video made of Intensitygrams, taken by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument on SDO. As a scale reference, the largest spot could contain a couple of Earths.
— Tom Chao
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(Southern) Winter Is Coming
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Thursday, July 18, 2013: The shadows of Saturn's rings slide farther southward as Saturn approaches southern winter (or northern summer). Saturn now lies almost exactly halfway between its equinox (August 2009) and southern winter solstice (in May 2017). This view centers on an area at 22 degrees south latitude on Saturn. Cassini spacecraft took the image with its wide-angle camera on May 6, 2013.
— Tom Chao
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Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
Credit: Meldeine Sipes
Friday, July 19, 2013: Astrophotographer Meldeine Sipes sent in a photo of the night sky over Sequoia National Park in California. She writes: “Over the 4th of July weekend, my family went on a road trip to the Sequoia National Park to see giants and stars. For the first time, we saw the night sky as nature intended. The sequoias reminded us how small we are, and the night sky showed us that the giants surrounding us were smaller than we could ever imagine.”
— Tom Chao
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Silver River Turning
Credit: Karen Nyberg (via Twitter as @AstroKarenN)
Monday, July 22, 2013: Astronaut Karen Nyberg tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on July 19, 2013. She wrote: "Sunset over the Rio de la Plata in South America. July 15. pic.twitter.com/my3ViPDmB0"
— Tom Chao
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Doppelgänger
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Tuesday, July 23, 2013: NGC 6744 gleams in this image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. NGC 6744 lies in the constellation of Pavo about 30 million light-years away, and this galaxy represents one of the most similar to our Milky Way in the local universe. The ultraviolet view shown here displays the extent of the spiral arms, and demonstrates that star formation can occur in the outer regions of galaxies. NGC 6744 looms larger than the Milky Way, having a disk stretching 175,000 light-years across. Image released June 28, 2013.
— Tom Chao
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Ice Station Concordia
Credit: ESA
Wednesday, July 24, 2013: Southern stars gleam over the Franco-Italian Concordia outpost in Antarctica, the remotest base on earth. Currently the station experiences the deepest part of southern winter, with no sun rising above the horizon. Situated on a plateau 10500 feet (3200 meters) above sea level in extremely dry, cold, brutal conditions, the isolated location makes a good testing ground for future space missions. Italian electronics technician Antonio Litterio took this photo, released on July 23, 2013. He wrote on the
Concordia blog, “I went out to take photos and I tasted the icy wind, the snow whipping up to cut my face, and the darkness that swallows you up completely.”
— Tom Chao
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Moons That Pass in the Night
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Thursday, July 25, 2013: Pandora, moon of Saturn, looks misshaped next to its compatriot, Mimas, as Pandora lacks sufficient gravity to pull itself into a sphere. Researchers believe that the elongated shape of Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) may give clues as to how it and other moons near the rings formed. Mimas stretches 246 miles, or 396 kilometers across. The Cassini spacecraft took the image in blue light on May 14, 2013, at a distance of approximately 690,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Mimas.
— Tom Chao
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Ultraviolet Scene
Credit: NASA/SDO
Friday, July 26, 2013: A large disturbance of the magnetic field on the sun took place on July 17, 2013, as seen in this still from a video made by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory. The disturbance likely took the form of a coronal mass ejection followed by a number of bright coronal loops coiling in a long line. The image was taken in extreme ultraviolet light. The very dark area near the top of the image represents an elongated coronal hole.
— Tom Chao
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The Satellite Looks Down
Credit: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE-Optique Photo Video du CSG
Monday, July 29, 2013: On July 25, 2013, an Ariane 5 lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana carrying Europe's largest telecom satellite, Alphasat. The satellite was delivered into the target geostationary transfer orbit on about 28 minutes after launch.
— Tom Chao
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Blazing Star
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine
Tuesday, July 30, 2013: Spiral galaxy NGC 4517 looms in space with a size slightly bigger than our Milky Way. From Hubble Space Telescope’s vantage point orbiting Earth, the galaxy appears edge-on, crowned by a very bright star. The star actually lies much closer to us than the galaxy making it appear large and dazzling in the photo. Visible and infrared light gathered by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope combines in this image. Contestant Gilles Chapdelaine entered a version of this image into the Hubble’s Hidden treasures image processing competition. Image released July 29, 2013.
— Tom Chao
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Rip It Up
Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum
Wednesday, July 31, 2013: Intriuging structures mark galaxy NGC 474’s unusual appearance. Astronomer call it a shell galaxy owing to stars creating the well-defined structures through some as-yet-not-understood process. Researchers do know, however, that galaxies collide over hundreds of millions of years in interactions called tidal stripping, as galaxies rip each other apart.
— Tom Chao
