Image of the Day: May 2012

By Space.com Staff
published

Talkin' 'Bout the Young Style … Talking ‘Bout the Old Style Too

Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum

Tuesday, May 29, 2012: Star cluster M46 is a young celestial object only some hundreds of millions of years old, containing a large population of massive blue stars. M46 lies near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, and the star cluster is coincidentally joined in this photo by a star in the foreground, NGC 2348, a much older star already at the stage of planetary nebula.

— Tom Chao

The Romance of the Telescope

ESO/B. Tafreshi/TWAN (twanight.org)

Wednesday, May 30, 2012: The antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope stand against the the Milky Way, in this photo taken on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile's Atacama region. The constellations of Carina (The Keel) and Vela (The Sails) glow in this picture. The Milky Way shines from middle top left to middle bottom right. The bright orange star in the upper left is Suhail in Vela.

— Tom Chao

Take Me in Your Arm

ESA/NASA (via André Kuipers on Flickr)

Thursday, May 31, 2012: SpaceX's Dragon capsule was grappled by the Canadarm2 of the International Space Station on May 25, 2012. The photograph was posted on the Internet by Dutch astronaut André Kuipers aboard the station.

— Tom Chao

Image of the Day Archives

NASA, ESA and Orsola De Marco (Macquarie University)

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

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Space.com Staff
Space.com Staff
News and editorial team

Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. Originally founded in 1999, Space.com is, and always has been, the passion of writers and editors who are space fans and also trained journalists. Our current news team consists of Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik; Editor Hanneke Weitering, Senior Space Writer Mike Wall; Senior Writer Meghan Bartels; Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd, Senior Writer Tereza Pultarova and Staff Writer Alexander Cox, focusing on e-commerce. Senior Producer Steve Spaleta oversees our space videos, with Diana Whitcroft as our Social Media Editor.