On Dec. 24, 2013, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, Expedition 38 Flight Engineer, participates in the second of two U.S. spacewalks, spread over a four-day period, which were designed to allow the crew to change out a faulty water pump on the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. He was joined on both spacewalks by NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, whose image shows up in Hopkins’ helmet visor.

Trying to comprehend the expanse of space is a daunting task. Just reading about the distance between Earth and the nearest star/planet/galaxy is enough to boggle most minds. So the thought of miniaturizing something so expansive as the Cosmos is both fascinating and counter-intuitive.

Last month reddit user TheScienceLlama used the Tilt-Shift filter in Photoshop to create a stunning series of space images. While many associate the technique with tilt-shift photography, it’s more accurate to describe this particular Photoshop process as miniature faking or the diorama effect.

The effect is achieved by blurring parts of the photo to simulate a shallow depth of field. You can read more about the technique here and here.

If you enjoy the series below, be sure to check out the desktop wallpapers that reddit user Wattsit made using the same effect.

[via TheScienceLlama]

ISS038-E-042992 (10 Feb. 2014) — One of the Expedition 38 crew members aboard the International Space Station downlinked this vertical 600mm night view of Sochi, Russia, which clearly shows the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics while they are just a few days under way. Fisht Stadium where the Opening Ceremonies were held on Feb. 7 is easily recognizable as the bright circular structure.

Sochi is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the Black Sea coast near the border between Georgia/Abkhazia and Russia. It has an area of 1,353 square miles or 3,505 square kilometers.

In advance of tonight’s 86th Annual Academy Awards, NASA toasts Gravity—which has been nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture—with an amazing 31 picture gallery of real-life images from space.

The album was uploaded this weekend to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Flickr page, which consistently provides some of the most awe-inspiring images you will ever see.

Below you will find a selection of the Sifter’s personal favorites. You can see the entire album on Flickr

Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless II, is seen further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut has ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger’s payload bay, McCandless went “free-flying” to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space. (02/12/1984)

The bright sun greets the International Space Station in this Nov. 22 scene from the Russian section of the orbital outpost, photographed by one of the STS-129 crew members.

Backdropped by Earth’s horizon and the blackness of space, the International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an STS-134 crew member on the space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 11:55 p.m. (EDT) on May 29, 2011. Endeavour spent 11 days, 17 hours and 41 minutes attached to the orbiting laboratory.

Silhouetted against the Earth, Atlantis flies into the rising Sun in this photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station on July 19, 2011. On July 20, the shuttle undocked from the station for the final time and began preparations to return home. During their 13 days in space, the shuttle astronauts supplied the International Space Station with a new logistics module, tested tools, technologies, and techniques to refuel satellites in space, and collected old equipment from the space station.
 
Atlantis is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center at 5:56 a.m. local time on July 21, concluding NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program. In addition to the science the shuttle and earlier programs enabled, human space flight has given us a unique view of planet Earth, which includes the now iconic spectacle of Earth rising over the Moon taken during the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969, and the photographs taken from Atlantis during its last full day in space on July 20, 2011. In fact every flight is a mission to planet Earth, as described in the Earth Observatory’s tribute to the shuttle program.

With his feet secured on a restraint on the space station remote manipulator system’s robotic arm or Canadarm2, NASA astronaut Mike Fossum (frame center) holds the Robotics Refueling Mission payload, which was the focus of one of the primary chores accomplished on a six and a half hour spacewalk on July 12. The failed pump module is with DEXTRE on left side of the photo. NASA astronauts Fossum and Ron Garan performed the six-hour, 31-minute spacewalk, which represents the final scheduled extravehicular activity during shuttle missions.

Astronaut Sunita L. Williams, Expedition 14 flight engineer, used a pistol grip tool as she worked on the International Space Station in the first of three spacewalks slated to occur over a nine-day period. During the 7-hour 55-minute spacewalk that took place on Jan. 31, 2007, Williams and station commander Michael E. Lopez-Alegria (out of frame) reconfigured one of two cooling loops for the Destiny laboratory module, rearranged electrical connections and secured the starboard radiator of the P6 truss after retraction.

Inside the Cupola, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, an Expedition 36 flight engineer, uses a 400mm lens on a digital still camera to photograph a target of opportunity on Earth some 250 miles below him and the International Space Station. Cassidy has been aboard the orbital outpost since late March and will continue his stay into September.

Beautiful Earth and NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-71), July 2, 1995 at 11:40:12 GMT As Seen From the Russian Federation Mir Space Station Latitude (LAT): 44.6 · Longitude (LON): 37.0 · Altitude (ALT): 210 Nautical Miles · Sun Azimuth (AZI): 240° · Sun Elevation Angle (ELEV): 57°

One of the Expedition 36 crew members aboard the International Space Station used a 50mm lens to record this image of a large mass of storm clouds over the Atlantic Ocean near Brazil and the Equator on July 4, 2013. A Russian spacecraft, docked to the orbiting outpost, partially covers a small patch of sunglint on the ocean waters in a break in the clouds.

This close-up view of the eye of Hurricane Isabel was taken by one of the Expedition 7 crew members onboard the International Space Station (ISS). “It is quite interesting to look at storms, said Ed Lu, Expedition 7 science officer. “When you see a large cyclone, you can see the spiral structure, and you can actually see – if there is a hurricane – you actually see the eye of the hurricane. You can look right down into it if you are lucky enough to go right over the top.”

The city lights of Spain and Portugal define the Iberian Peninsula in this photograph from the International Space Station (ISS). Several large metropolitan areas are visible, marked by their relatively large and brightly lit areas, including the capital cities of Madrid, Spain—located near the center of the peninsula’s interior—and Lisbon, Portugal—located along the southwestern coastline. The ancient city of Seville, visible to the north of the Strait of Gibraltar, is one of the largest cities in Spain. The astronaut view is looking toward the east, and is part of a time-lapse series of images.
 
The network of smaller cities and towns along the coastline and in the interior attest to the extent of the human presence on the Iberian landscape. The blurring of city lights is caused by thin cloud cover (image left and center), while cloud tops are dimly illuminated by moonlight. Though obscured, the lights of France are visible near the horizon line on the upper left, while the lights of northern Africa are more clearly discernible at right. The faint gold and green line of airglow—caused by ultraviolet radiation exciting the gas molecules in the upper atmosphere—parallels the horizon (or Earth limb).

Expedition 27 Flight Engineer Cady Coleman peeks out of a window of the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft shortly after she and Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli landed southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 24, 2011. NASA Astronaut Coleman, Russian Cosmonaut Kondratyev and Italian Astronaut Nespoli are returning from more than five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 26 and 27 crews.

A close-up of Astronaut John Grunsfeld shows the reflection of Astronaut Andrew Feustel, perched on the robotic arm and taking the photo. The pair teamed together on three of the five spacewalks during Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009.

Earth and its Moon are nicely framed in this image taken from the aft windows of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. Discovery – on mission STS-95 – was flying over the Atlantic Ocean at the time this image was taken.

The thin line of Earth’s atmosphere and the setting sun are featured in this image photographed by a crew member on the International Space Station while space shuttle Atlantis (STS-129) remains docked with the station. 11/23/09.

This past Sunday (9 March 2014) marked the premier of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new 13-part Cosmos is a 21st-century follow-up to the landmark 1980 series hosted by famed astronomer Carl Sagan, who passed in 1996.

The reboot was written by Ann Druyan (Sagn’s widow) and Steven Soter, whom both collaborated on the original series. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane—who was a huge fan of the original series—serves as executive producer on the new show.

To celebrate the series remake, NASA released an incredible 42-picture Flickr album entitled, ‘Cosmos’ – NASA Images of a Space-Time Odyssey. The Sifter has compiled our personal favourites below, but be sure to head over to Flickr to see all of the breathtaking images in the gallery!

The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant, all that remains of a tremendous stellar explosion. Observers in China and Japan recorded the supernova nearly 1,000 years ago, in 1054.

Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory’s launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery more than a century ago. The nebula is a favorite target for amateur and professional astronomers. It is shadowy in optical light. It appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that easily are visible in infrared light.

The Cat’s Eye Nebula, one of the first planetary nebulae discovered, also has one of the most complex forms known to this kind of nebula. Eleven rings, or shells, of gas make up the Cat’s Eye. The image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) shows a bull’s eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat’s Eye. Each ‘ring’ is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky — that’s why it appears bright along its outer edge.
 
Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun’s mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible.

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. This is a lighten blended version of the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths.

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. Swirls of green and red appear in an aurora over Whitehorse, Yukon on the night of September 3, 2012. The aurora was due to a coronal mass ejection from the sun, which erupted on August 31.

This image of Asia and Australia at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet. The nighttime view was made possible by the new satellite’s “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite. VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. In this case, auroras, fires, and other stray light have been removed to emphasize the city lights.
 
Named for satellite meteorology pioneer Verner Suomi, NPP flies over any given point on Earth’s surface twice each day at roughly 1:30 a.m. and p.m. The polar-orbiting satellite flies 824 kilometers (512 miles) above the surface, sending its data once per orbit to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway, and continuously to local direct broadcast users distributed around the world.

JANUARY 9, 2014: The vibrant magentas and blues in this Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy M83 reveal that the galaxy is ablaze with star formation. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death. The galaxy, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, lies 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra.

At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished. In the first decades of the century, it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost a thousand times closer to Earth). In the years that followed, it gradually dimmed again and by the 20th century was totally invisible to the naked eye.
 
NASA’s Hubble Telescope captured an image of Eta Carinae. This image consists of ultraviolet and visible light images from the High Resolution Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 30 arcseconds across. The larger of the two stars in the Eta Carinae system is a huge and unstable star that is nearing the end of its life, and the event that the 19th century astronomers observed was a stellar near-death experience. Scientists call these outbursts supernova impostor events, because they appear similar to supernovae but stop just short of destroying their star.
 
Although 19th century astronomers did not have telescopes powerful enough to see the 1843 outburst in detail, its effects can be studied today. The huge clouds of matter thrown out a century and a half ago, known as the Homunculus Nebula, have been a regular target for Hubble since its launch in 1990. This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys High Resolution Channel, is the most detailed yet, and shows how the material from the star was not thrown out in a uniform manner, but forms a huge dumbbell shape.
 
Eta Carinae is not only interesting because of its past, but also because of its future. It is one of the closest stars to Earth that is likely to explode in a supernova in the relatively near future (though in astronomical timescales the “near future” could still be a million years away). When it does, expect an impressive view from Earth, far brighter still than its last outburst: SN 2006gy, the brightest supernova ever observed, came from a star of the same type, though from a galaxy over 200 million light-years away.

This image is a composite of visible (or optical), radio, and X-ray data of the full shell of the supernova remnant from SN 1006. The radio data show much of the extent that the X-ray image shows. In contrast, only a small linear filament in the northwest corner of the shell is visible in the optical data. The object has an angular size of roughly 30 arcminutes (0.5 degree, or about the size of the full moon), and a physical size of 60 light-years (18 parsecs) based on its distance of nearly 7,000 light-years. The small green box along the bright filament at the top of the image corresponds to the dimensions of the Hubble release image.

In this composite image, visible-light observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are combined with infrared data from the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona to assemble a dramatic view of the well-known Ring Nebula. The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the constellation Lyra, the nebula is a popular target for amateur astronomers.

This brand new Hubble photo is of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but is even more striking in appearance. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed ‘Suomi NPP’ on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

In this amazing aerial photograph by NASA, we see the rollout of space shuttle Atlantis to the launching pad on 4 September 2008. STS-125 was the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). After several delays, launch occurred on 11 May 2009 at 2:01 pm EDT. Landing occurred on 24 May at 11:39 am EDT, with the mission lasting a total of just under 13 days. [source]

According to a NASA press release of the event:

The fully assembled space shuttle, consisting of the orbiter, external tank and twin solid rocket boosters are mounted on a mobile launcher platform and will be delivered to the pad atop a crawler-transporter. The crawler will travel slower than 1 mph during the 3.4-mile journey. The process is expected to take approximately six hours.

Crawler-transporters are a pair of tracked vehicles used to transport spacecraft from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39. Kennedy Space Center has been using the same two crawlers, nicknamed “Hans” and “Franz” for the bodybuilding characters, since their initial delivery in 1965. In their lifetime, they have traveled more than 5,500 km (3,400 mi), about the same driving distance as from Miami to Seattle. [source]

In this incredible capture taken on 30 September 1994, we see a major eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka as seen by the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour (mission: STS-68). The eruption cloud reached 60,000 feet above sea level and the winds carried ash as far as 640 miles (1,030 km) southeast from the volcano into the North Pacific air routes. This picture was made with a large format Linhof camera. While astronauts used handheld camera’s to keep up with the Kamchatka event, instruments in the cargo bay of Endeavour recorded data to support the Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-2) mission.

Klyuchevskaya Sopka is a stratovolcano, the highest mountain on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia and the highest active volcano of Eurasia. Its steep, symmetrical cone towers about 100 kilometres (60 mi) from the Bering Sea. The volcano is part of the natural Volcanoes of Kamchatka UNESCO World Heritage Site. Klyuchevskaya’s first recorded eruption occurred in 1697 and it has been almost continuously active ever since. [source]

Click here for the high-resolution version of this amazing image.

NOAA’s GOES-East satellite captured this stunning view of the Americas on Earth Day, April 22, 2014 at 11:45 UTC/7:45 a.m. EDT. The data from GOES-East was made into an image by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

In North America, clouds associated with a cold front stretch from Montreal, Canada, south through the Tennessee Valley, and southwest to southern Texas bringing rain east of the front today. A low pressure area in the Pacific Northwest is expected to bring rainfall in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, stretching into the upper Midwest, according to NOAA’s National Weather Service. That low is also expected to bring precipitation north into the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. Another Pacific low is moving over southern Nevada and the National Weather Service expects rain from that system to fall in central California, Nevada, and northern Utah. [source]

Near the equator, GOES imagery shows a line of pop up thunderstorms. Those thunderstorms are associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The ITCZ encircles the Earth near the equator. In South America, convective (rapidly rising air that condenses and forms clouds) thunderstorms pepper Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and northwestern and southeastern Brazil. [source]

GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth’s surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric “triggers” for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes. [source]

Earth Day is an annual event, celebrated on April 22, on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first celebrated in 1970, and is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and celebrated in more than 192 countries each year.

From open prairie land on the 1625-acre Johnson Space Center site, a Johnson Space Center photographer took this multi-frame composite image of the so-called “Blood Moon” lunar eclipse in the early hours of April 15.

The eclipse is a phenomenon that occurs when the Earth, moon and sun are in perfect alignment, blanketing the moon in the Earth’s shadow. The United States will not be able to witness a full lunar eclipse in its entirety again until 2019. As for the blood moon reference, this is a term that the media has picked up and run with recently. It is in reference to the four ‘red moons’ of a lunar tetrad. A lunar tetrad refers to four successive total lunar eclipses with no partial lunar eclipses in between, each of which is separated from the other by six lunar months (six full moons). There’s a good write-up on EarthSky about the whole ‘blood moon’ thing.

[Cosmic Fairy Lights] This sparkling jumble is Messier 5 — a globular cluster consisting of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by their collective gravity. But Messier 5 is no normal globular cluster. At 13 billion years old it dates back to close to the beginning of the Universe, which is some 13.8 billion years of age. It is also one of the biggest clusters known, and at only 24,500 light-years away, it is no wonder that Messier 5 is a popular site for astronomers to train their telescopes on.

Messier 5 also presents a puzzle. Stars in globular clusters grow old and wise together. So Messier 5 should, by now, consist of old, low-mass red giants and other ancient stars. But it is actually teeming with young blue stars known as blue stragglers. These stars spring to life when stars collide, or rip material from one another. [source]

Pre-Winter Storm, Southwestern Australia (NASA, International Space Station, 03/29/14)

One of the Expedition 39 crew members aboard the International Space Station on March 29 used a 14mm lens on a digital still camera to photograph this pre-winter storm located just off the coast of southwestern Australia. A solar array panel on the orbital outpost is in the left side of the frame. [source]

In Crew Earth Observations (CEO), crewmembers on the International Space Station (ISS) photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles (322 km) above the surface. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions.

A major emphasis of CEO is to monitor disaster response events in support of the International Disaster Charter (IDC). CEO imagery provides researchers on Earth with key data to understand the planet from the perspective of the ISS. Crewmembers have been photographing Earth from space since the early Mercury missions beginning in 1961. The continuous images taken from the ISS ensure this record remains unbroken. [source]

Expedition 39 was the 39th expedition to the International Space Station. It marked the first time the ISS had been under command of a Japanese astronaut, space veteran Koichi Wakata. After Expedition 21 in 2009 and Expedition 35 in 2013, it was only the third time an ISS-crew has been led by a non-NASA or RSA crew member.

In this amazing capture, we see Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji from space. The photo was taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station on 27 May 2010 using a Kodak DCS460 Electronic Still Camera with a 800 mm lens.

Mount Fuji, located on Honshu Island, is the highest mountain in Japan at 3,776.24m (12,389 ft). An active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707–08, Mount Fuji lies about 100 kilometres (60 mi) south-west of Tokyo and can be seen from there on a clear day. Mount Fuji’s exceptionally symmetrical cone is snow-capped several months a year. [source]

This is the first image ever taken of Earth from the surface of a planet beyond the Moon. It was taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit one hour before sunrise on the 63rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. (March 8, 2004)

The image is a mosaic of images taken by the rover’s navigation camera showing a broad view of the sky, and an image taken by the rover’s panoramic camera of Earth. The contrast in the panoramic camera image was increased two times to make Earth easier to see. The inset shows a combination of four panoramic camera images zoomed in on Earth. The arrow points to Earth. Earth was too faint to be detected in images taken with the panoramic camera’s color filters.

The image is reminiscent of the famous pale blue dot capture by Voyager 1. If you have never heard Carl Sagan’s famous ‘Pale Blue Dot’ speech, check it out here.

[Taken 20 July 1969] Earth Rise as Seen From Lunar Surface: This incredible image of the Earth rise was taken during lunar orbit by the Apollo 11 mission crew in July of 1969. The first manned lunar mission, Apollo 11 launched aboard a Saturn V launch vehicle from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida on July 16, 1969 and safely returned to Earth on July 24, 1969. The 3-man crew aboard the flight consisted of Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, Command Module pilot; and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module pilot.

Carrying astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., the Lunar Module (LM) ‘Eagle’ was the first crewed vehicle to land on the Moon. Astronaut Collins piloted the Command Module in a parking orbit around the Moon. The LM landed on the moon’s surface in the region known as Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquility). The crew collected 47 pounds of lunar surface material which was returned to Earth for analysis. The surface exploration was concluded in 2.5 hours. With the success of Apollo 11, the national objective to land men on the Moon and return them safely to Earth had been accomplished. The Saturn V launch vehicle was developed by the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun.

Fifteen years ago, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since its deployment on July 23, 1999, Chandra has helped revolutionize our understanding of the universe through its unrivaled X-ray vision.

Chandra, one of NASA’s current “Great Observatories,” along with the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, is specially designed to detect X-ray emission from hot and energetic regions of the universe.

With its superb sensitivity and resolution, Chandra has observed objects ranging from the closest planets and comets to the most distant known quasars. It has imaged the remains of exploded stars, or supernova remnants, observed the region around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and discovered black holes across the universe. Chandra also has made a major advance in the study of dark matter by tracing the separation of dark matter from normal matter in collisions between galaxy clusters. It is also contributing to research on the nature of dark energy.

Chandra orbits far above Earth’s X-ray absorbing atmosphere at an altitude up to 139,000 km (86,500 mi), allowing for long observations unobscured by Earth’s shadow. When it was carried into space in 1999, it was the largest satellite ever launched by the shuttle.

To celebrate this incredible instrument’s 15th birthday, the Sifter has compiled 15 standout photos Chandra helped capture over the years. Click here to see the complete Chandra X-ray Observatory gallery on Flickr.

[via NASA]

A galaxy about 23 million light years away is the site of impressive, ongoing fireworks. Rather than paper, powder and fire, this galactic light show involves a giant black hole, shock waves and vast reservoirs of gas. This galactic fireworks display is taking place in NGC 4258, also known as M106, a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way. This galaxy is famous, however, for something that our galaxy doesn’t have – two extra spiral arms that glow in X-ray, optical and radio light. These features, or anomalous arms, are not aligned with the plane of the galaxy, but instead intersect with it.

An optical image, from the Digitized Sky Survey, of a large field centered on the Flame Nebula. A comparison with the composite image from Chandra and Spitzer – shown as an overlay – demonstrates how powerful X-ray and infrared images are for studying star forming regions. The central cluster of stars, NGC 2024, is clearly observed in the X-ray and optical images but is not visible in the optical image.

This composite image shows one of the clusters, NGC 2024, which is found in the center of the so-called Flame Nebula about 1,400 light years from Earth. In this image, X-rays from Chandra are seen as purple, while infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red, green, and blue.
 
A study of NGC 2024 and the Orion Nebula Cluster, another region where many stars are forming, suggest that the stars on the outskirts of these clusters are older than those in the central regions. This is different from what the simplest idea of star formation predicts, where stars are born first in the center of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust when the density is large enough. Read more here

Centaurus A is the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky — making it an ideal target for amateur astronomers — and is famous for the dust lane across its middle and a giant jet blasting away from the supermassive black hole at its center. Cen A is an active galaxy about 12 million light years from Earth.

NGC 6946 is a medium-sized, face-on spiral galaxy about 22 million light years away from Earth. In the past century, eight supernovas have been observed to explode in the arms of this galaxy. Chandra observations (purple) have, in fact, revealed three of the oldest supernovas ever detected in X-rays, giving more credence to its nickname of the “Fireworks Galaxy.” This composite image also includes optical data from the Gemini Observatory in red, yellow, and cyan.

A region of glowing gas in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way galaxy, NGC 3576 is located about 9,000 light years from Earth. Such nebulas present a tableau of the drama of the evolution of massive stars, from the formation in vast dark clouds, their relatively brief (a few million years) lives, and the eventual destruction in supernova explosions. The diffuse X-ray data detected by Chandra (blue) are likely due to the winds from young, massive stars that are blowing throughout the nebula. Optical data from ESO are shown in orange and yellow.

Stars like the Sun can become remarkably photogenic at the end of their life. A good example is NGC 2392, which is located about 4,200 light years from Earth. NGC 2392, nicknamed the “Eskimo Nebula”, is what astronomers call a planetary nebula. This designation, however, is deceiving because planetary nebulas actually have nothing to do with planets. The term is simply a historic relic since these objects looked like planetary disks to astronomers in earlier times looking through small optical telescopes. Read more here.

The remnant, called W49B, is about a thousand years old, as seen from Earth, and is at a distance about 26,000 light years away. The supernova explosions that destroy massive stars are generally symmetrical, with the stellar material blasting away more or less evenly in all directions. However, in the W49B supernova, material near the poles of the doomed rotating star was ejected at a much higher speed than material emanating from its equator. Jets shooting away from the star’s poles mainly shaped the supernova explosion and its aftermath. Read more here.

This is an inset from this gorgeous panel image. Main caption: This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat’s Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826. Read more here.

This composite image shows a superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 160,000 light years from Earth. Many new stars, some of them very massive, are forming in the star cluster NGC 1929, which is embedded in the nebula N44, so named because it is the 44th nebula in a catalog of such objects in the Magellanic Clouds. The massive stars produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds, and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas. The winds and supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities called superbubbles in the surrounding gas. Read more here.

When radiation and winds from massive young stars impact clouds of cool gas, they can trigger new generations of stars to form. This is what may be happening in this object known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula (or its official name of IC 1396A).

This image provides a view into the central region of a galaxy that is similar in overall appearance to our own Milky Way, but contains a much more active supermassive black hole within the white area near the top. This galaxy, known as NGC 4945, is only about 13 million light years from Earth and is seen edge-on.

This composite image shows a beautiful X-ray and optical view of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a supernova remnant located in our Galaxy about 11,000 light years away. These are the remains of a massive star that exploded about 330 years ago, as measured in Earth’s time frame. Read more here.

A star’s spectacular death in the constellation Taurus was observed on Earth as the supernova of 1054 A.D. Now, almost a thousand years later, a super dense object — called a neutron star — left behind by the explosion is seen spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles into the expanding debris field known as the Crab Nebula. X-ray data from Chandra provide significant clues to the workings of this mighty cosmic “generator,” which is producing energy at the rate of 100,000 suns.

30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula because its glowing filaments resemble spider legs, is located in the neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, and is one of the largest star-forming regions located close to the Milky Way. At the center of 30 Doradus, thousands of massive stars are blowing off material and producing intense radiation along with powerful winds. The Chandra X-ray Observatory detects gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by these stellar winds and also by supernova explosions.

[12 December 2006] Backdropped by a colorful Earth, astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr. (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang, both STS-116 mission specialists, participate in the mission’s first of three planned sessions of extravehicular activity (EVA) as construction resumes on the International Space Station. The landmasses depicted are the South Island (left) and North Island (right) of New Zealand.

The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest human-made object ever to orbit the Earth. The station is so large that it could not be launched all at once — it is being built piecemeal with large sections added continually by flights of the Space Shuttle. To function, the ISS needs trusses to keep it rigid and to route electricity and liquid coolants. These trusses are huge, extending over 15 meters long, and with masses over 10,000 kilograms. Pictured above earlier this month, astronauts Robert L. Curbeam (USA) and Christer Fuglesang (Sweden) work to attach a new truss segment to the ISS and begin to upgrade the power grid. [source]

In a tweet last month, astronaut Buzz Aldrin informed the world that he was responsible for taking the first ever selfie in space during the Gemini 12 mission in 1966. The mission took place from November 11-15 lasting 3 days, 22 hours and 34 minutes. The two-man crew included Aldrin and James Lovell Jr.

The mission was Aldrin’s first spaceflight. He would later become the second person to ever walk on the moon after Neil Armstrong on 21 July 1969.

Click here to see an interview with CNN about the memorable moment.

[NASA April 21, 2010] Perhaps the most impressive of cloud formations, cumulonimbus (from the Latin for “pile” and “rain cloud”) clouds form due to vigorous convection (rising and overturning) of warm, moist, and unstable air. Surface air is warmed by the Sun-heated ground surface and rises; if sufficient atmospheric moisture is present, water droplets will condense as the air mass encounters cooler air at higher altitudes. The air mass itself also expands and cools as it rises due to decreasing atmospheric pressure, a process known as adiabatic cooling. This type of convection is common in tropical latitudes year-round and during the summer season at higher latitudes.
 
As water in the rising air mass condenses and changes from a gas to a liquid state, it releases energy to its surroundings, further heating the surrounding air and leading to more convection and rising of the cloud mass to higher altitudes. This leads to the characteristic vertical “towers” associated with cumulonimbus clouds, an excellent example of which is visible in this astronaut photograph. If enough moisture is present to condense and heat the cloud mass through several convective cycles, a tower can rise to altitudes of approximately 10 kilometers at high latitudes and to 20 kilometers in the tropics before encountering a region of the atmosphere known as the tropopause—the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. For more info, visit NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Flickr.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this. 10 minutes ago on the #ISS #aurora”

Those were the words of astronaut Reid Wiseman who is currently aboard the International Space Station. He posted the photo above to Twitter last night at 6:04 pm ET (19 Aug 2014).

If you enjoy incredible photos of our planet from space, be sure to follow Reid on Twitter where he actively shares the world as he sees it from the ISS.

An aurora (astralis in the south and borealis in the north) is a natural light display in the sky particularly in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere (thermosphere). The charged particles originate in the magnetosphere and solar wind and, on Earth, are directed by the Earth’s magnetic field into the atmosphere. [source]

For more incredible photos of auroras, click here.

Watch Expedition 38 crew members Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio give a brief geography lesson as they hurtle through space at 27,600 km/h (17,100 mph) onboard the International Space Station.