Space Shots: The Universe's Best Images

Moon-Based Telescope Observation Of M101 Spiral.
Is First Galaxy Imaged From The Moon



Great Astronomy From The Moon Potential Confirmed By China Chang’e-3 Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope LUT Observations On 2 December At Beginning Of Lunar Day 13; Iconic 2014 Photo To Be Refined Further By NAOC Astronomers In Beijing, In Collaboration With ILOA And UHH, CFHT Lunar Astronomy Team On Hawai`i Island USA, Introducing Bright, Robust New Year 2015

Image Credit: National Astronomical Observatories of China & International Lunar Observatory Association; University of Hawaii Hilo, Canada France Hawaii Telescope

Breaking News Special New Year EditionThursday / 1 January 2015 | Lunar Enterprise Daily

Pillars of Creation

The Eagle Nebula, Revisited. NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The iconic Hubble photograph, the Pillars of Creation, caused a stir when it was released in 1995. Now, 20 years later, the Hubble has revisited the Eagle nebula to capture a sharper vision of the 'Pillars', towers of gas that are more than five light-years tall.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken a bigger and sharper photograph of the iconic Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation," shown at right. The original 1995 Hubble image of the gaseous towers, taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, is shown at left.
Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble a wider view of the pillars, which stretch about 5 light-years high in the new image. The dark, finger-like feature at bottom right may be a smaller version of the giant pillars. The image was taken with Hubble's versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3.
The pillars are bathed in the blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth.
In the new image at right, oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green.
Object Names: M16, Eagle Nebula, NGC 6611
Image Type: Astronomical/Annotated



The Moon and the Earth and then changing positions
Fantastic shots taken during Chang'e 5T1's mission 

Orbiting Mars. NASA

This illustration is supposed to be of MAVEN, a NASA spacecraft that entered orbit around Mars September 2014.

A Cloud City Above Hellish Surface Of Venus

Venus Cloud City. NASA

An artist rendering of the HAVOC project

The planet Venus, named for the Roman goddess of Love, certainly wouldn’t be a very loving place to live. On the surface, Venus hosts scorching temperatures of more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit, a heat capable of melting lead, as well as an atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than Earth's. That’s the same kind of pressure found at nearly 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
These factors are somewhat disheartening, as Venus would make a great place for humans to explore otherwise. The planet is roughly the size of Earth, it’s similar to our world in density and chemical composition, and perhaps most importantly, it’s much closer get to than Mars. Traveling to Venus would only take about 400 days, while a mission to Mars would require between 650 to 900 days in space. The great Carl Sagan once envisioned colonizing Venus; he proposed lowering the temperature of the atmosphere with blue-green algae.
Well, it seems NASA hasn’t totally given up on the idea of sending humans to visit our closer, yet more tempestuous, neighbor. In a recent report, researchers at NASA’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate have proposed a new mission for going to Venus that seems like it comes straight out of Star Wars.

Video of A way to explore Venus

According to IEEE Spectrum, Dale Arney and Chris Jones, the authors of the report, envision a mission called HAVOC, or the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept. Through HAVOC, astronauts would explore the upper atmosphere of Venus, riding above the planet’s clouds in huge solar-powered airships (Cloud City, anyone?). At about 80 miles above Venus’ surface, the atmospheric pressure and gravitational forces are pretty comparable to those of Earth. And the temperature is only 167 degrees Fahrenheit, which is still pretty hot, but manageable.
HAVOC would encompass a series of missions, with multiple trips to and from Venus. Initial crews would travel to the planet’s upper atmosphere and remain in orbit for 30 days. Later crews would stay up to two years in the clouds, followed by a floating cloud city in which colonists could live.
The ship that would house these Venus-faring astronauts would resemble something like a huge blimp, filled with helium and powered by the sun. An array of solar panels on the top of the airship would take advantage of the sun’s close presence, and even though Venus is only a (relatively) short distance away from our star, its upper atmosphere offers a lot of protection from radiation, “about the same as if you were in Canada.”
IEEE Spectrum has more details on the logistics of the airship, as well as the complicated process of getting such a spacecraft into Venus’ atmosphere. Of course, NASA could always just use an anti-gravity pod...
[IEEE Spectrum]  Popular Science

Artist's Impression Of Pluto. C.M. Handler via Wikimedia Commons

Curiosity rover for trip to Mars, NASA


The biggest and baddest ground-based telescopes are on their way

The Gold Standard: The W.M. Keck Observatory. Navin75 via Flickr CC By SA 2.0

Location: Mauna Kea, Hawaii
First Light: 1992
When it came online in 1992, Keck was twice the size of the biggest telescopes at the time. So many astronomers wanted to use it that the designers quickly built another nearly identical scope: Keck II, equipped with different instruments, which saw first light in 1996. Since then, the pair has yielded major discoveries, including dark energy, which won a 2011 Nobel Prize. Popular Science

Artist Rendering Of Lunar Mission One