[OT] The Final Frontier: The Epic Thread of Space.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

This image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) shows the constellation Cassiopeia. The red circle visible in the upper left part of the image is SN 1572, often called "Tycho

Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

Thursday, November 18, 2010 This Hubble Space Telescope photo released in April 2010 for its 20th birthday 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.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Thursday, December 2, 2010 This image, taken on August 13, 2010, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows the moon Enceladus over the bright arc of Saturn's atmosphere.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Wednesday, December 8, 2010 This view of grains from a sand dune near Christmas Lake, Ore., was taken by a test version of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on Curiosity, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, slated to launch in fall 2011. Three 2-millimeter-diameter (0.08-inch-diameter) ball bearings in the scene provide an independent measure of the image scale. This image has a resolution of 15.4 microns per pixel, about twice as high as the camera resolution on Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The view covers an area about 1 inch, or 2.5 centimeters, across.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Tuesday, December 14, 2010 Rings enrobe crescent Saturn in this Cassini spacecraft image. Clouds swirl through the atmosphere of the planet, while barely-visible Prometheus orbits between the planet's main rings and its the thin F ring. Saturn's moon Prometheus appears very small above the rings near the middle of the image.

Credit: Kolbj

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/NASA/GSFC Distributed Active Archive Center

Tuesday, December 21, 2010. Temperatures plunged during the first week of December in much of Europe and parts of the United States. This image shows the temperature of the land surface for December 3-10, 2010, compared to the average temperature for the same period between 2002 and 2009 (blue=colder; red=warmer). A climate pattern known as the Arctic Oscillation caused the temperatures to fall. The unusual cold brought heavy snow to Northern Europe, stopping flights and trains early in December.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW

This view is one of the first from the MESSENGER probe's Oct. 6, 2008 flyby of Mercury.

Credit: ESA/NASAFrom Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli: "It was sleeping under the blanket, and now the giant is awakened! Sicily and Mount Etna, seen from ISS,14 Jan 11, 09:40 CET."

Credit: ESA/NASA
The icy landscape of northern Canada takes center stage in this Jan. 11, 2011 image taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Credit: ESA/NASA"Aircraft contrails - evidence of life on planet Earth!" This photo was taken by astronaut Paolo Nespoli on Jan. 15, 2011 during the Expedition 26/26 mission to the International Space Station.

Credit: ESA/NASALake Manicouagan and Ren