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

A serene sunset over Saudia Arabia on Jan. 16, 2011 as photographed by astronaut Paolo Nespoli on the International Space Station. The space station sees 16 sunsets and sunrises every day as it orbits Earth once every 90 minutes.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011: The Whirlpool Galaxy, AKA spiral galaxy M51, sports a new look when seen in near-infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope. With most of the starlight removed, this image provides the sharpest view of the dust structure of the galaxy to date.

Friday, January 21, 2011: From the Chilean plateau of Chajnantor, where ESO's highly-advanced Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope stands, comes an unique image created with very simple components. This "solargraph" shows trails of the sun in the sky taken over a six-month period from mid-December 2009 until the southern winter solstice in June 2010. The pinhole camera that made the image used a plastic film canister and a piece of photographic paper. After exposure, the paper was scanned into a computer, where the colors were reversed. The trails reveal very few clouds in the sky over Chajnantor.