Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/21
In Pictures: Sinkholes around the world
In Pictures: What happened to the green revolution in Iran?
In Pictures: Facing the devastation of the Oklahoma tornadoes
In Pictures: Sandy: Chronicle of an unrelenting storm
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/20
In Pictures: Weather extremes 2013
In Pictures: The Israeli separation barrier: A West Bank wall
In Pictures: Derby Day devotees, Kenyan style
The first color movie of Jupiter from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows what it would look like to peel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall into the form of a rectangular map, and watch its atmosphere evolve with time. The brief movie clip spans 24 Jupiter rotations between Oct. 31 and Nov. 9, 2000.
A seven-year journey to the ringed planet Saturn begins with the liftoff of a Titan IVB/Centaur carrying the Cassini orbiter and its attached Huygens probe. This spectacular streak shot was taken from Hangar AF on Cape Canaveral Air Station, with a solid rocket booster retrieval ship in the foreground.
This image shows the eruption of a galactic 'super-volcano' in the massive galaxy M87, as witnessed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NSF's Very Large Array (VLA). At a distance of about 50 million light years, M87 is relatively close to Earth and lies at the center of the Virgo cluster, which contains thousands of galaxies. The cluster surrounding M87 is filled with hot gas glowing in X-ray light (and shown in blue) that is detected by Chandra. As this gas cools, it can fall toward the galaxy's center where it should continue to cool even faster and form new stars.
The 'once upon a time' science fiction concept of a space elevator has been envisioned and studied as a real mass transportation system in the latter part of the 21st century. David Smitherman of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center's Advanced Projects Office has compiled plans for such an elevator. The space elevator concept is a structure extending from the surface of the Earth to geostationary Earth orbit at 22,000 miles in altitude. The tower would be over 30 miles tall with a cable tethered to the top. Its center mass would be at GEO such that the entire structure orbits the Earth in sync with the Earth's rotation maintaining a stationary position over its base attachment at the equator.
Apollo 13 astronauts train prior to their ill-fated mission in 1970. Originally intended to land on the moon, the mission had to be aborted after an oxygen tank ruptured, severely damaging their spacecraft's electrical system.
With the doors to the high-tech telescope nestled in its rear fuselage open, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, soars over California’s Owens Valley during a flight-envelope expansion test flight on June 30. Several test points were flown with the telescope doors open at an altitude of 42,000 feet, within the altitude range that the SOFIA will operate when conducting astronomical observations.
In 1572, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe observed and studied the explosion of a star that became known as Tycho's supernova. More than four centuries later, Chandra's image of the supernova remnant shows an expanding bubble of multimillion degree debris (green and red) inside a more rapidly moving shell of extremely high energy electrons (filamentary blue).
This is an artist's concept of Deep Impact's Encounter with Comet Tempel 1. One part of Deep Impact, a NASA probe, was slammed into the comet in 2005, while another component of the probe photographed the impact. This illustration gives us a look at the moment of impact and the forming of the crater.
Why are some hills on Mars so layered? The answer is still under investigation. Clearly, dark windblown sand surrounds outcropping of light sedimentary rock across the floor of crater Arabia Terra. The light rock clearly appears structured into many layers, the lowest of which is likely very old. Although the dark sand forms dunes, rippled dunes of lighter colored sand are easier to see surrounding the stepped mesas. Blown sand possibly itself eroded once-larger mesas into the layered hills.
Scientists have reported the first conclusive discovery of water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, or a planet beyond our solar system. This artist's impression shows an infrared view of a gas-giant exoplanet transiting across the face of its star. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed this type of system in infrared light, providing the breakthrough. The planet, HD 189733b, lies 63 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula.
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/21
In Pictures: Sinkholes around the world
In Pictures: What happened to the green revolution in Iran?
In Pictures: Facing the devastation of the Oklahoma tornadoes
In Pictures: Sandy: Chronicle of an unrelenting storm
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/20
In Pictures: Weather extremes 2013
In Pictures: The Israeli separation barrier: A West Bank wall
In Pictures: Derby Day devotees, Kenyan style
Aleppo was once the economic heart of Syria, with factories ringing the city. But war destruction and a lack of electricity and materials has caused most of them to shut down.
In opposition-controlled Aleppo, once the economic heart of Syria, few businesses have survived the war, which has reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble amid fighting, scud missile attacks, airstrikes, and artillery bombardment.
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