2014's Most Awesome Space Pictures

2014's Most Awesome Space Pictures from guimera

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• 1. Astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo on June 1, 2014 from the International Space Station "A simple toy from my childhood makes for a cool picture in space." REID WISEMAN—NASA
• 2. A crescent moon rises over the cusp of the Earth's atmosphere in this picture by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata onboard the International Space Station on Feb. 1, 2014. NASA/REUTERS
• 3. 2014's Most Awesome Space Pictures
• 4. SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship arrives at the International Space Station on Sept. 23. After a two-day chase, the Dragon spacecraft caught up to the orbiting laboratory, and German astronaut Alexander Gerst used the space station's robotic arm to grab the capsule with help from NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman. "Hundreds of hours of training for one moment," Gerst said on the Flickr webpage where he posted this photo.
• 5. NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore captured this picture of the Red Sea from the International Space Station on Nov. 8, with docked Russian spacecraft in the foreground.
• 6. Typhoon Hagupit churns in the western Pacific Ocean in this satellite image from Dec. 5. Typhoon Hagupit slammed into Philippines on Dec. 7, destroying thousands of homes and killing dozens of people.
• 7. The sun sets over the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast in this image from the International Space Station posted to social media on Dec. 14. The space station and its crew orbit Earth from an altitude of 220 miles, traveling at a speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Because the station completes each trip around the globe in about 92 minutes, the crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets each day.
• 8. A camera looking back over SpaceShipTwo's fuselage shows the rocket burn with a Mojave Desert vista in the background during a test flight of the rocket plane on Jan. 10. Cameras were mounted on the exterior of SpaceShipTwo as well as its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo, to monitor the rocket engine's performance. The test was aimed at setting the stage for eventual commercial space tours.
• 9. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata peers out one of the windows of the Cupola on the International Space Station on April 27. A crewmate inside the Russian-built Pirs docking module captured the image. The Cupola is considered the station's best vantage point for Earth observation.
• 10. European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst enjoys the view of Earth from the windows in the cupola of the International Space Station in this image released on June 13.
• 11. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov waves as he works outside the International Space Station on Aug. 18. During the five-hour, 11-minute spacewalk, Skvortsov and his Russian crewmate, Oleg Artemyev, deployed a small science satellite and swapped out experimental packages on the station's exterior.
• 12. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev looks out of the Russian Soyuz TMA-12M space capsule shortly after landing southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, September 11, 2014. REUTERS/Maxim Shipenkov/Pool
• 13. International Space Station crew Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy attends a sending-off ceremony before the launch of the Soyuz TMA-15 M spacecraft at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, November 23, 2014. REUTERS/Maxim Shipenkov/Pool
• 14. Russia's Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft, carrying new crewmembers to the International Space Station, launches on May 29 at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
• 15. The Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station crew of Anton Shkaplerov of Russia, Terry Virts of the U.S. and Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy blasts off from the launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, November 24, 2014. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov
• 16. Star trails circle the celestial south pole over a cactus-dominated landscape in Chile's Atacama Desert, in a long-exposure image released by the European Southern Observatory on May 12. The trails show the apparent path of stars in the sky as Earth slowly rotates. A deeper exposure was superimposed over the magnificent trails, revealing fainter stars and the southern Milky Way.
• 17. The 10-m (32.8 ft) South Pole Telescope and the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization Telescope at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is seen against the night sky with the Milky Way in a picture released March 17, 2014. Researchers announced that they had discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang. The gravitational waves were detected by the BICEP telescope. REUTERS/Keith Vanderlinde/National Science Foundation
• 18. The Delta IV rocket is seen streaking across the sky after being launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as pictured from Port Canaveral, Florida, February 20, 2014. Picture taken with long exposure. REUTERS/Mike Brown
• 19. A view photographed by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman from the International Space Station showing part of the United States mainland from the state of Florida to Louisiana just before dawn, September 12, 2014. REUTERS/Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 20. Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, looms large in this reprocessed image released by NASA on Nov. 21. The original observations were collected by the Galileo spacecraft, which explored Jupiter and its moons from orbit in the 1990s. NASA officials reprocessed Galileo's data using modern imaging techniques. Europa's mineral-laced ice is thought to cover a deep ocean of water that some scientists suspect could harbor life.
• 21. The G292.0+1.8 supernova remnant is shown in a newly processed image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The picture is among several that were released July 22 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Chandra's deployment from the space shuttle Columbia. Chandra's "X-ray vision" traces the expanding debris of an exploded star and the shock waves associated with the long-ago blast.
• 22. Chinese astronomers and others around the world witnessed the creation of the Crab Nebula by a supernova explosion in the year 1054. This 15th-anniversary image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, released July 22, shows a rapidly rotating neutron star spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles from the heart of the Crab Nebula. Lower-energy X-rays are shown in red, medium energy in green, and high energy in blue.
• 23. The destructive results of a powerful supernova explosion reveal themselves in a delicate tapestry of X-ray light, as seen in this image from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, released on Sept. 10. The image shows the remains of a supernova that would have been witnessed on Earth about 3,700 years ago. The remnant is called Puppis A. It's about 7,000 light- years away and about 10 light-years across.
• 24. This colorful image shows a cosmic lighthouse known as the Egg Nebula, which lies about 3,000 light-years from Earth. The image, which was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and released on Nov. 24, captures a brief but dramatic phase in the life of a sunlike star. The Egg Nebula, also known as RAFGL 2688, is a "preplanetary nebula." These objects flare up when a dying star's hot remains briefly illuminate the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the star.
• 25. The spiral galaxy NGC 4258, also known as M106, with two extra spiral arms as seen in this composite image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The image was published in the June 20, 2014 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letter. REUTERS/NASA
• 26. The camera on the Rosetta spacecraft's Philae lander captured this image of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from a distance of about 10 miles from the surface of the comet on Oct. 7. Also visible is one of Rosetta’s 46-foot long solar wings. Two images with different exposure times were combined to bring out the faint details in this very high contrast situation. The comet's active ‘neck’ region is clearly visible, with streams of dust and gas extending away from the surface. The European Space Agency wrote a new chapter in the history of space exploration on Nov. 12 by landing the probe Philae on the surface of a comet 317 million miles from Earth, marking the climax of a decade-long mission.
• 27. An image captured from a distance of about 7.8 km (4.8 miles) from the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in an image taken from a probe launched from the spaceship Rosetta, October 26, 2014. REUTERS/ESA/Rosetta
• 28. Nili Patera, one of the most active dune fields on the planet Mars in a photo taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, March 1, 2014. REUTERS/NASA/JPL- Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
• 29. The sun lights the crests of sand dunes on Mars in this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, obtained March 13. The especially bright patches - bluish in enhanced color - are due to seasonal frost that is accumulating as Mars' southern hemisphere approaches winter.
• 30. The Russell Crater dunes seen on Mars in this photo released on Feb. 5, 2014. JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/NASA
• 31. A view of the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometres) away from the rover. The images were obtained by the rover's 34-millimetre Mast Camera. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/AFP/Getty
• 32. The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on NASA's Curiosity rover is pictured, with the Martian landscape in the background on the 32nd Martian day, or sol, of operations on the surface on September 7, 2012, PDT or September 8, 2012, UTC. This image lets researchers know that the APXS instrument had not become caked with dust during Curiosity's dusty landing. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Handout
• 33. The left eye of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Curiosity took this image of the camera on the rover's arm, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on September 5, 2012. The image shows that MAHLI has a thin film or coating of Martian dust on it. This dust accumulated during Curiosity's final descent to the Martian surface. The mechanism at the right in this image is Curiosity's dust removal tool, a motorised wire brush. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
• 34. A NASA image shows a photo taken by the Expedition 38 crew aboard the International Space Station, of the night view of the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea in the middle almost completely dark compared to neighboring South Korea (bottom right) and China (top left). The photograph was cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed at source. REUTERS/NASA-JSC
• 35. Active regions on the sun resemble a jack-o'-lantern in this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, captured on Oct. 8, just in time for Halloween.
• 36. Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket explodes moments after its launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Oct. 28. The rocket was carrying Orbital's robotic Cygnus spacecraft, loaded with supplies for the International Space Station. No one was injured.
• 37. An unmanned Antares rocket is seen exploding seconds after lift off from a commercial launch pad in this still image from video shot by Matthew Travis of Zero-G News from the press area at Wallops Island, Virginia, October 28, 2014. REUTERS/Matthew Travis/Zero-G News
• 38. The Delta IV Heavy rocket with the Orion spacecraft lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 5, 2014. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
• 39. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory image in extreme ultraviolet light shows an active region of the sun's coronal loops taken over about a two-day period, from February 8 - 10, 2014. Coronal loops are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks, but most change quite rapidly. REUTERS/Solar Dynamics Observatory
• 40. Radiation and winds from stars blow a cavity into the surrounding dust and gas, creating the Trifid nebula, as seen in infrared light by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The Trifid nebula is located 5,400 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
• 41. A globular star cluster called Messier 5 containing 100,000 stars or more and packed into a region around 165 light-years in diameter in an image taken by NASA's Hubble Space telescope and released April 25, 2014. Messier 5 lies some 25,000 light-years away and its stars are estimated to be nearly 13 billion years old, according to NASA. REUTERS/NASA/Hubble Space Telescope
• 42. The moon moves between NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, and the sun, giving the observatory a view of a partial solar eclipse from space, January 30, 2014. Such a lunar transit happens two to three times each year. This one lasted two and one half hours, which is the longest ever recorded. REUTERS/NASA/SDO
• 43. The fifth brightest galaxy in the sky Centaurus A, an active galaxy about 12 million light years from Earth in an image taken May 1, 2014. The image is produced through a collaboration of professional and amateur astronomers that combines optical data from amateur telescopes with data from the archives of NASA missions. REUTERS/NASA
• 44. A churning region of star birth in NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula, about 6400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion in an infrared image mosaic from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope released March 17, 2014. REUTERS/NASA
• 45. NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array's first picture of the sun taken in high-energy X-rays released on Dec. 22, 2014. JPL-CALTECH/GSFC/NASA
• 46. Eta Carinae is one of the most luminous known star systems in our galaxy seen here in this photo released on Aug. 26, 2014. JPL-CALTECH/NASA
• 47. This close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. NASA/SIPA
• 48. The sun emits a significant solar flare on Dec. 19, 2014 as seen from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO/NASA
• 49. Egmont National Park in New Zealand with Mt. Taranaki at its center is seen in a Landsat 8 satellite image taken July 3, 2014. The image is from the book Sanctuary: Exploring the World's Protected Areas from Space, published by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies with support from NASA. REUTERS/NASA/USGS
• 50. A cloud floats over South America's Andes Mountains in an image tweeted by German astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station on Aug. 3.
• 51. The moon over northeast Greenland in March 2014. MICHAEL STUDINGER—NASA
• 52. "My favourite view from space - just past sunrise over the ocean" tweets Reid.: Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 53. The sun reflects off the water in this picture taken by German astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station and sent on his Twitter feed July 17, 2014. REUTERS/Alexander Gerst/NASA
• 54. The Earth looks like artwork from above: the Grand Canyon in the US, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 55. The ash plume of a volcano in Africa spreads out east, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 56. The Hoover dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 57. A coast-to-coast view across France and Spain, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 58. The Egyptian desert meets the Red Sea on a cloudless afternoon in a photo tweeted by first-time astronaut Reid Wiseman aboard the International Space Station on June 8, 2014. REUTERS/Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 59. The Nile river and the Red Sea meet as they flow into the Mediterranean Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 60. Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, launch site for many ISS missions, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 61. Kuwait, Iran and the Caspian Sea, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 62. Beauty. Power. Fear.' tweets Reid along with this picture of hurricane Marie, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 63. The iconic shape of Manhattan Island in New York, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 64. "The interesting shaped #eye of super #Typhoon Neoguri" - Reid Wiseman via Twitter on July 7, 2014. Astronaut Reid Wiseman’s Photos from the International Space Station
• 65. "I’m becoming obsessed with volcanoes, and for good reason. Chile." - Reid Wiseman, June 6, 2014. Astronaut Reid Wiseman’s Photos from the International Space Station
• 66. "I will never tire of this view." - Reid Wiseman via Twitter on June 19, 2014. Astronaut Reid Wiseman’s Photos from the International Space Station
• 67. "Watching mother nature at work in Africa." - Reid Wiseman via Twitter on June 21, 2014. Astronaut Reid Wiseman’s Photos from the International Space Station
• 68. This photograph was taken with a slow shutter speed to capture the Earth's atmosphere, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 69. The eye of Hurricane Arthur is seen over the Atlantic in a photo from the International Space Station tweeted by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst on July 3, 2014. REUTERS/Alexander Gerst/NASA
• 70. "Moonrise from the #ISS." - Reid Wiseman via Twitter on July 8, 2014. Astronaut Reid Wiseman’s Photos from the International Space Station
• 71. The supermoon hangs on the horizon at the Astro-Physical Institute of the Canaries in Tenerife, Canary Islands, on Aug. 10. This was the closest that a full moon would get to Earth during 2014, making for the biggest and brightest supermoon of the year.
• 72. The Russian Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-13M space ship carrying the Expedition 40 crew to the International Space Station launches from the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on May 29, 2014. DMITRY LOVETSKY—AP
• 73. An impact crater on Mars in an image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released February 5, 2014. The crater spans approximately 100 feet in diameter and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone. Because the terrain where the crater formed is dusty, the fresh crater appears blue in the enhanced color of the image, due to removal of the reddish dust in that area. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
• 74. This image of Saturn's rings was taken by a camera on the Cassini spacecraft released on Jan. 21, 2014. JPL-CALTECH/NASA/EPA
• 75. Saturn taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2013 and released for the first time on Feb. 3, 2014. NASA/JPL/CALTECH/REUTERS
• 76. Saturn was captured by the Cassini spacecraft cameras in this image released on March 17, 2014. JPL-CALTECH/NASA
• 77. The shadow of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity pictured in late-afternoon in an image taken by the rover's rear hazard avoidance camera, March 20, 2014. The rover's shadow falls across a slope called the McClure-Beverlin Escarpment on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, where Opportunity was investigating rock layers for evidence about ancient environments. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech
• 78. The Holuhraun lava field as seen with infrared imaging captured by the Operational Land Imager on Sept. 6, 2014, NASA
• 79. The Aurora Borealis swirls over the earth as one of the space station's struts is visible in the foreground, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 80. A photo of the Canadarm2 system used to move sections of the space station, Reid Wiseman/NASA
• 81. The Milky Way seen from the International Space Station in a photo taken by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman on September 28, 2014 REUTERS/NASA
• 82. Astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on July 1, 2014 "Here is a #Today Sunrise from space for @MLauer" REID WISEMAN—NASA end
• 83. cast 2014's Most Awesome Space Pictures images and text credit www. www.nbcnews.com www.reuters.com Music vangelis created olga.e. thanks for watching