Moscow at Night

Moscow appears at the center of this nighttime image photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station, flying at an altitude of approximately 240 miles on March 28, 2012.

The Space Shuttle Discovery on its Mobile Launcher Platform slowly moves through the high bay doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building en route to Launch Pad 39A, where Discovery is scheduled to lift off on the STS-82 mission on Feb. 11. A seven-member crew will perform the second servicing of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during the 10-day STS-82 mission.

Filigree and Shadow

Wispy tendrils of hot dust and gas glow brightly in this ultraviolet image of the Cygnus Loop Nebula, taken by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The nebula lies about 1,500 light-years away, and is a supernova remnant, left over from a massive stellar explosion that occurred 5,000-8,000 years ago. The Cygnus Loop extends more than three times the size of the full moon in the night sky, and is tucked next to one of the ‘swan’s wings’ in the constellation of Cygnus.

blech:

One last Richard Avedon photograph from the 1965 Harper’s Bazaar modern special: Naty Abascal. (You’d never allow a cigarette near the pure-oxygen atmospheres of a 1960s space mission, but never mind.)

The Jewels of Messier 9

The Solar Flare

Enceladus: Saturn’s Moon

Below a darkened Enceladus, a plume of water ice is back-lit in this view of one of Saturn’s most dramatic moons.

[Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute]

Birth of Stars

Beside a Giant