Monday, 28 September 2009

The 50 Greatest Space Photos Ever !

If we look at the word Space, it seems a small word. But this word contained many mysteries and interesting things. Space always attracts people for its beauty. It is beautiful science. If you think about the solar system, galaxy to the UFO's everything are very interesting. So, I culled these images to make a beautiful post of the beautiful science.


There are many sites which releases many of the Images from the space every year, So it is difficult task to choose fifty Images from there. But I had collected some of the Images which seems best according to their importance in history and beauty.

Here I had inserted the original image link to provide high bigger images some of them are high resolution too. Click on the images and see bigger images. Enjoy the images.

The Apollo 1 Crew

One of the worst tragedies in the history of spaceflight occurred on January 27, 1967 when the crew of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in January 27, 1967, when a fire swept through the Command Module (CM). The tragedy occurred during a preflight test for Apollo 204 (AS-204), which was scheduled to be the first Apollo manned mission, and would have been launched on February 21, 1967. The astronauts are pictured here in the interior of the CM.

Apollo 9 Floats Above Earth, March, 1969

The Apollo 9 mission, launched shortly before the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, tested critical devices like the Lunar Module, which, a mere four months later, landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. This photograph has an appealing air of unreality about it: How can anything that enormous (see the open hatch door for scale) actually float?

Atlantis Climb - A Streak of Light

A timed exposure of Atlantis' climb into space and movement downrange over the Earth's curvature is captured by NASA in what local news media commonly call the 'streak shot.

Beautiful Blue Ball

Earth, from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica's polar ice cap, seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon in 1972. This was the first time an Apollo spacecraft trajectory made it possible to photograph the southern polar ice cap -- and the result is one of the most striking images of the Earth ever taken: the very emblem of a living Blue Planet.

Big Red, 1979

This is the "Great Red Spot" of Jupiter, which extends from the enormous planet's equator to its southern polar latitudes, as seen by the space probe Voyager 2. After marveling at the chaotic, painterly beauty of the scenery, one would be well-advised to ponder the sheer size of the object in question. How big is the Great Red Spot, you ask? Big enough to swallow two Earths.

Boldly Go

The Federation Starship Enterprise (registration number: NCC-1701) in orbit over the planet M-113 in a digitally edited version of Star Trek's premiere episode. For those who saw this episode when it first aired, on September 8, 1966, and for millions since, this image -- or a very slight variation of this image -- came to embody what exploring "strange new worlds" and seeking out "new life and new civilizations" might actually look like.

Challenger accident after launch on Jan 28, 1986

The main engine exhaust, solid rocket booster plume and an expanding ball of gas from the external tank is visible seconds after the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after lifting off from Kennedy Space Center. Ten years later, on the 10th anniversary of the challenger accident, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin observed the anniversary: "The best way to honor the memories of the crew of the Challenger, and of all the men and women who have given their lives to explore the frontiers of air and space, is to continue their bold tradition of exploration and innovation. That's what the people of NASA do every day. They push the boundaries of knowledge and human endeavor to improve and enrich life on Earth today and secure a better future for all of us tomorrow

Chandra - Four Years of X-ray Imaging

Jets figured in one of the most beautiful images of the year, which was also one of the most popular with the press and the public. The composite X-ray, radio and optical image of the galaxy Centaurus A reveals a galaxy in turmoil. A broad band of dust and cold gas is bisected at an angle by opposing jets of high-energy particles blasting away from the supermassive black hole in its nucleus. Two large arcs of multimillion-degree gas indicate that a titanic explosion rocked the galaxy about ten million years ago.

The Cone Nebula, 1995

A photo of the Cone Nebula taken in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the upper 2.5 light years of the structure. The entire nebula is seven light years long, meaning it takes light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, seven years to go from one end to the other. (To put that in perspective: If a beam of light were to circle the Earth, it would take about one-fifth of one second to complete its entire orbit.)

The Deep Blue Sun

This image, taken by the SOHO Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, shows the solar corona at a temperature of about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius). The two active regions are made up of numerous magnetic loops.

Earth Forever

In a photograph taken from the space shuttle Columbia that's astonishing for its clarity and breathtaking beauty, Chile and the Andes mountains look close enough to touch, while the perfect blue curve of the Earth's atmosphere against the black void of space looks at once incredibly fragile and eternal.

Ed White Walks in Space

Astronaut Ed White makes the first American space walk -- if one can call traveling at around five miles per second, 120 miles above the Pacific Ocean, a "walk" -- on June 3, 1965. A momentous occasion for NASA, captured in a photograph that should be in the dictionary beside the word "bravery.

Eros - "Our Neighboring Asteriod"

This picture of Eros, the first of an asteroid taken from an orbiting spacecraft, is a mosaic of four images obtained by NEAR on February 14, 2000, immediately after the spacecraft's insertion into orbit. We are looking down over the north pole of Eros at one of the largest craters on the surface, which measures 4 miles (6 kilometers) across. Inside the crater walls are subtle variations in brightness that hint at some layering of the rock in which the crater formed. Narrow grooves that run parallel to the long axis of Eros cut through the southeastern part of the crater rim. A house-sized boulder is present near the floor of the crater; it appears to have rolled down the bowl-shaped crater wall. A large number of boulders is also present on other parts of the asteroid's surface. The surface of the asteroid is heavily cratered, indicating that Eros is relatively old.

Evidence of Water on Mars

At 8:03 p.m. Eastern Time on June 20, 2000 SPACE.com reported that NASA had found evidence of water on Mars. It was a remarkable finding, which subsequently fueled hopes for the existence of microbial life on the Red Planet. It also made the prospect of a human mission to Mars a more practical idea.

Exploring Jupiter

Galileo released a probe while still five months away from Jupiter. Both arrived about the same time in December 1995. On Dec. 7, the probe entered the atmosphere and over the course of 58-minutes fell 124 miles (204 kilometers) into Jupiter and transmitted data to the Galileo spacecraft.

First Image of Earth from the International Space Station

November 2000—A mass of storm clouds was observed and recorded from the International Space Station (ISS) by the Expedition 1 crew members. The picture, made with an Electrical Still Camera (ESC), was the first Earth observation still image downlinked by the three-man crew. Crew members are cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, flight engineer; astronaut William Shepherd, mission commander; and cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, Soyuz commander.

The Great Mountain of the Solar System

Olympus Mons is the undisputed king of the volcanoes in the solar system. Its slopes rise 15 miles (24 kilometers) above the plane, and it is 342 miles (550 kilometers) across at its base.

Ground Zero, New York City

This one-meter resolution satellite image of Manhattan, New York was collected at 11:43 a.m. EDT on Sept. 12, 2001 by Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite. The image shows an area of white dust and smoke at the location where the 1,350-foot towers of the World Trade Center once stood. Since all aircraft were grounded following the attack on America it's the only high-resolution 'view from above' of the fire and destruction of the twin towers. Click here to zoom into the satellite image of the clean-up and rebuilding efforts at ground zero in New York City.

How Many Astronauts Can You Fit In a...?

President Richard M. Nixon welcomes the crew of Apollo 11 home after their historic journey to the Moon in July 1969. Here Nixon speaks to the quarantined astronauts on the hangar deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet cruising in the Pacific Ocean.

Hubble Captures Best View of Mars Ever Obtained From Earth

Frosty white water ice clouds and swirling orange dust storms above a vivid rusty landscape reveal Mars as a dynamic planet in this sharpest view ever obtained by an Earth-based telescope. The Earth-orbiting Hubble telescope snapped this picture on June 26, when Mars was approximately 43 million miles (68 million km) from Earth -- its closest approach to our planet since 1988. Hubble can see details as small as 10 miles (16 km) across. Especially striking is the large amount of seasonal dust storm activity seen in this image. One large storm system is churning high above the northern polar cap [top of image], and a smaller dust storm cloud can be seen nearby. Another large duststorm is spilling out of the giant Hellas impact basin in the Southern Hemisphere [lower right].

Hubble Mosaic of the Majestic Sombrero Galaxy

The Sombrero galaxy has a massive bulge, too. The galaxy is probably younger than some, having not developed the graceful spiral arms seen in others. The galaxy is edge-on to our view, accentuating the visual effect of the bulge.

Humanity's Footprint

Neil Armstrong took this photograph of the boot of astronaut Buzz Aldrin imprinting its tread in the dust of the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, during the historic Apollo 11 mission. This was not the first footstep on the moon, but for millions of people who recognize this picture, the symbolism is immediately clear: We took one giant step, and this footprint proves it.

The Lure of the Rings

Resembling a diamond-encrusted bracelet, a ring of brilliant blue star clusters wraps around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This image is being released to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990 and its deployment from the space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990. The galaxy, cataloged as AM 0644-741, is a member of the class of so-called "ring galaxies." It lies 300 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado.

Making History: China's First Astronaut

China's first astronaut Yang Liwei, in orbit aboard Shenzhou 5, is seen on a giant screen in the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center.

Making History: The First Human to Orbit Earth

On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin lifted off in the Vostok 1 spacecraft and became the first human to orbit Earth. Vostok 1 circled Earth at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour. The flight lasted 108 minutes. Vostok's reentry was controlled by a computer. Yuri Gagarin did not land inside of Vostok 1, rather, he ejected from the spacecraft and landed by parachute. After his historic flight, Gagarin became an international symbol for the Soviet space program and was involved in many endeavours for the country. Tragically, during flight training in a UTI-MiG-15 aircraft on March 27, 1968, Gagarin was killed when his plane crashed.

The Mars Pathfinder Mission

On July 4, 1997, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft arrived on the Red Planet. Pathfinder deployed a small rover called Sojourner to explore the Martian landscape. It is shown here at the site of an ancient Martian flood, Ares Vallis (Mars Valley).

The Messier Galaxy

The galaxy Messier 83 is located in the southern constellation Hydra (The Water-Snake) and is also known as NGC 5236. It is about 15 million light-years away. The spiral structure resembles that of the Milky Way Galaxy in which we live, but Messier 83 also possesses a bar-like structure at the center.

Moon Buggy

Few species of photograph are as purely, simply awe-inspiring as those taken of--or from--the outer reaches of space. Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan takes a ride on the moon, December, 1972, fulfilling, by proxy, the dreams of both nerds and gearheads everywhere.

Joseph Kittinger's Leap of Faith

Look carefully: You can just make out Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger, Jr. in a record-shattering free fall from the very edge of space on August 16, 1960, after jumping from a balloon-supported gondola 102,800 feet above New Mexico. During his descent, Kittinger reached approximate speeds of 614 miles an hour. The clouds beneath him are 15 miles away. Kittinger's leap was part of the Air Force's "Project Excelsior," which conducted research into high altitude bailouts from aircraft. Incredibly, almost 50 years later, Kittinger's record for the longest-ever free fall and highest parachute jump still stand.

Live In Color!

This color image was taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1990 from about 350,000 miles (563,000 km) away. Near the center is the circular Orientale basin, 600 miles (966 km) across.

Moonrise Over Earth

A quarter moon is visible in this oblique view of Earth's horizon and airglow, recorded with a digital still camera on the final mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia on January 26, 2003. Columbia's crew was killed on Feb. 1, 2003 when the shuttle broke up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Opportunity Lands On Mars

The interior of a crater surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at Meridiani Planum on Mars can be seen in this color image from the rover's panoramic camera. This is the darkest landing site ever visited by a spacecraft on mars. The rim of the crater is approximately 10 meters (32 feet) from the rover. The crater is estimated to be 20 meters (65 feet) in diameter. Scientists are intrigued by the abundance of rock outcrops dispersed throughout the crater, as well as the crater's soil, which appears to be a mixture of coarse gray grains and fine reddish grains. Data taken from the camera's near-infrared, green and blue filters were combined to create this approximate true color picture, taken on the first day of Opportunity's journey. The view is to the west-southwest of the rover. Jan. 26, 2004.

The Picture That Changed The World

The blue and white Earth shimmers in space -- in the starkest contrast to the lunar wasteland below. The photo, taken from Apollo 8 on December 22, 1968, turns our notion of the universe on its head, as we're accustomed to seeing the cold, dead moon shining above our own vibrant planet, and romanticizing it. Here, there's nothing romantic about the moon, while the Earth appears to offer everything we need: water, air, even hope.

Pillars Of Creation

Ever wonder where stars actually come from? Turns out, many of them come from places like this: monumental gaseous pillars in the Eagle Nebula that have been dubbed, grandly and accurately, The Pillars of Creation. This image of the columns of hydrogen and dust that act as incubators for new stars, was taken in April, 1995, and remains one of the most humbling images in the known universe.

The Pizza Moon

This is one of the many images of Jupiter's Moon Io made by the Galileo spacecraft. Io is the most volcanically dynamic object in the solar system, with some three dozen active volcanoes. Some are nearly twice as tall as Mt. Everest, the highest point on Earth. Also, Io has no impact craters, which tells scientists its surface must be constantly recycled by the volcanism and is probably no more than a million years old.

Pointing the Way Home

Astronaut Harrison Hagan Schmitt stands next to an American flag seemingly pointing to Earth in the far distance -- a beacon of life in the void -- during Apollo 17's December, 1972 mission to the moon. The clean, white perfection of Schmitt's space suit; the rumpled flag; the black of space; the fragile Earth -- if one wanted to compose a tableau that said "space exploration," it might look a lot like this.

The Shadow On The Moon

Shown above is a shadow of Surveyor 1 on the Moon. The Surveyor probes were the first U.S. spacecraft to land safely on the Moon. Surveyor 1 is the first U.S spacecraft to make a soft landing. Settling down at a site called Flamsteed in Oceanus Procellarum, Surveyor 1 sends back 11,240 pictures of the lunar surface, revealing details as small as 2 millimeters (1/12th inch). The lander operates until January 7, 1967.

Slightly Used

Astronaut Dale A. Gardner while repairing the stranded Westar VI satellite in 1984 after one of its motors failed. Gardner and colleagues retrieved the satellite (on a mission funded by insurance companies) and brought it back to Earth. The beauty of this shot, aside from the clarity of the image, stems from its casual humor: 15 years after the epic of the Apollo moon landing, humans are comfortbale enough in space to indulge in goofy jokes.

SOHO Cool! The Largest Flare Recorded ... So Far

NOAA's Space Environment Center (SEC) has classified this flare from November 4, 2003 as an X28, making it in fact the strongest ever recorded.

Solar Power

We're so used to seeing the sun as a life-giving force that we often forget that it's also downright terrifying. This 1997 photograph taken by the space-based Solar & Heliospheric Observatory shows a vast "solar prominence" (lower left) erupting from the sun's surface. These cataclysmic events, with tongues and loops of superheated gas lifting off to heights of hundreds of thousands of miles, sometimes remaining suspended there for months at a time, are eerily gorgeous reminders that, while the sun is a source of a nice tan, it's also an unfathomably large and volatile nuclear fusion reactor, releasing each second more energy than human beings have used in the last 10,000 years.

Space Phenomenon Imitates Art

This image resembling Vincent van Gogh's painting, "Starry Night," is Hubble's latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon).

Space Speck

The Space Shuttle Atlantis appears almost infinitesimally small photographed in silhouette during a solar transit -- in other words, when passing between the sun and the Earth -- on May 12, 2009. Beyond the sheer scale of what we're seeing (and it's worth remembering that somewhere around 1,000,000 Earths would fit inside our sun), this picture is just eerily beautiful.

Spirit's Journey Across The Red Planet

In this photo, Mars Rover Spirit casts a shadow over the trench it dug and examined with tools on its robotic arm. Spirit took this image with its front hazard-avoidance camera on Feb. 21, 2004, during the rover's 48th martian day, or sol. It dug the trench with its left front wheel the preceding sol. Feb. 22, 2004. The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet.

Stellar Beauty


The complex structure of the Sun's whirling heat reveals itself when images of three different energies of ultraviolet radiation are combined.

Cat's Eye Hubble Remix


Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat's Eye Nebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth. One of the most famous planetary nebulae in the sky, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) is over half a light-year across and represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood. Here, Hubble Space Telescope archival image data has been reprocessed to create another look the cosmic cat's eye. Compared to well-known Hubble pictures, the alternative processing strives to sharpen and improve the visiblility of details in light and dark areas of the nebula and also applies a more complex color palette. Of course, gazing into the Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our Sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.

The Moon

In 1840, John William Draper, an English-born American scientist, philosopher, and photographer, took what are generally regarded as the first photographs of the moon that display distinct features -- that is, the first pictures to actually show what the moon looks like. This is one of those 1840 photographs, and all these years later, the smooth, mysterious, black and white surface, seemingly made up of vast continents, islands, and oceans, still manages to stun.

Uranus Ring System

This dramatic Voyager 2 picture reveals a continuous distribution of small particles throughout the Uranus ring system Voyager took this image while in the shadow of Uranus, at a distance of 236,000 kilometers (142,000 miles and a resolution of about 33 km (20 ml). This unique geometry -- the highest phase angle at which Voyager imaged the rings -- allows us to see lanes of fine dust particles not visible from other viewing angles. All the previously known rings are visible here, however, some of the brightest features in the image are bright dust lanes not previously see. The combination of this unique geometry and a long, 96 second exposure allowed this spectacular observation, acquired through the clear filter of Voyager's wide-angle camera. The long exposure produced a noticeable, non-uniform smear as well as streaks due to trailed stars.

We Came in Peace for All Mankind

Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin plant the US flag on the moon on July 20, 1969. Their mission, Apollo 11, was the first time man set foot on the moon.

Where in the World Is Bruce McCandless?

In February, 1984, astronaut Bruce McCandless floats 320 feet from the space shuttle Challenger during the first-ever untethered space walk, made possible by that most sci-fi of all gadgets, a jet-propelled backpack. Almost everything that makes the idea of exploring space can be found in this picture: the immediately recognizeable human form; the vastness of space; the blue glow of Earth, an impossibly long way off, and yet right there, in sight. For a second this picture feels comical. Quite quickly, it turns harrowing and thrilling at once.

Where Stars Are Born

NASA scientists say this image highlights a gas cloud that may be a birthplace for new stars. It is a picture of NGC 1999, a brilliant gas nebula located in the constellation Orion.

There were many space images which would also get space in listing. But, due to the limiting it to 50 they could not listed here. If you think that any image does not worth to listed here then comment below with link of the other image which would be listed at that place. Thanks !!


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