NASA: Image of the day

The magnificent central bar of NGC 2217 (also known as AM 0619-271) shines bright in the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog), in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Roughly 65 million light-years from Earth, this barred spiral galaxy is a similar size to our Milky Way at 100,000 light-years across.

Artists used paintbrushes and airbrushes to recreate the lunar surface on each of the four models comprising the LOLA simulator. Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface.

Rivers swelled in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan in April 2024 following heavy rain and rapid snowmelt. This image shows Orenburg on April 13, the day river levels peaked. This scene was acquired by the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9.

In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The name 'Little Dumbbell' comes from its shape that is a two-lobed structure of colorful, mottled, glowing gases resembling a balloon that’s been pinched around a middle waist. Like an inflating balloon, the lobes are expanding into space from a dying star seen as a white dot in the center. Blistering ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to glow. The red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen.

Behold one of the more detailed images of Earth. This Blue Marble Earth montage—created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite—shows many stunning details of our home planet.

This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) of star-forming region NGC 604 shows how stellar winds from bright, hot young stars carve out cavities in surrounding gas and dust.

The ocean holds about 97 percent of Earth's water and covers 70 percent of our planet's surface. According to the United Nations, the ocean may be home to 50 to 80 percent of all life on Earth. Even if you live hundreds of miles from a coast, what happens in the ocean is fundamental to your life.

NASA Engineer Cindy Fuentes Rosal waves goodbye to a Black Brant IX sounding rocket launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The rocket was part of a series of three launches for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study the disturbances in the electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere known as the ionosphere created when the Moon eclipses the Sun. The rockets launched before, during, and after peak local eclipse time on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

A team of engineers lifts the mast into place atop of NASA’s VIPER robotic Moon rover in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

This spectacular image showing the Moon’s shadow on Earth’s surface was acquired during a 20-second period starting at 2:59 p.m. EDT (18:59:19 UTC) on April 8, 2024, by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The new era in space flight began on April 12, 1981. That is when the first Space Shuttle mission (STS-1) was launched. The Marshall Space Flight Center developed the propulsion system for the Space Shuttle. This photograph depicts the launch of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia crewed with two astronauts, John Young and Robert Crippen.

A total solar eclipse is seen in Dallas, Texas on Monday, April 8, 2024. A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the North American continent from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of Central America and Europe.

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, left, Frank Rubio, Warren Hoburg, and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, right, pose for a photo wearing solar glasses, Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. Bowen, Hoburg, and Alneyadi spent 186 days aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 69; while Rubio set a new record for the longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut, spending 371 days in orbit on an extended mission spanning Expeditions 68 and 69.

“… I've just seen such tremendous things happen since I've been part of the Astrobiology Program, and that's why I'm pretty confident we're going to find life elsewhere, because there are just so many brilliant people working on this.” — Melissa Kirven-Brooks, Exobiology Deputy Branch Chief and Future Workforce Lead of the NASA Astrobiology Program, NASA’s Ames Research Center

What looks like highways going through a metropolitan area are actually a series of glaciers carving their way through the Karakoram mountain range north of the Himalayas. This photograph was taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above.

The primary structure of the Gateway space station's HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) module is one step closer to launch following welding completion in Turin, Italy. HALO is one of four Gateway modules where astronauts will live, conduct science, and prepare for lunar surface missions. NASA is partnering with Northrop Grumman and their subcontractor Thales Alenia Space to develop HALO.

Safety is important, no matter where you're viewing the eclipse. NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station show off their eclipse glasses, which allow safe viewing of the Sun during a solar eclipse.

“One of my cornerstone pinnacles [is], ‘Show up to work [and] life with integrity and intent.’ So, accomplish your goals with integrity, intent, and a mission. Stick to that and have the confidence to do that, and be OK with messing up and failing, and have fun with those things." — Meghan Everett, International Space Station Program Deputy Chief Scientist, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

An Atlas-Centaur launched at 5:22 p.m. EST on March 27, 1969, to send Mariner 7 on its way to Mars. Mariner 7 joined its sister spacecraft, Mariner 6, on a journey that carried them within 2,000 miles of the red planet that summer. Mariner 6 was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 24 and investigated the Martian equatorial area while Mariner 7 concentrated on the south polar cap.

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter's moon Europa. The moon shows strong evidence of an ocean under its icy crust, with more than twice the amount of water of all of Earth's oceans combined. A triangular metal plate, seen here, will honor that connection to Earth. The plate is made of tantalum metal and is about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters). It is engraved on both sides and seals an opening in the electronics vault, which houses the spacecraft's sensitive electronics. The art on this side of the plate features waveforms that are visual representations of the sound waves formed by the word "water" in 103 languages. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for "water."