There’s something special about this picture of last night’s Soyuz launch from Baikonur. Maybe it’s the “meta” of watching the video camera watching the launch; maybe it’s the lovely bokeh formed by the launch tower lights. (I believe that it’s much better to look at the launch of any rocket, not through a viewfinder… but it’s a cool photo.)

The Soyuz rocket is seen in the monitor of a video camera moments before Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineers Joseph Acaba and Sergei Revin arrived to board the rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for their flight to join their crew mates already aboard the International Space Station. The craft successfully launched at 11:01 p.m. EDT, Monday, May 14, 2012.

The trio will dock to the station’s Poisk Mini-Research Module at 12:38 a.m. Thursday, bringing Expedition 31 to its full six-member complement.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Birds Silhouetted against SuperMoon, photo © Don Kittle

Why wait until Tuesday when I can post some of my favorite SuperMoon pictures today?? (Especially since my own lame iPod photo of the SuperMoon was… lame.) Above, a superb shot with birds in flight by Don Kittle; below, SuperMoon above Seattle (by Liem Bahneman), and San Francisco (by David Yu.)

Photo of "Supermoon" as it rises over Seattle on May 5, 2012, photo © Liem Bahneman

SuperMoon rising above San Francisco, photo © David Yu

Interesting plans are afoot, to use the Moon’s surface as a mirror for observation:

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. Astronomers didn’t aim NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun’s face on June 5-6.

Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth’s moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and isolate the small fraction of the light that passes through Venus’s atmosphere. Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet’s atmospheric makeup.

These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus’s atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earth-like planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star. Venus is an excellent proxy because it is similar in size and mass to our planet.

The astronomers will use an arsenal of Hubble instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, to view the transit in a range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. During the transit, Hubble will snap images and perform spectroscopy, dividing the sunlight into its constituent colors, which could yield information about the makeup of Venus’s atmosphere.

Pretty fascinating stuff!

This… THIS is the photo I was waiting for. Thank you NASA and Bill Ingalls!

Space shuttle Enterprise, mounted atop a NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), is seen off in the distance behind the Statue of Liberty, Friday, April 27, 2012, in New York. Enterprise was the first shuttle orbiter built for NASA performing test flights in the atmosphere and was incapable of spaceflight. Originally housed at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Enterprise will be demated from the SCA and placed on a barge that will eventually be moved by tugboat up the Hudson River to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in June. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

But wait, there’s more! My tweetup buddy David Parmet took this beauty:

Space Shuttle Enterprise flyover, photo by David Parmet

And Ben Cooper of LaunchPhotography.com captures Lady Liberty and the lower Manhattan skyline:

Enterprise flies over lower Manhattan, photo by Ben Cooper, launchphotography.com

For more interesting Enterprise/NYC shots, check out this collection at Gothamist, the NASA HQ photostream at Flickr, or check the #spottheshuttle hashtag on Twitter!

After the amazing photos taken during Discovery’s #SpottheShuttle flight to Washington, D.C., I’m very much looking forward to seeing what New York City viewers capture, as Enterprise migrates north this morning! (I’ll post an update with my favorites, later today.) For now, enjoy this awesome shot of the ferry 747′s stats, with Enterprise perched above and waiting….

The space shuttle Enterprise is seen mated on top of the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) at Washington Dulles International Airport, Saturday, April 21, 2012, in Sterling, Va. Painted graphics line the side of NASA 905 depicting the various ferry flights the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft has supported during the Space Shuttle Program, including the tests using the space shuttle prototype Enterprise. Space Shuttle Transition and Retirement engineers Saturday completed the final steps to ready Space Shuttle Enterprise for its flight to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport while managers continue to evaluate the expected weather that has postponed delivery past Monday. Enterprise, the first orbiter built for the Space Shuttle Program, was used primarily for ground and flight tests within the atmosphere. The initial testing period named Approach and Landing Test (ALT) included a flight on February 18, 1977 atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system. Enterprise will go on permanent display at the Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum in New York in June. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Space shuttle Discovery, on its way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., passes the moon one last time as it flies low over Edgewater Tuesday morning. Photo by Tim Wilson.

An orbiter took the scenic route Tuesday morning, as space shuttle Discovery made her way to Washington Dulles International Airport. Discovery will be installed at the National Air & Space Museum on Thursday. I thought this snippet of the above article put it well:

It was a sad day out at the Kennedy Space Center for those of us who’ve been around the shuttle program for a while. Sure, we know the ships stopped flying last year, but watching preparations for Discovery’s final flight — in the horizontal, not vertical orientation — was sobering.

“I almost feel like I’m at a funeral and there’s the hearse,” said one of my long-time space reporter pals, Bill Harwood, with CBS.

Space shuttle Discovery mounted atop a 747 shuttle carrier aircraft, flies by the Washington Monument during a flyover of the nation's capital on its final trip (Getty Images)

NASM and NASA promoted this fly-by event heavily, and Discovery flew over many DC landmarks before settling down at Dulles. Viewers were encouraged to “spot the shuttle” and post their images online. Here is a large collection of photos, both of the fly-by and of the crowds. The imagery is bittersweet, for me — I plan to visit Discovery in the future, but I think I’m glad I’m not there now. It does, indeed, feel like a funeral… or taxidermy.

Orbiter Discovery is carried on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft up and down the beaches of Brevard County as a farewell on her way to Washington D.C. and her new home at the National Air & Space Museum. Photo by Jen Scheer.

Well… this is it. Get your fill of landing (and launch!) photos here. The landing was beautiful… and sad, very sad. The thing with perhaps the most sustained influence on my life, is over today.

Goodbye, Space Shuttle, and thank you.

Credit & Copyright: Ben Cooper (Launch Photography, launchphotography.com)

Two weeks from today (we hope!), space shuttle Atlantis will make her final climb into orbit, on the final space shuttle flight of the program. I, along with many, many others, will be there to see her off. I grew up with space shuttles, they defined my dreams for most of my life, and it seems fitting to be in Florida for the final sendoff. I’ll be at the Space View Park Tweetup event, please join us! (Registration is FREE.)

An artists impression of the green crystals falling down upon the star, almost like glitter. Picture: NASA/JPL

I’m a big fan of olivine/peridot, so when I saw this article about — get this — a star bombarded by peridot rain, I knew I had to post it!

MORE proof that space is amazing, this time from the not-too-distant constellation of Orion, where one star is currently being bombarded with green crystal rain.

The embryonic star is described as “Sun-like” – as in our Sun – and named HOPS-38.

The crystals are a green mineral called olivine and have been spotted raining down from the clouds of gas engulfing HOPS-68 by NASA’s Spitzer infrared detectors.

Much as I would like to visit, I’ll have to content myself with one day visiting Hawaii’s green beach (composed primarily of olivine crystals; scroll down.)

Old news (but good news): meet the star with a 10 billion trillion trillion carat diamond at its core! I’ve been fascinated with the thought of diamond-core stars and planets ever since first reading 2010. Just last year, studies indicated possible carbon-rich, diamond-core planets; for those of you on a budget, there’s a cubic zirconia (and/or zircon) star that will suit any piece of cosmic-sized jewelry. Both cubic zirconia and zircon are diamond simulants, CZ being the most popular.

You might ask why I’m stuck on diamonds, seemingly out of the blue — the truth is, I’ve been saving this post up. I am just finishing Diamonds & Diamond Grading, as part of my Graduate Gemologist coursework, and today is my first final exam in approximately 7.5 years. I have been studying THE SPARKLIES at great length and thus ends my weak attempt at a tie-in between my two favorite subjects: SPACE, and SPARKLY ROCKS.

Incidentally, the reason you don’t see more star-shaped diamonds — whole, one-piece stars, I mean — is because so much of the rough carat weight is lost in cutting. An efficient shape, it is not.