Image Credit & Copyright: Ben Cooper (LaunchPhotography.com)

The latest Moon mission (unmanned) launched on September 10th. Would love to have been there, but alas, many other things going on around then. Enjoy this beautiful time-lapse image by Ben Cooper of the rollback.

This dramatic time-lapse photo traces a 20 minute long, late evening rollback of the lighted Mobile Service Tower at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17. Twin spacecraft are snug inside the 13 story tall Delta 2 rocket poised for launch. The duo will journey to the Moon on NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission, GRAIL, using precision formation flying to map the Moon’s gravity field. The scene was captured prior to the first launch attempt, canceled due to upper level winds, on September 8. Further launch opportunities for GRAIL begin this morning, September 10. The GRAIL launch is the last one planned from Complex 17 on Cape Canaveral’s oldest still active pad, in use since 1957.

Image Credit & Copyright: Tunç Tezel and Stéphane Guisard (TWAN)

What are we looking at? A full panorama of the Milky Way, as seen from both Northern and Southern Hemispheres of the earth…

A quest to find planet Earth’s darkest night skies led to this intriguing panorama. In projection, the mosaic view sandwiches the horizons visible in all-sky images taken from the northern hemisphere’s Canary Island of La Palma (top) and the south’s high Atacama Desert between the two hemispheres of the Milky Way Galaxy. The photographers’ choice of locations offered locally dark skies enjoyed by La Palma’s Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and Paranal Observatory in Chile. But it also allowed the directions to the Milky Way’s north and south galactic poles to be placed near the local zenith. That constrained the faint, diffuse glow of the plane of the Milky Way to the mountainous horizons. As a result, an even fainter S-shaped band of light, sunlight scattered by dust along the solar system’s ecliptic plane, can be completely traced through both northern and southern hemisphere night skies.

Credit: Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrees, nuitsacrees.fr)

As usual, the width of my blog layout is insufficient to truly express the awesomeness of this photo; you’re simply going to have to go here and view it embiggered.

On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for landscape astrophotography. The above winning image was taken two months ago over Jökulsárlón, the largest glacial lake in Iceland. The photographer combined six exposures to capture not only two green auroral rings, but their reflections off the serene lake. Visible in the distant background sky is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, the Pleiades open clusters of stars, and the Andromeda galaxy. A powerful coronal mass ejection from the Sun caused auroras to be seen as far south as Wisconsin, USA. As the Sun progresses toward solar maximum in the next few years, many more spectacular images of aurora are expected.

Credit & Copyright: David Kaplan

An amazing photo of the Swiss Alps, with a pre-dawn Moon and Venus in the sky. Gorgeous, excuse me while I set this to be my desktop….

Sometimes a morning sky can be a combination of serene and surreal. Such a sky perhaps existed before sunrise this past Sunday as viewed from a snowy slope in eastern Switzerland. Quiet clouds blanket the above scene, lit from beneath by lights from the village of Trübbach. A snow covered mountain, Mittlerspitz, poses dramatically on the upper left, hovering over the small town of Balzers, Liechtenstein far below. Peaks from the Alps can be seen across the far right, just below the freshly rising Sun. Visible on the upper right are the crescent Moon and the bright planet Venus. Venus will remain in the morning sky all month, although it will likely not be found in such a photogenic setting.

Credit & Copyright: James Vernacotola

I generally try to avoid posting two APOD pictures back to back, but it’s late (the night before), I’m tired, and this is a spectacular photo that posted over the weekend (so you may not have seen it.) I admit, I’m a sucker for night photography, but the framing of this shot — and oh, the colors!! — makes it downright FANTASTIC. Beautifully done, Mr. Vernacotola.

UPDATE, 2/22: The photographer has set up a special page for this photo, with a large Q&A section and reassurances that prints will be available soon. Join the mailing list to stay informed.

The 32nd shuttle mission to the International Space Station, STS-130, left planet Earth on February 8. Its early morning launch to orbit from Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A followed the long, graceful, eastward arc seen in this 2 minute time exposure. Well composed, the dramatic picture also shows the arc’s watery reflection from the Intracoastal Waterway Bridge, in Ponte Vedra, Florida, about 115 miles north of the launch site. In the celestial background a waning crescent Moon and stars left their own short trails against the still dark sky. The brightest star trail near the moon was made by red supergiant Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius.

Space Shuttle Columbia over Houston, July 27, 1999 - © Danielle Signor

I mentioned on Twitter last week that the Columbia anniversary is something I take pretty personally, so I’m not going to attempt to make some happy-ooh-cool-space post like I typically do. Instead I’m sharing a picture I took of Columbia (STS-93) en route to a night landing in Florida, which I took from the rocket park at Johnson Space Center during my summer internship there. (Well, my internship was at LPI to be precise; we had access to JSC and used it whenever possible. Because we could. It was fun.)

ANYWAY we decided to watch the reentry at the rocket park because it was nice and dark, and in a fit of desperation, having stupidly forgotten my tripod I took this long exposure and somehow unconsciously tracked the shuttle’s path. DUMB. LUCK. It’s probably my favorite picture from that summer, especially given what happened on this day, seven years ago….

Earlier that summer, us interns went to the public welcome-back slideshow/ceremony for STS-96 at Space Center Houston. It was my first encounter with astronauts in Houston (it was just a week or two after we’d all arrived.) I seem to remember the rookies getting their pins, but I was in such an awed daze that it’s hard to say for sure. What I do remember was getting autographs after the presentation was over. Most of the crew looked tired, inured to the procedure; signing, a polite word or two, next please. All except one: a radiant young man, brimming with energy, asking each person’s name, writing a personalized message along with his signature, chatting with everyone in turn.

I don’t relate this to bag on anyone for not being astronaut-y enough; I’m sure dealing with the public is exhausting even under the best of circumstances. It’s just that this man shone out in the crowd, and I never forgot his smiling face, his kind words, and the scripture he wrote down under his autograph (Proverbs 3:5-6.) I met a lot of astronauts that summer, a lot of really incredible people, but this was the one that always stuck out to me (and still does; the memory hasn’t dimmed in a decade.)

His name was Rick Husband.

Sky photo credit & copyright: Tony Hallas, astrophoto.com

Tony Hallas doesn’t know how his photo above thrilled me to bits on Christmas Day — I never dreamed I’d see my home-mountain — is that a term? I live at the foot of it — on APOD! I live near Mount Shasta, California, which is on the right side of his photo; I’ve cropped it above to show just Mt. Shasta, because it’s clearly better than Mt. Lassen and YES I AM EXTREMELY BIASED, I DON’T CARE! (If you don’t believe me, see for yourself. And if you like those sites, click here, eheh. Thank you.)

Anyway, all mountain-bias aside, I’d like to wish all my visitors and regular readers a very happy 2010 — may yours be especially awesome! Thanks for your (site) patronage!!

Double-posting today, too awesome not to pass on: last night, what you see above appeared over the skies of Norway. This is not an aurora, and NOT Photoshop, as there are many witnesses, videos and photos. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has the explanation (most likely, a rocket/missile gone awry; if you’re not convinced, watch the video at the bottom), Gizmodo has collected the pictures and a video, and The Daily Mail has eyewitness interviews and more videos (and photos with credit, which I borrowed.) I learned about this initially from Space Weather, and despite it likely being a man-made phenomenon, it’s still quite a sight to behold!

Spiral light over Norway. Photo by Jan Petter Jørgensen