[OT] The Final Frontier: The Epic Thread of Space.

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Credit: Kolbjørn Blix Dahle/Andøya Rocket Range

Friday, December 17, 2010 A NASA rocket launched Dec. 12 from Norway to study the mysterious northern lights. This photo of the RENU launch was taken from downtown Andenes, Norway.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Tuesday, December 14, 2010 Rings enrobe crescent Saturn in this Cassini spacecraft image. Clouds swirl through the atmosphere of the planet, while barely-visible Prometheus orbits between the planet's main rings and its the thin F ring. Saturn's moon Prometheus appears very small above the rings near the middle of the image.

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Credit: NASA

Monday, December 13, 2010 Harrat Khaybar, Saudi Arabia. lies in the western half of the Arabian peninsula, and contains extensive lava fields known as haraat (referred to as harrat for a named field). The most recent recorded eruption of this volcanic field took place between 600-700 A.D. The local climate may have been much wetter during some periods of volcanic activity. Today, the regional climate is hyperarid, leading to an almost total lack of vegetation. The image was taken by the Expedition 16 crew aboard the International Space Station in March 2008.

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Thursday, December 9, 2010 The dark rippled dunes of Mars' Proctor Crater likely formed more recently than the lighter rock forms they appear to cover. Researchers believe the dunes slowly shift in response to pervasive winds. This image was taken by HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Wednesday, December 8, 2010 This view of grains from a sand dune near Christmas Lake, Ore., was taken by a test version of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on Curiosity, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, slated to launch in fall 2011. Three 2-millimeter-diameter (0.08-inch-diameter) ball bearings in the scene provide an independent measure of the image scale. This image has a resolution of 15.4 microns per pixel, about twice as high as the camera resolution on Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The view covers an area about 1 inch, or 2.5 centimeters, across.

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Friday, December 2, 2010 This Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image (released Aug. 1, 2007) shows a ridge in Mars' Terra Meridiani that is most likely a former streambed, now exposed in inverted relief. The stream that formed this ridge must have been ancient, as the ridge is buried by brighter rocks, which are themselves very old, having been thickly deposited and then heavily eroded

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Thursday, December 2, 2010 This image, taken on August 13, 2010, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows the moon Enceladus over the bright arc of Saturn's atmosphere.

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Credit: SDO/NASA

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

This composite image of the Sun taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft shows the HMI magnetic field in blue and orange (indicating opposite polarity) aligned with the AIA 171 channel in extreme ultraviolet superimposed over it (May 23, 2010). The juxtaposition is especially effective at showing how the arcs that we observe in UV light emerge from regions of strong magnetic field.