Asteriant Prime, by Tobias Roetsch (Taenaron)

Gorgeous colors and violent weather in this beautiful illustration by Tobias Roetsch (Taenaron).

Asteriant Prime is a highly developed planet with giant city-scapes. There also is life on his moons. Due to the climate, which is very cold and windy , there are only a few savage colonies.

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

LEGO model of Discovery, from 2001: A Space Odyssey

No, not space shuttle Discovery, I’m talking about the 2001: A Space Odyssey version. Spindly and memorable, and entirely build-able, with just 3,861 pieces. (Check out those engines!)

Engines, LEGO model of Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey

I’m all for learning “moon talk”! Image via x-ray delta one.

When I saw this image of the Omega Nebula, I was instantly reminded of labradorite, one of my favorite minerals. (I even dreamed about it once. Stop laughing.) Below, I present a most excellent photo of labradorite, for comparison.

Edited to add: Do you enjoy seeing things in star clouds? There’s a site for that.

Labradorite (closeup), photo © Wood's Stoneworks and Photo Factory

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!

Credit: Composite Image Data - Hubble Legacy Archive; Adrian Zsilavec, Michelle Qualls, Adam Block / NOAO / AURA / NSF; Processing - André van der Hoeven

It’s time for an awesome galaxy picture, and today’s APOD fits the bill — another treasure dug from the Hubble Legacy Archive! (I’ve uploaded the full version for your viewing pleasure, click the image to view. You’re welcome.)

Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe: a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Along with prominent dust lanes and a bright central core, this colorful composite image highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries that trace the galaxy’s spiral arms. The high resolution galaxy portrait is a mosaic of data from Hubble’s sharp ACS camera combined with groundbased color image data. M106 (aka NGC 4258) is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Energetic active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.

Vincent van Gogh. (Dutch, 1853-1890). The Starry Night. Saint Rémy, June 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm). On display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City

I’m starting to dig through the archives here at Silver Rockets, as I’m discovering that a lot of my favorite things were posted toward the beginning when nobody was reading this blog. I’ll be starting a series of highlights and best-ofs, every so often, to bring some happy images back to the surface for your enjoyment.

First up is The Starry Night, one of my favorite paintings PERIOD. This was post #4 here, on July 4, 2006. (Long time, no see!) It was also my first masthead.

It came to mind the other day, while I was remembering this:

Danielle visits Starry Night! June 2011, NYC.

I saw a lot of neat things while I was in New York City last June (most of them sparkly, not spacey), but there are a few specific things that are especially vivid memories, and this is one of them. I could have sat and looked at The Starry Night for an hour, I bet. The colors are vibrant. The texture is incredible. It’s smaller than I’d imagined. Funny how that works. The Starry Night is smallish. The Lady of Shalott is GIGANTIC. Go figure.

I buzzed around MoMA briefly, taking in a roomful of Monet’s water lilies, Art Nouveau furniture and more, but kept gravitating back to the Starry Night room. I could hardly take my eyes off it! I firmly believe that art is best experienced in person, if possible. Even the best reproductions can’t capture that feeling. If you’re able to, I highly recommend paying Starry Night a visit! And don’t be afraid to get close! I got about a foot away, before getting the Eyeball from a guard. Beware the Eyeball.

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!