Apollo 16 mission’s picture of the video camera on the moon, taken from the Lunar Module “Orion” by astronauts. Apollo 16 was the tenth NASA mission to the Moon and the fifth (and last) to land a manned module on the Moon. Commander John Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke spent just under three days on the Moon in the lander while Ken Mattingly piloted the “Casper” Command/Service Module.
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this picture of the open star cluster M7 in June, 2010 using a 100-millisecond manual exposure. The LORRI is part of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto. Star cluster M7 (Messier 7) is also referred to as NGC 6475. It is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Scorpius that is visible with the naked eye. This star cluster has been seen by humans since ancient times, and has also been called the Ptolemy Cluster after being discovered by the by the first century Greek-Roman astronomer, Ptolemy.
Apollo 11’s Lunar Module / Lunar Excursion Module, about to end its mission on the Moon. The lander is seen here leaving the Moon’s surface to dock with the Command/Service Module (CSM). In the background is a picturesque “Earthrise” picture taken by astronaut Michael Collins in the Apollo CSM.
Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and has a nice bright blue colour. Its bluer than Uranus, which has more green, because of an atmosphere that is composed of methane, hydrogen and helium. The high amount of methane absorbs just the red light from the visible spectrum and reflects the blue light. Hence Neptune appears very blue to us. The above picture of Neptune was taken by NASA’s Voyager space probe and focuses in on the planet’s dark spot (a very large anti-cyclonic storm system).
Picture of (our) Moon taken by NASA Jet Propulsion Lab’s (JPL) passing spacecraft. The Galileo spacecraft took this picture of the moon on its way to its primary mission which was to explore the planet Jupiter and three of its moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) . Galileo’s picture provides a view of our Moon’s geography with its many impact basins and areas filled with dark lava rock.
