This December 21, 1973 black and white picture of the Comet Kohoutek was taken from the Skylab space station while in Earth orbit, by a Skylab 4 mission astronaut.
Pictures of Comet Kohoutek from Earth and Space
Category Archives: Pictures
Space pictures
Strange object on Mars
This is one of the first views of Mars as photographed by the Viking 2 lander in 1976. The trenches dug by Viking to analyze sub-surface samples (middle of picture) and the foot pad of the lander (lower right) are visible. But what is the circled cylindrical object? A part from the Viking 2 lander? It doesn’t look like the rest of the rocks in this Martian landscape.
Canadarm deployed by Endeavour
The iconic Canadarm (formerly known as Shuttle Remote Manipulator System) being deployed by the space shuttle Endevour (STS 77) during a 1996 mission conducting Spacelab experiments. In the background is a chance solar starburst pattern. The Canadarm is a “robotic arm” that was designed and built by SPAR Aerospace in Montreal and first delivered to NASA in 1981. Canadarm2 followed this original SRMS system and continues to be used on the International Space Station (ISS). It is now built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) of Canada.
Meteoroid over Yellowknife in the Canadian Arctic
A couple of days ago ago we talked about three asteroids that had passed by very close to Earth in the short span of a day. Today there were some reports that a small meteoroid had also burned up as a fireball over Yellowknife, Northwest Territories – in the Canadian Arctic. The fireball was photographed by a contingent of Japanese tourists out to view the Aurora Borealis, and was shared on Twitter.
March 5, 2014 One of the brightest fireball I’ve seen tonight! Vee Lake, Yellowknife, NWT @AuroraMAX @spectacularNWT pic.twitter.com/2p6705Si0c
— Yuichi Takasaka (@ytakasaka) March 6, 2014
The meteoroid would have been too small to cause any damage but it apparently turned the night sky blue over that part of the NWT. Another fireball was also seen around New Mexico and it is believed that many more occurred, with some being photographed or recorded by NASA.
M-Class Solar Flare and Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)
Coronal mass ejection (CME) is the violent release of gas, radiation and magnetic fields, above the Sun’s corona and then often into space. This picture from August 18, 2013 is of a medium solar flare (M-class flare) and the associated coronal mass ejection. The solar flare is the strong bright region while the CME is the plasma streaking out. This picture was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
SDO is a mission launched in 2010 to study the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth. A CME directed towards Earth could affect affect us greatly. It could cause our planet’s magnetic field to shift suddenly; inducing electricity in large, powerful conductors. This would overload the affected electrical systems and cause massive damage to the critical electricity transformers and other grid infrastructure – with potentially drastic results for mankind.
