This picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as Messier 51a; discovered by the great French astronomer Charles Messier in 1773; or M51a, or NGC 5194) was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy is located about 31 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy and is part of the constellation Canes Venatici. The very distinctly spiral shaped, interacting and grand design Whirlpool Galaxy is estimated to be home to approximately 270 billion stars.
Crew of the departing Skylab 2 mission took this June 22, 1973 photo of the orbiting space station. The SL-2 crew comprised of Charles Conrad, Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin. They spent over 26 days in space and took this picture from the Skylab Command/Service Module as part of their final fly by inspection before returning back to Earth.
This picture of Earth was taken by Alan Shepard on May 5, 1961 as part of NASA’s Mercury Redstone 3 space mission. The historic MR-3 launch allowed Shepard to become the first American (and second person) in space. He likely took this picture of Earth through the on board periscope. The 15 minute mission was put into orbit by an extended and up-powered version of the US Army’s Redstone ballistic missile – forming the Redstone Launch Vehicle.
The Mars Curiosity Rover was not be left behind the times. With the help of its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a series of images were stitched together to put together this 2012 selfie of the Mars Curiosity Rover. In this picture, the rover is situated in the Gale Crater’s “Rocknest” area with Mount Sharp visible towards the right of the picture.
Jupiter is an amazing planet with sixty seven (as of 2014) confirmed moons. Callisto is one of its larger natural satellites, in fact bigger in size than the planet Mercury. NASA’s Voyager probe was sent to explore Jupiter and some of its moons and took this picture of Callisto in 1979. The bright portion is believed to be an impact crater about 600 km across. Callisto was discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610 and over time it has been determined that Callisto is mostly composed of rock and ices (water and ammonia frozen in ice form due to extreme temperatures of about 120 degrees Kelvin or -243.67 degrees Fahrenheit at its equator).
