Sun and Moon

Amazing Space Photos

This image provided by NASA Wednesday Oct. 20, 2010 shows the new Moon passing between the Sun and the Solar Dynamics Observatory's space telescope on Oct. 7, 2010.

(AP Photo/NASA- SDO)

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Never-Seen Moon ... This image released by NASA on Thursday, March 22, 2012 shows the far side of the moon with Earth in the background. It was among more than 60 images taken by one of NASA's spacecraft in orbit around the moon. The cameras are operated by middle school students as part of a project. (AP Photo/NASA)

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Saturn's Moon Rh... This photo made March 10, 2012, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows a raw, unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Rhea. The camera was pointing toward Rhea from a distance of approximately 42,096 kilometers (26,157 miles). (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

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Solar Flare This handout image provided by NASA shows a solar flare heading toward Earth. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center said the sun erupted Tuesday evening and the effects should start smacking Earth late Wednesday night, close to midnight EST. They say it is the biggest in five years and growing. (AP Photo/NASA)

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UV Flare Image This extreme ultraviolet wavelength image provided by NASA shows a solar flare. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center said the sun erupted Tuesday evening and the effects should start smacking Earth late Wednesday night, close to midnight EST. They say it is the biggest in five years and growing. (AP Photo/NASA)

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X1 Flare An image released by NASA on March 5, 2012 is a view of a X1 solar flare in a new active region on the sun, region 1429. It has let loose two M-class flares and one X-class so far. The M-class flares erupted on March 2 and on March 4. The third flare, rated an X1, peaked at 10:30 ET on March 4. A CME accompanied each flare, though due to the fact that this active region is still off to the side of the sun, they will likely have a weak effect on Earth's magnetosphere. (AP Photo/NASA)

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Vesta Asteroid This Jan. 5, 2012 image provided by NASA shows bright and dark material at the rim of the Marcia crater on the Vesta asteroid, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. The lighter areas of the crater's edge is causing high interest and speculation by NASA scientists. (AP Photo/NASA)
Solar Flare This image provided by NASA shows the Sun unleashing a medium-sized solar flare, a minor radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection on June 7, 2011. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface. The ejection should deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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First-ever Photo... This image provided by NASA is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet, Mercury. The image was captured at 5:20 a.m. EDT,Tuesday March 29, 2011. The dominant rayed crater in the upper portion of the image is Debussy. The bottom portion of this image is near Mercury's south pole and includes a region of Mercury's surface not previously seen by spacecraft. On March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011, UTC), MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Baby Black Hole This composite image provided by NASA, created this month, taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, shows a galaxy where a recent supernova probably resulted in a black hole in the bright white dot near the bottom middle of the picture.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Valentines Comet This photo released by NASA/JPL on Feb. 15, 2011 shows an image from NASA's Stardust mission of comet Tempel 1 taken on Feb. 14, 2011. The Stardust craft zipped past a comet half the size of Manhattan during a Valentine's Day rendezvous that scientists hoped would shed light on these icy solar system bodies. At nearest approach, the craft passed within 112 miles of the potato-shaped comet, closer than the original prediction.

(AP Photo/ NASA/JPL/ Caltech/Cornell)

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Mars' Surface In this image provided by NASA shows portions of the Martian surface in unprecedented detail like this one from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken on Jan. 14, 2011, nearly five years after the March 10, 2006, arrival of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at Mars. This one shows many channels from 1 meter to 10 meters (approximately 3 feet to 33 feet) wide on a scarp in the Hellas impact basin. North is up. The image was taken at 3:44 p.m. local Mars time.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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North America Ne... An images provided by NASA shows a Spitzer Space Telescope infrared image of the swirling landscape of stars known as the North American nebula. In visible light, the region resembles North America. The infrared view penetrates dust in the nebula and reveals the glow of dusty cocoons enveloping baby stars. Clusters of young stars (about one million years old) can be found throughout the image. Slightly older but still very young stars (about 3 to 5 million years) are also liberally scattered across the complex, Some areas of this nebula are still very thick with dust and appear dark even in Spitzer's view.

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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Gibbous Moon This image provided by NASA shows Earth's thin line of atmosphere and a gibbous moon are featured in this image photographed Sunday March 6, 2011 by an Expedition 26 crew member on the International Space Station.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Hartley 2 This black-and-white image of the comet Hartley 2 provided by NASA was sent from the NASA EPOXI Mission Deep Impact spacecraft, which passed within 435 miles (700 kilometers) of the comet at its closest point, and was received at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. The comet is estimated to be 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) long, and weigh about 280 million metric tons.

(AP Photo NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland)

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New Planets This is a January, 2011 handout artist rendering provided by NASA. NASA’s Kepler telescope is finding that relatively smaller planets _ still larger than Earth, but tinier than Jupiter _ are proving more common outside our solar system than once thought. This drawing is of one of the smallest planets that Kepler has found, a rocky planet called Kepler-10b, that measures 1.4 times the size of Earth and where the temperature is more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

(AP Photo/Dana Berry, SkyWorks Digital Inc., Kepler Mission, NASA Ames Research Center)

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Supernova Blast This image provided by NASA Tuesday Dec. 14, 2010 shows a delicate sphere of gas, photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, floats serenely in the depths of space. The pristine shell, or bubble, is the result of gas that is being shocked by the expanding blast wave from a supernova. Called SNR 0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth.

(AP Photo/NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

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Asteroid Meteori... This photo released by NASA shows a typical example of a meteorite remnant linked to asteroid 2008 TC3, with a dark scruffy texture. When the 2008 TC3 burned up in the atmosphere, it also scattered meteorite fragments in the remote Sudan desert.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Zeta Runaway The blue star near the center of this image provided by NASA Monday Jan. 24, 2011 is Zeta Ophiuchi. When seen in visible light it appears as a relatively dim red star surrounded by other dim stars and no dust. However, in this infrared image taken with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, a completely different view emerges. Zeta Ophiuchi is actually a very massive, hot, bright blue star plowing its way through a large cloud of interstellar dust and gas.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Moon Map This image provided by NASA Friday Dec. 17, 2010 shows a topographic map of the moon's northern hemisphere from data provided by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. NASA's LRO is allowing researchers to create the most precise and complete map to date of the moon's complex, heavily cratered landscape according to scientists. The false colors indicate elevation: red areas are highest and blue lowest.

(AP Photo/NASA/GSFC)

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Saturn Moon Ice This image provided by NASA shows a radar mapping image made by the Cassini spacecraft of a flyover area on Saturn's giant moon Titan showing an ice volcano. There's been ongoing debate about whether volcanoes exist on ice-rich moons in the outer solar system. Such a volcano may spew ice and hydrocarbons instead of lava.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Nebula Orion The central area of nebula Orion is clearly seen in this picture taken by the world's largest telescope named Subaru, set at the top of Mount Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. The photo was the first astrononomical achevement of the telescope, equipped with an 8.2-meter (27 feet) mirror and an infra-red camera. It was transported to an observatory of the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory on the giant volcano last October from Japan. The photo was released in Tokyo on Friday, January 29, 1999.

(AP Photo/Kyodo NewsTokyo Astronomical Observatory)

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Hartley 2 This black-and-white image of the comet Hartley 2 provided by NASA was sent from the NASA EPOXI Mission Deep Impact spacecraft, which passed within 435 miles (700 kilometers) of the comet at its closest point, and was received at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. The comet is estimated to be 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) long, and weigh about 280 million metric tons.

(AP Photo NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland)

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Space Aurora This image provided by NASA shows the Earth at night showing the Aurora Australis dancing on a moonlit night…a new dawn just beyond the horizon. The small pinpoint lights that you see in these night images are pixels on the camera’s image sensor blown out by particles of cosmic radiation…one of the hazards of the job out here according to astronaut Douglas Wheelock.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Solar Storm In this x-ray photo provided by NASA, the sun is shown early in the morning of Sunday, Aug. 1, 2010. The dark arc near the top right edge of the image is a filament of plasma blasting off the surface _ part of the coronal mass ejection. The bright region is an unassociated solar flare. When particles from the eruption reach Earth on the evening of Aug. 3-4, they may trigger a brilliant auroral display known as the Northern Lights.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Sun and Moon This image provided by NASA Wednesday Oct. 20, 2010 shows the new Moon passing between the Sun and the Solar Dynamics Observatory's space telescope on Oct. 7, 2010.

(AP Photo/NASA- SDO)

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Galaxy Messier 8... This image provided by the NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team shows the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) view of the nearby galaxy Messier 83. It is sometimes referred to as the southern Pinwheel galaxy. What's special about WISE is its ability to see through impenetrable veils of dust, picking up the heat glow of objects that are invisible to regular telescopes. So far, WISE has discovered 25,000 never-before-seen asteroids. Of those, 95 are considered "near-Earth" asteroids.

(AP Photo/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team)

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Mars' 'Block Isl... This image provided by NASA of the rock informally named by scientists "Block Island" was taken on July 28, 2009, with the navigation camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Composition measurements by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity confirmed Thursday Aug. 6, 2009 that this rock on the Martian surface is an iron-nickel meteorite. With a width of about two-thirds of a meter (2 feet), it is the largest meteorite yet found on Mars. Opportunity found a smaller iron-nickel meteorite, called "Heat Shield Rock" in late 2004.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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DR22 This infrared picture provided by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Wednesday Aug. 5, 2009 shows a cloud, known as DR22, bursting with new stars in the Cygnus region of the sky. Spitzer's infrared eyes can both see through and see dust, giving it a unique view into star-forming nests. The blue areas are dusty clouds, and the orange is mainly hot gas. The image is on of the first to be taken during Spitzer's warm mission -- a new phase that began after the telescope, which operated for more than five-and-a-half years, ran out of liquid coolant. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech) This image is one of the first to be taken during Spitzer's warm mission -- a new phase that began after the telescope, which operated for more than five-and-a-half years, ran out of liquid coolant. The picture was snapped with the two infrared channels that still work at Spitzer's still-quite-chilly temperature of 30 Kelvin (about minus 406 Fahrenheit). The two infrared channels are part of Spitzer's infrared array camera: 3.6-micron light is blue and 4.5-micron light is orange. This picture was taken while the telescope was being re-commissioned, on July 21.
(Photo: AP)

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NGC-1097 This image provided by NASA this July 23, 2009 is a photo made by the Spitzer Space Telescope of the galaxy, called NGC-1097, is located 50 million light-years away. It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white. The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. The galaxy's red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy. This image was taken during Spitzer's cold mission, before it ran out of liquid coolant.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Cartwheel Galaxy This false-color composite image provided by NASA Thursday April 2, 2009 shows the Cartwheel galaxy as seen by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's Far Ultraviolet detector (blue); the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera-2 in B-band visible light (green); the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 8 microns (red); and the Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer-S array instrument (purple). Approximately 100 million years ago, a smaller galaxy plunged through the heart of Cartwheel galaxy, creating ripples of brief star formation. In this image, the first ripple appears as an ultraviolet-bright blue outer ring. The blue outer ring is so powerful in the GALEX observations that it indicates the Cartwheel is one of the most powerful UV-emitting galaxies in the nearby universe. Although astronomers have not identified exactly which galaxy collided with the Cartwheel, two of three candidate galaxies can be seen in this image to the bottom left of the ring, one as a neon blob and the other as a green spiral.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Arp 274 On April 1-2, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed a group of galaxies called Arp 274. Arp 274, also known as NGC 5679, is a system of three galaxies that appear to be partially overlapping in the image, although they may be at somewhat different distances. The spiral shapes of two of these galaxies appear mostly intact. The third galaxy, to the far left, is more compact, but shows evidence of star formation. Two of the three galaxies are forming new stars at a high rate. This is evident in the bright blue knots of star formation that are strung along the arms of the galaxy on the right and along the small galaxy on the left. The entire system resides at about 400 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

(AP Photo/ Hubble Space Telescope/NASA)

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Mars Ice Cap Tro... An image released by NASA shows Mars' seasonal cap of carbon dioxide ice has eroded many beautiful terrains as it sublimates in the Martian spring. In the region where the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this image, shows troughs that form a starburst pattern. In other areas these radial troughs have been referred to as spiders, simply because of their shape. In this region the pattern looks more dendritic as channels branch out numerous times as they get further from the center. The troughs are believed to be formed by gas flowing beneath the seasonal ice to openings where the gas escapes, carrying along dust from the surface below. The dust falls to the surface of the ice in fan-shaped deposits.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

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Tug of War This photo, supplied by NASA-ESA, is a new Hubble Space Telescope image of three galaxies locked in a gravitational tug-of-war that may result in the eventual demise of one of them. The three pictured galaxies -- NGC 7173, middle left, NCG 7174,middle right, and NGC 7176, lower right,-- are part of the Hickson Compact Group 90, named after astronomer Paul Hickson, who first catalogued these small clusters of galaxies in the 1980s. NGC 7173 and NGC 7176 appear to be smooth, normal elliptical galaxies without much gas and dust. In stark contrast, NGC 7174 is a mangled spiral galaxy, barely clinging to independent existence as it is ripped apart by its close neighbors. The strong tidal interaction surging through the galaxies has dragged a significant number of stars away from their home galaxies. These stars are now spread out, forming a tenuous luminous component in the galaxy group.

(AP Photo/ NASA, ESA - R. Sharples)

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Spiral Galaxy This image provided by NASA Tuesday Feb. 10, 2009 shows the spiral galaxy Messier 101 and is a composite of views from the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The red color shows Spitzer's view in infrared light. It highlights the heat emitted by dust lanes in the galaxy where stars can form. The yellow color is Hubble's view in visible light. Most of this light comes from stars, and they trace the same spiral structure as the dust lanes. The blue color shows Chandra's view in X-ray light. Such composite images allow astronomers to see how features seen in one wavelength match up with those seen in another wavelength.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Space Junk This image provided by the European Space Agency shows and artist impression of catalouged objects in low-Earth orbit viewed over the Equator. Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites _ one American, the other Russian _ smashed into each other hundreds of miles above Siberia Tuesday Feb. 10, 2009. The collision was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said. The debris field shown in this image is an artist's impression based on actual data but not shown in their actual size or density.

(AP Photo/ESA)

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Comet Lulin Comet Lulin is seen in the early morning sky during this half-hour time exposure photographed with a 300 mm telephoto lens on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009, in Stedman, N.C. The lens tracked the comet during the exposure. This rendered background stars as short streaks. On Monday at 10:43 p.m. EST, Lulin will be 38 million miles from Earth, the closest it will ever get, according to Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object program.

(AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Johnny Horne)

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Comet Lulin This image provided by NASA shows the Comet Lulin as it was passing through the constellation Libra when Swift imaged it. This view merges the Swift data with a Digital Sky Survey image of the star field. While waiting for high-energy outbursts and cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift Gamma-ray Explorer satellite is monitoring Comet Lulin as it closes on Earth. For the first time, astronomers are seeing simultaneous ultraviolet and X-ray images of a comet. Data acquired by Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (blue and green) and X-Ray Telescope data (red). While all the planets and most of the other objects in the solar system circle the sun counterclockwise, Lulin circles clockwise, said NASA astronomer Stephen Edberg. And thanks to an optical illusion, from Earth it appears as if the comet's tail is in the front as the comet approaches Earth and the sun.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Comet Lulin Comet Lulin, right, appears near the bright planet Saturn, left, in this six-minute time exposure made with a 300mm telephoto lens early Tuesday morning, Feb. 24, 2009, in Stedman, N.C. Comet Lulin passed closest to earth Monday night.

(AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Johnny Horne)

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Comet Lulin The Green Comet Lulin is seen (center-right) in the Constellation Leo near the Planet Saturn (center-left) on Monday Night, Feb. 23, 2009 from Tyler, Texas while a high altitude plane flies right to left in this 12 sec. time exposure. The Comet is visible in dark areas to the unaided eye as a faint green patch, while it makes its closest approach to the Earth tonight, about 38 Million miles. It is visible between 11PM and the dawn.

(AP Photo/Dr. Scott M. Lieberman)

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Comet Lulin The Green Comet Lulin is seen (upper-right) in the Constellation Virgo on Sunday morning, Feb. 22, 2009 from Tyler, Texas, in this 25 sec. time exposure. The Comet is visible to the unaided eye as a faint green patch, that will continue to brighten over the next several days, as it makes its closest approach to the Earth, 38 Million miles on Feb. 24, 2009. It is in the night sky between midnight and the dawn.

(AP Photo/Dr. Scott M. Lieberman)

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Spiral Galaxy In this image provided by NASA shows the very deep image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and released Thursday Feb. 5, 2009 shows the spiral galaxy NGC-4921 along with a spectacular backdrop of more distant galaxies. It was created from a total of 80 separate pictures through yellow and near-infrared filters.

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL)

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Peek-a-boo Moon In this image provided by NASA Thursday Dec. 18, 2008 the Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet. Ganymede completes an orbit around Jupiter every seven days. Because Ganymede's orbit is tilted nearly edge-on to Earth, it routinely can be seen passing in front of and disappearing behind its giant host, only to reemerge later. Composed of rock and ice, Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system. It is even larger than the planet Mercury. But Ganymede looks like a dirty snowball next to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. This color photo was made from three images taken on April 9, 2007.

(AP Photo/NASA/HUBBLE)

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Dark Energy This image provided by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Tuesday Dec. 16, 2008 shows the galaxy cluster Abell 85, located about 740 million light years from Earth. The purple emission is multi-million degree gas detected in X-rays by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This galaxy cluster is one of 86 observed by Chandra to trace how dark energy has stifled the growth of these massive structures over the last 7 billion years. Galaxy clusters are the largest collapsed objects in the Universe and are ideal for studying the properties of dark energy, the mysterious form of repulsive gravity that is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Going Supernova This composite image provided by NASA Wednesday Dec. 3, 2008 of the Tycho supernova remnant combines infrared and X-ray observations obtained with NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space observatories, respectively, and the Calar Alto observatory, in Spain. The image shows the remnant of a supernova that was observed in 1572 by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The explosion has left a blazing hot cloud of expanding debris (green and yellow). The location of the blast's outer shock wave can be seen as a blue sphere of ultra-energetic electrons. Newly synthesized dust in the ejected material and heated pre-existing dust from the area around the supernova radiate at infrared wavelengths of 24 microns (red). Foreground and background stars in the image are white.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Mars Craters This image provided by NASA Thursday Nov. 4, 2008 shows layers of similar thickness repeating dozens to hundreds of times in rocks exposed inside four craters in the Arabia Terra region of Mars in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Three dimensional analysis based on stereo pairs of images confirmed the regularity of repetition in the thickness of the beds. In the left half of this image, some of the rhythm is apparent as a series of bundles of about 10 individual layers per bundle. By corresponding to a known 10-to-one pattern in changes in the tilt of Mars' rotation axis, this pattern suggests the periodicity in the rock layers results from cyclical changes in the planet's tilt. Sedimentary rocks appear pink.

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL)

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New Planet This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star, Fomalhaut. According to scientists this is the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star. The small white box at lower right pinpoints the planet's location. Fomalhaut b has carved a path along the inner edge of a vast, dusty debris ring encircling Fomalhaut that is 34.5 billion kilometers across. The inset at bottom right is a composite image showing the planet's position during Hubble observations taken in 2004 and 2006. Astronomers have calculated that Fomalhaut b completes an orbit around its parent star every 872 years. The white dot in the center of the image marks the star's location.

(AP Photo/NASA/ESA)

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Saturn's Aurora This image provided by NASA Nov. 12, 2008 shows the northern polar region of Saturn showing both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared light as captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. According to NASA scientists Saturn has its own unique brand of aurora that lights up the polar cap, unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system. This odd aurora revealed itself to one of the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Auroras are caused by charged particles streaming along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere. Particles from the sun cause Earth's auroras. Many, but not all, of the auroras at Jupiter and Saturn are caused by particles trapped within the magnetic environments of those planets.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Echus Chasma The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express has returned images of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on the Red Planet. Echus Chasma is the source region of Kasei Valles which extends 3,000 km to the north. The image was made available on July 14, 2008.

(Reuters/NASA)

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Mountain on Mars A perspective view of a mountain in the eastern Hellas region of Mars surrounded by a lobate deposit with flow textures on the surface. A radar instrument aboard a NASA spacecraft has detected large glaciers hidden under rocky debris that may be the vestiges of ice sheets that blanketed parts of Mars in a past ice age, scientists said on Thursday.

(REUTERS/Ernst Hauber/ESA/DLR/Handout)

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Color World This undated handout photo provided by NASA, taken earlier this month by the Messenger space probe, shows a portion of Mercury. Earth's first nearly full look at Mercury reveals that the tiny lifeless planet took a far greater role in in shaping itself than scientists had thought with volcanoes spewing "mysterious dark blue material." New images from NASA's Messenger space probe should help settle a decades-old debate about what caused parts of Mercury to be somewhat smoother than it should be. NASA released photos Wednesday Oct. 29, 2008 from Messenger's fly-by earlier this month, that gave the answer: Lots of volcanic activity, far more than signs from an earlier probe.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Color World This undated handout photo provided by NASA shows a portion of Mercury. Earth's first nearly full look at Mercury reveals that the tiny lifeless planet took a far greater role in in shaping itself than scientists had thought with volcanoes spewing "mysterious dark blue material."

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Gravity Dance This undated handout photo provided by NASA, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The Hubble Space Telescope is working again, taking stunning cosmic photos after a one-month breakdown. The Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said the $10 billion telescope is as good as it was before a shutdown in late September. That glitch scotched plans for spacewalking astronauts to upgrade the telescope this month.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Blue Mars A photo released by NASA made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed Martian rocks containing a hydrated mineral similar to opal. The rocks are light-toned and appear cream-colored in this false-color image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera. The opal minerals are located in distinct beds of rock outside of the large Valles Marineris canyon system and are also found in rocks within the canyon. The presence of opal in these relatively young rocks tells scientists that water, possibly as rivers and small ponds, interacted with the surface as recently as two billion years ago, one billion years later than scientists had expected.

(AP Photo/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

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Saturn Cyclones This image provided by NASA Monday Oct. 13, 2008 shows a side-by-side view of large cyclones at both poles of Saturn obtained by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard the Cassini spacecraft. The left image is the first detailed image of Saturn's entire north polar region ever obtained. Winds reach over approximately 325 miles per hour just outside the first bright ring nearest the pole. The cyclone reaches out some 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) from the pole, bordered by the hexagon. This hexagon is populated by fast-moving clouds which also reach speeds of over 500 kilometers per hour (300 miles per hour). The south pole image (right), acquired just a few hours after the north polar image also shows a polar cyclone, complete with a central eye clear of clouds. The images were acquired June 15, left and 16, right, 2008.

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL)

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Mercury This image provided by NASA Tuesday Oct. 7, 2008 shows a close up photo of the surface of the planet Mercury taken taken on Oct. 6, 2008 when NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew by Mercury for the second time this year. MESSENGER is the first mission sent to orbit the planet closest to the sun. This portion of Mercury’s surface was previously imaged under different lighting conditions by Mariner 10, but this new MESSENGER image mosaic is the highest-resolution ever acquired of any portion of Mercury’s surface. The largest impact feature at the top of the image is about 133 kilometers (83 miles) in diameter and is named Polygnotus, after a Greek painter from the 5th century B.C. This basin has a central peak ring and is embayed with smooth plains material, which is very different in texture from the surrounding terrain.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Mercury This image provided by NASA Tuesday Oct. 7, 2008 shows the planet Mercury taken on Oct. 6, 2008, at roughly 4:40 a.m. ET, when MESSENGER flew by Mercury for the second time this year. MESSENGER is the first mission sent to orbit the planet closest to the sun. During the encounter, the probe swung just 125 miles (200 kilometers) above the cratered surface of Mercury, snapping hundreds of pictures and collecting a variety of other data from the planet as it gains a critical gravity assist that keeps the probe on track to become the first spacecraft ever to orbit the innermost planet beginning in March 2011. The spectacular image shown here is one of the first to be returned. It shows Mercury about 90 minutes after the spacecraft’s closest approach.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Violet Sun This image provided by NASA Thursday Oct. 2, 2008 shows the "Cantaloupe ridges" on the sun. The glowing white magnetic network is what gives the sun its extra oblateness (The ratio of a planet's polar to its equatorial diameter) during times of high solar activity. Amateur astronomer Gary Palmer took the picture in July 2005 using a violet calcium-K filter.

(AP Photo/NASA - Gary Palmer)

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Space Landscape In this image provided by NASA Thursday Oct. 2, 2008 shows landscape' image from the cosmos to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's Hubble Heritage Project. Cutting across a nearby star-forming region, called NGC 3324, are the "hills and valleys" of gas and dust displayed in intricate detail. Set amid a backdrop of soft, glowing blue light are wispy tendrils of gas as well as dark trunks of dust that are light-years in height. NGC 3324 is located in the constellation Carina, about 7,200 light-years away from Earth. The abrupt, mysterious failure of the command and data-handling system for Hubble's science instruments Saturday Sept. 28, 2008 means that the telescope is unable to capture and beam down the data needed to produce its stunning deep space images.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Star Burst This photo, released by NASA-ESA on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, show the Hubble Space Telescope view of the NCG 3077 galaxy. The dark clumps of material scattered around the bright nucleus are pieces of wreckage from the galaxy's interactions with its larger neighbors. NGC 3077 is a member of the M81 group of galaxies and it resides 12.5 million light-years from Earth. The photo was taken during a detailed survey of nearby galaxies which observed around 14 million stars in 69 galaxies. Some galaxies were found to be full of ancient stars, while others are like sun-making factories. The ancient stars are the fossil equivalents of new stars forming in the far Universe.

(AP Photo/NASA-ESA)

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Mars-scape In this image provided by NASA Thursday Sept. 18, 2008, shows the north polar layered deposits of Mars form a layered stack of dusty ice up to 3 kilometers (2 miles) thick.

(AP Photo/NASA - JPL - University of Arizona)

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Mars Ice This is one of the newly posted images from more than 1,000 observations by the high resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provided by NASA Thursday Sept. 18, 2008 that shows translucent Ice in the North Polar Region of Mars.

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

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Sands of Mars This image provided by NASA Thursday Sept. 18, 2008 captures unusual arrow-shaped sand dunes in the north polar Olympia Undae region of Mars that may have been formed by changing winds. The dark patches and streaks show sand that has begun escaping from a blanket of seasonal frost. the interaction between the sand, wind, and seasonal frost sculpts the dunes to their unusual, arrow-like appearance. Newly posted images from more than 1,000 observations by the high resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal details as small as a desk.

(AP Photo/NASA- JPL/University of Arizona)

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Blue Mars This is one of the newly posted images from more than 1,000 observations by the high resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provided by NASA Thursday Sept. 18, 2008. This image shows the Dune Field in an Impact Crater Near Cerberus Fossae.

(AP Photo/NASA - JPL/University of Arizona)

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Sunspot This image provided by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows a new sunspot, upper right, which after many weeks of a blank sun with no sunspots and very few sunspots this entire year, emerged Sept. 23, 2008. This new spot has both the magnetic orientation and the high-latitude position of a sunspot belonging to the new solar cycle, Cycle 24.

(AP Photo/NASA/ESA)

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Star Cloud In this image provided by NASA Friday Aug. 22, 2008 generations of stars can be seen in this new infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5 in the constellation Cassiopeia, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). Younger stars line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen as pink dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The white knotty areas are where the youngest stars are forming. Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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View from Mars In this image provided by NASA the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed out of "Victoria Crater" Thursday Aug. 28, 2008 following the tracks it had made when it descended into the 800-meter-diameter (half-mile-diameter) bowl nearly a year earlier. The rover's navigation camera captured this view back into the crater just after finishing a 6.8-meter (22-foot) drive that brought Opportunity out onto level ground during the mission's 1,634th Martian day, or sol. The rover laid down the first tracks at this entry and exit point during its 1,291st sol (Sept. 11, 2007), after about a year of exploring around the outside of Victoria Crater for the best access route to the interior.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Supernova Remnan... An image provided by NASA is a false-color picture showing the many sides of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. It is made up of images taken by three of NASA's Great Observatories, using three different wavebands of light. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red; visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope are yellow; and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are green and blue. Astronomers have unearthed secrets from the grave of the star that blasted apart in a supernova explosion long ago. The discovery, represents the first time astronomers have been able to resurrect the life history of a supernova remnant in our own galaxy. Cassiopeia A is the burnt-out corpse of a massive star that ended its life in a fiery supernova about 11,300 years ago. Because it is 11,000 light-years from Earth, the light from its explosion would have reached Earth, sweeping right past it, about 300 years ago.

(AP Photo/HO/NASA)

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Color Burst This composite image provided by NASA Wednesday Aug. 20, 2008 shows the active galaxy NGC 1275 (Perseus A). X-ray data from the Chandra's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer and radio data from NRAO's Very Large Array were combined with optical wavelengths in the red, green and blue from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. In the composite image, the X-ray data contribute to the soft violet shells around the outside of the center. The pinkish lobes toward the center of the galaxy are from radio frequencies. The radio emission, tracing jets from the black hole, fills the X-ray cavities. Dust lanes, star-forming regions, hydrogen filaments, foreground stars, and background galaxies are contributions from the Hubble optical data. The Hubble Space Telescope has found the answer to a long-standing puzzle by seeing the details of giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Enceladus An image provided by NASA of Saturn's moon Enceladus was made by the Casini spacecraft during a fly-by on Aug. 11, 2008. This false-color mosaic combines Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) narrow-angle camera images obtained through ultraviolet, green, and near-infrared camera filters. Areas that are greenish in appearance are believed to represent deposits of coarser grained ice and solid boulders that are too small to be seen at this scale. The whitish deposits represent finer grained ice. The mosaic shows that coarse-grained and solid ice are concentrated along valley floors and walls, as well as along the upraised flanks of the “tiger stripe” fractures.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Enceladus Close-... This image provided by NASA shows a closeup of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The Cairo Sulcus crosses the upper left portion of the image. An unnamed fracture curves around the lower right corner.The Cassini spacecraft began sending data to Earth Monday Aug. 11, 2008 following a very close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. During the closest approach, Cassini successfully passed only 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface of the tiny moon. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008, a distance of approximately 2,621 kilometers (1,629 miles) above the surface of Enceladus.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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NGC 2074 This photo was released by NASA and the European Space Agency to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074, top, on Sunday,Aug.10, 2008. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170 000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies.
(Photo: AP)

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Messier 101 In a photo provided by NASA, the Pinwheel galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 101, sports bright reddish edges in this new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Research from Spitzer has revealed that this outer red zone lacks organic molecules present in the rest of the galaxy. The red and blue spots outside of the spiral galaxy are either foreground stars or more distant galaxies. The organics, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are dusty, carbon-containing molecules that help in the formation of stars. Scientists also believe this space dust has the potential to be converted into the stuff of life. Spitzer found that the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons decrease in concentration toward the outer portion of the Pinwheel galaxy, then quickly drop off and are no longer detected at its very outer rim. According to astronomers, there's a threshold at the rim where the organic material is being destroyed by harsh radiation from stars.

(AP Photo/HO/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI)

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Peony Nebula Sta... This image provided by NASA from the Spitzer Space Telescope shows the newly discovered second brighterst star in the our Galaxy, the "Peony Nebula Star," in the central region of our Milky Way. While the existance of the star was already known, it wasn't until the Spitzer telescope with infrared instruments were able to pierce the dust in the nebula so scientists calculate it's brightness. According to NASA the star puts out light equivalent to 3.2 million suns.

(AP Photo/HO/NASA)

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Ribbon of Gas This image provided by NASA July 1, 2008 shows a delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. This image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago. The supernova was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans, and surpassed Venus as the brightest object in the night time sky, only to be surpassed by the moon. It was visible even during the day for weeks, and remained visible to the naked eye for at least two and a half years before fading away. This image is a composite of hydrogen-light observations taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006 and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations in blue, yellow-green, and near-infrared light taken in April 2008. The supernova remnant, visible only in the hydrogen-light filter was assigned a red hue in the Heritage color image.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Space Station Su... This image provided by NASA shows layers of Earth's atmosphere, brightly colored as the sun rises over central Asia, and Polar Mesospheric Clouds (also known as noctilucent clouds) are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 17 crew member on the International Space Station Tuesday July 22, 2008.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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'Baby ' Supernov... This undated photo released by NASA shows an artist's rendering of a view looking down on the Milky Way galaxy and the location of historic Supernovas. Astronomers have discovered the youngest known supernova in the Milky Way galaxy, still just a baby at 140 years old. In this rendering, the position of the Sun is shown, as are the approximate positions and names (shown in orange) of past supernovas. These are stellar explosions that are thought to have occurred in the last 2,000 years and may have been seen by early astronomers. The estimated position of the recently discovered G1.9+0.3 is shown in black.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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'Baby ' Supernov... This image provided by NASA Wednesday May 14, 2008 shows a composite image of the supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The image obtained in early 2007 is shown in orange and the radio image from NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA) from 1985 is in blue. The difference in size between the two images gives clear evidence for expansion, allowing the time since the original supernova explosion (about 140 years) to be estimated. his makes the original explosion the most recent supernova in the Galaxy, as measured in Earth's time-frame (referring to when events are observable at Earth). Equivalently, this is the youngest known supernova remnant in the Galaxy (140 years old), easily beating the previous record of about 330 years for Cassiopeia A. The rapid expansion and young age for G1.9+0.3 was recently confirmed by a new VLA image obtained in early 2008.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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NGC 1672 This photo supplied by NASA and the European Space Agency Tuesday, April 3, 2007, is a Hubble Space Telescope view of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, showing up clusters of hot young blue stars along its spiral arms, and clouds of hydrogen gas glowing in red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them. NGC 1672’s symmetric look is emphasized by the four principal arms, edged by eye-catching dust lanes that extend out from the center. The galaxy, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy’s strong galactic bar.

(AP Photo/NASA-ESA)

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Enceladus This image provided by NASA shows geyser-like eruptions of ice particles and water vapor shooting out from the south pole of Saturn's moon, Enceladus. Three years after gigantic geysers were spied on an icy Saturn moon, the international Cassini spacecraft is poised to plunge through the fringes of the mysterious plumes to learn how they formed.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Southern Pinwhee... This image provided by NASA Wednesday April 16, 2008 shows the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, in this composite image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array in New Mexico. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer is an ultraviolet survey telescope. Its observations, shown here in blue and green, highlight the galaxy's farthest-flung clusters of young stars up to 140,000 light-years from its center. The Very Large Array observations show the radio emission in red. They highlight gaseous hydrogen atoms, or raw ingredients for stars, which make up the lengthy, extended arms. Astronomers are excited that the clusters of baby stars match up with the extended arms, because this helps them better understand how stars can be created out in the "backwoods" of a galaxy. In this image, far-ultraviolet light is blue, near-ultraviolet light is green and radio emission at a wavelength of 21 centimeters is red.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Enceladus This image released Thursday March 13, 2008 by NASA shows a close up view by the Cassini spacecraft of the Saturn moon, Enceladus' northern pole. NASA scientists say the data download has started from the Cassini spacecraft as it moves through geyser plumes from one of Saturn's moons, which began Wednesday. The probe was expected to be at a height of nearly 120 miles above the surface of the moon Enceladus as it sweeps through the edge of the geysers and measures their chemical makeup.

(AP Photo/NASA)

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Wildest Conspira... Were the moon landings faked? Click here to see some of the wildest conspiracy theories around.