Start the slideshow to get a glimpse of this month's exclusive space visuals:
The space shuttle Discovery is seen from the International Space Station as the two separated on March 7. During a flight around the station after undocking, the crew of each vessel photographed the other.
NASA’s most traveled space shuttle will be decommissioned and offered to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum for public display and preservation as part of the national collection
NASAThe Sunflower galaxy, also known as Messier 63, as captured in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.Located 37 million light years away, close to the well-known Whirlpool galaxy, Messier 63 is part of the M51 Group and was discovered by Pierre Méchain on June 14, 1779.Spitzer's view reveals complex structures that trace the galaxy's spiral arm pattern. The dust, glowing red in this image, can be traced all the way down into the galaxy's nucleus, forming a ring around the densest region of stars at its center. The dusty patches are where new stars are being born.
NASANASA's solar dynamics observatory captured high resolution images of a very active sun in a composite of several wavelengths. NASANASA's Cassini spacecraft views Saturn with a selection of its moons in varying sizes. Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) is on the far right, appearing just below the rings.NASA/handout.The Subaru Telescope, fitted with its instrument COMICS, has produced a new image of the interior of the famous starburst galaxy Messier 82 that reveals young star clusters as well as the sources of its superwind in spectacular detail.The ultra-sharp image released by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan contributes to our understanding of this complex, young galaxy by showing that M 82's galactic windstorms emanate from many sites rather than from any single cluster of stars.The image was formed by combining the Subaru mid-infrared image with the Hubble Space Telescope’s near-infrared image and the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s data. Their integration produces a beautiful mosaic (as seen in the picture) that provides the first opportunity to isolate M 82's infrared properties.
NOJ/handout.The strange and irregular bundle of jets and clouds in this curious image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the result of a burst of activity late in the life of a star.As its core runs out of nuclear fuel, the star’s unstable outer layers are puffing out a toxic concoction of gases including carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.This image was prepared from many separate exposures taken using Hubble’s newest camera, the Wide Field Camera 3.
spacetelescope/handout.
