Best Space Pictures: Whirlpools Churn, Volcanos Burn, and Astronauts Learn
An ancient supernova blossoms, astronauts train for a moon landing, and the stars align for a father and daughter.
Neutron stars and black hole jets swirl in the spirals of the Whirlpool galaxy, seen in this June 3 image from NASA's Chandra space telescope.
Some 30 million light-years away, the galaxy resembles our own Milky Way with its far-flung arms. The image, a composite from Chandra and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, combines an x-ray view with red and green glints from stars.
Astronauts from the Apollo 14 moon landing trained on the Big Island of Hawaii, seen in this historical image from 1970 released this week by NASA.
Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roost rehearsed their exploration skills on the volcanic fields and rode around in a practice moon buggy.
The Hawaiian excursion was a warm-up for their February 5,
