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NASA’s Operation IceBridge successfully collected data over several glaciers, research sites, and some parallel coastal grid lines on April 26, 2018, as part of its Spring 2018 campaign. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HyjdHX

This grand allsky view of our Milky Way and nearby galaxies is not a photograph. It’s a map based on individual measurements for nearly 1.7 billion stars. The astronomically rich data set used to create it, the sky-scanning Gaia satellite’s second data release, includes remarkably precise determinations of position, brightness, colour, and parallax distance for 1.3 billion stars. Of course, that’s about 1 percent of the total number of stars in the Milky Way. Still, the flat plane of our galaxy dominates the view. Home to most Milky Way stars it stretches across the center of Gaia’s stellar data map. Voids and rifts along the galactic plane correspond to starlight-obscuring interstellar dust clouds. At lower right are stars of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, neighboring galaxies that lie just beyond the Milky Way. via NASA https://ift.tt/2r2I1N2

This view from above the nation of Turkey looks out across the Aegean Sea, over Greece and onto the Ionian Sea where Sicily and the boot of Italy are barely visible. The sun’s glint on the Mediterranean waters highlight the Greek islands while clouds cloak the island of Crete. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HQry97

This view from above the nation of Turkey looks out across the Aegean Sea, over Greece and onto the Ionian Sea where Sicily and the boot of Italy are barely visible. The sun’s glint on the Mediterranean waters highlight the Greek islands while clouds cloak the island of Crete. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HQry97

This view from above the nation of Turkey looks out across the Aegean Sea, over Greece and onto the Ionian Sea where Sicily and the boot of Italy are barely visible. The sun’s glint on the Mediterranean waters highlight the Greek islands while clouds cloak the island of Crete. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HQry97

This view from above the nation of Turkey looks out across the Aegean Sea, over Greece and onto the Ionian Sea where Sicily and the boot of Italy are barely visible. The sun’s glint on the Mediterranean waters highlight the Greek islands while clouds cloak the island of Crete. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HQry97

You couldn’t really be caught in this blizzard while standing by a cliff on Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as comet 67P. Orbiting the comet in June of 2016 the Rosetta spacecraft’s narrow angle camera did record streaks of dust and ice particles though, as they drifted across the field of view near the camera and above the comet’s surface. Still, some of the bright specks in the scene are likely due to a rain of energetic charged particles or cosmic rays hitting the camera, and the dense background of stars in the direction of the constellation Canis Major. Click on this single frame to play and the background stars are easy to spot as they trail from top to bottom in an animated gif (7.7MB). The 33 frames of the time compressed animation span about 25 minutes of real time. The stunning gif was constructed from consecutive images taken while Rosetta cruised some 13 kilometers from the comet’s nucleus. via NASA https://ift.tt/2vNeeO2

NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold captured this clear view of Mount Rainier National Park as the International Space Station orbited above, sharing the image with his followers on April 25 to celebrate National Park Week. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JsclrI