Image of the Day Gallery NASA
Detailing the Big Picture
This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse collection of galaxies 450 million light-years away in cluster Abell S0740 near the constellation Centaurus.
The giant elliptical ESO 325-G004 looms large at the cluster's center. The galaxy, as massive as 100 billion of our suns, is home to thousands of globular clusters, small compact groups of hundreds of thousands of stars that are gravitationally bound systems.
* A Atlantis *
Atlantis Lifts Off!
Photographers crowd around the countdown clock to capture the successful launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from Launch Pad 39A. The shuttle is delivering a new segment to the starboard side of the International Space Station's backbone, known as the truss. Three spacewalks are planned to install the S3/S4 truss segment, deploy a set of solar arrays and prepare them for operation. STS-117 is the 118th space shuttle flight, the 21st flight to the station, the 28th flight for Atlantis and the first of four flights planned for 2007. Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann
Photographers crowd around the countdown clock to capture the successful launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from Launch Pad 39A. The shuttle is delivering a new segment to the starboard side of the International Space Station's backbone, known as the truss. Three spacewalks are planned to install the S3/S4 truss segment, deploy a set of solar arrays and prepare them for operation. STS-117 is the 118th space shuttle flight, the 21st flight to the station, the 28th flight for Atlantis and the first of four flights planned for 2007. Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann