Image of the Day: October 2012

In the Dead of Night

Monday, October 29, 2012: During the night of October 28, 2012, Hurricane Sandy’s cloud tops were illuminated by the nearly full moon. The Suomi NPP satellite spied the storm with a special “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared, and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as auroras, airglow, gas flares, city lights, and reflected moonlight. Some llights of Florida and Georgia cities glow between the clouds. [See full gallery.]

— Tom Chao

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Tuesday, October 30, 2012: SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft returned from the International Space Station, splashing down approximately 250 miles off the coast of southern California on October 28, 2012, 12:22 p.m. PT. The mission represented NASA’s first commercial cargo resupply trip to the ISS.

— Tom Chao

It’s the Great Rover, Charlie Brown

Wednesday, October 31, 2012: Liz Warren, an employee at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, recently carved her annual "space-o'-lantern," this year featuring Curiosity rover. She writes: "I carved a Curiosity design this year because in August of this year, that mission truly captured the imagination of the world in bold NASA fashion. They dared a mighty thing and they succeeded.... It's breaking a little with my tradition of featuring human spaceflight, but NASA's missions are broad and so I feel good about broadening the topic of my pumpkins.... Bobak Ferdowski [“Mohawk Guy”] is going to be in Houston late next week, and I think it would be fun to give him the pumpkin!"

— Tom Chao