มาชมภาพห้วงอวกาศกันดีกว่าครับ Best Space Pictures of 2012

Helix Nebula
Image courtesy ESO
The intricate structure of the Helix Nebula, seen in January, is featured as one of National Geographic News editor's picks for the best space pictures of 2012. (See more nebula pictures.)

Nightly Swirl
Photograph by Alex Cherney, TWAN
A long-exposure picture—posted to the night-sky photography community The World at Night (TWAN) in November—captures the stars' nightly swirl while auroras set the horizon aglow over Australia's Mornington Peninsula.

Southern Sky Show
Photograph courtesy NASA
From their vantage point high above Earth in March, astronauts on the International Space Station were able to capture daybreak (left) and nighttime auroras in a single frame.

Witch's Broom
Photograph courtesy Robert Franke, APOY/Royal Observatory
This image of a supernova remnant called the Witch's Broom received high commendation in the Deep Space category in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, whose results were announced in September.

Arctic Aurora
Photograph by Max Edin, Your Shot
Earth's most famous light formation hangs over a landscape saturated by the glow of a full moon in Longyearbyen, Norway, in June.

Frosty Mars
Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA
It might look as if someone sculpted a pigeon in the Martian sand. But this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, released in April, shows naturally shaped dunes in the red planet's north polar region, which are lined and speckled by defrosting winter ice.

"Smiley" Eclipse
Photograph by Bullit Marquez, AP
A solar eclipse turns the disk of the sun into a wide orange grin over Gumaca in the Philippines in May.

Farewell Voyage
Photograph by Sheri Locke, NASA
The last of five shuttles in the U.S. space shuttle program,Endeavour was formally retired in September and made its final aerial journey, bound for the California Science Museum (CSC) in downtown Los Angeles.
Endeavour was the youngest of the shuttle fleet, having been built after the 1986 explosion of the Challenger shuttle during liftoff.

Star Fields
Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory
This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.
To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

Stormy Saturn
Image courtesy SSI/ISA/ESA/NASA
A vortex of storm clouds swirls around Saturn's north pole in this November 27 image taken from about 250,000 miles (about 400,000 kilometers) away by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Cassini's cameras have revealed a cyclone-like pattern at the pole before but only in infrared wavelengths because the north pole was in darkness during the planet's long winter. As Saturn slowly orbits the sun, light has finally begun to reach the north pole.

See Our Favorite Space Pictures of 2011
Photograph courtesy NASA
Published December 11, 2012