Astrosphere for January 31, 2008

Enough of this cold, wet January. Let’s have some cold wet February. Your space photo for the day is this astonishing image of the International Space Station captured by Mike Salway. And here’s a bonus. If you follow this link, you’ll see two more images.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Explorer 1. Nancy looked back here on Universe Today, but we’re not the only ones to mark the day. Here are a selection of articles from Cosmic Log, Astroprof and Space Politics.

Spirit says, it’s a rock. And now you can get the T-shirt.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day comes the Young Cluster Westerlund 2.

Astroblog has Comet Holmes in thrilling stereo.

Daily Galaxy reports on a new strategy to search for wormholes and signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

If you’ve got some time on your hands, why not go searching for craters on Mars.

And finally, Visual Astronomy has a video of asteroid 2007 TU24’s close approach to the Earth.