--- title: The Blood Moon, SpaceX and Mars: The Best Photos from Space April 2014 description: Curiosity rover labored on Mars, spacewalking astronauts worked in Earth orbit, and galaxies and star clusters danced their eternal dance. canonical: https://time.com/85056/most-beautiful-space-photos-april-2014/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-02T16:44:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:08:25.910Z article:section: Science og:title: In Celebration of Space Day, The Month's Most Beautiful Photos from Space og:description: Curiosity rover labored on Mars, spacewalking astronauts worked in Earth orbit, and galaxies and star clusters danced their eternal dance. og:url: https://time.com/85056/most-beautiful-space-photos-april-2014/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt85d77fea3b16bcd9/69868d7013c79f45a7191e65/mars-hirise-space-photos-05.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Nili Patera is one of the most active dune fields on Mars og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: In Celebration of Space Day, The Month's Most Beautiful Photos from Space twitter:description: Curiosity rover labored on Mars, spacewalking astronauts worked in Earth orbit, and galaxies and star clusters danced their eternal dance. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt85d77fea3b16bcd9/69868d7013c79f45a7191e65/mars-hirise-space-photos-05.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Window on Infinity: Selfies, Star Clusters and Hard Work on Mars > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff May 2, 2014 4:44 PM UTC  Nili Patera is one of the most active dune fields on Mars and is continuously monitored by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a new image acquired about every six weeks. This most recent one was recorded in March and released on April 30, 2014. Nili Patera is one of the most active dune fields on Mars and is continuously monitored by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a new image acquired about every six weeks. This most recent one was recorded in March and released on April 30, 2014. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff May 2, 2014 4:44 PM UTC  Nili Patera is one of the most active dune fields on Mars and is continuously monitored by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a new image acquired about every six weeks. This most recent one was recorded in March and released on April 30, 2014. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona  This image taken by the right eye of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover's stereoscopic camera, on April 3, 2014, includes a bright spot, upper left, which might be due to the sun glinting off a rock or cosmic rays striking the camera's detector. Bright spots appear in images from the rover nearly every week. NASA/AP  A self-portait taken by the Curiosity Rover's Navigation Camera (Navcam) on April 23, 2014 shows a sandstone slab on which the rover team has selected a target, ''Windjana,'' for close-up examination and possible drilling. NASA/JPL-Caltech/eyevine/Zuma Press  NASA's Mars Curiosity rover completed a shallow "mini drill" experiment on April 29, 2014, as part of its preliminary examination of a rock target called "Windjana." The hole in this image is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 0.8 inch (2 centimeters) deep. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS  A long exposure of the European Space Agency's Optical Ground Station (OGS), at the La Teide Observatory on Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, released on April 27, 2014. ESA/EPA  This image released on April 26, 2014 shows Messier 5 (M5), a globular cluster which consists of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by their collective gravity. M5 is one of the oldest globulars, its stars estimated to be nearly 13 billion years old. NASA/Hubble Space Telescope/ESA/EPA  From open prairie land on the 1,625-acre Johnson Space Center site, a JSC photographer took this multi-frame composite image of the "Blood Moon" lunar eclipse in the early hours of April 15, 2014\. Watch the blood moon lunar eclipse in 9 seconds flat here. NASA/JSC  The Sentinel-1A satellite lifts off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 3, 2014. Stephane Corvaja—ESA/AP  The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on April 18, 2014. Kim Shiflett—NASA/Reuters  The SpaceX Dragon capsule is berthed at the International Space Station on April 20, 2014 as photographed by the ISS crew members. NASA/AP  NASA astronaut Steve Swanson during a spacewalk to replace a failed backup computer relay box on the International Space Station on April 22, 2014\. He was accompanied on the spacewalk by fellow Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA, who can be seen as a tiny figure anchored several yards away reflected in Swanson's helmet visor. NASA/AP  NASA astronaut Rich Mastracchio aboard the International Space Station takes a selfie during a spacewalk on April 23, 2014\. "The space suit makes it very difficult to get a good selfie," he said. "I tried several today." NASA/Zuma Press  This image released on April 14, 2014 shows the spiral galaxy NGC 3455, which lies some 65 million light-years away from us in the constellation of Leo. Galaxies of this type appear to have a bar of stars slicing through the bulge of stars at their center. ESA/Hubble Telescope/NASA/Acknowledgement: Nick Rose  Centaurus A is the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky is famous for the dust lane across its middle and a giant jet blasting away from the supermassive black hole at its center. It is an active galaxy about 12 million light years from Earth. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Rolf Olsen; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech  This image of the galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915, located about 7 billion light years from Earth, is a composite of X-ray data from the Chandra telescope and optical data from the Hubble telescope and was released on April 4, 2014\. The galaxy has been nicknamed "El Gordo" (or, "the fat one" in Spanish) because of its gigantic mass. NASA/ESA  One of NASA's 20 BARREL balloons in Antarctica, where they have been deployed to help unravel the mysterious Van Allen belts, two gigantic donuts of radiation that surround Earth. Brett Anderson—NASA/Goddard/BARREL  Eureka Sound on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic as captured by NASA during an Operation IceBridge survey March 25, 2014 and released on April 8, 2014\. IceBridge is a six-year NASA airborne mission which will provide a yearly, multi-instrument look at the behavior of the Greenland and Antarctic ice. NASA/Reuters  Saturn's rings cast shadows on the planet in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 2, 2013 and released on April 29, 2014. NASA/eyevine/Zuma Press  An X-class flare explodes off the right side of the sun in this image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on April 24, 2014. NASA/Reuters ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/85056/most-beautiful-space-photos-april-2014/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/85056/most-beautiful-space-photos-april-2014/"},"headline":"Window on Infinity: Selfies, Star Clusters and Hard Work on Mars","datePublished":"2014-05-02T16:44:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:08:25.910Z","description":"The universe is unfathomably huge, but sometimes the most interesting thing in it is a tiny drill hole—less than an inch across—in a rock on Mars. 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