Picture of the Day

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BREAKING GROUND: U.S. and Bahraini officials broke ground Wednesday in Manama, Bahrain, on a $580 million project to develop 70 acres of waterfront near the U.S. Navy base for American and coalition forces. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2015. (Hasan Jamali/Associated Press)

 

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FIRED UP: A South Korean tank fired during an exercise Tuesday at a demilitarized zone. Tensions have been high since the March sinking of South Korea’s Cheonan warship, which South Korea says North Korea sank with a torpedo. (Kim Do-yoon/Associated Press)

 

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DEEP GASH: The Malaysian-registered MT Bunga Kelana 3 oil tanker collided with another vessel in waters between Malaysia and Singapore Tuesday, spilling thousands of tons of oil. (Aziz Hussin/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

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GUN CHECK: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, right, visited a weapons manufacturer in Izhevsk, Russia, Tuesday. (Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti/Reuters)

 

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BEACH COWS: Cows rested on a beach in Corsica Monday. (Maxppp/ZUMA Press)

 

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WINGS SPREAD: The solar-powered aircraft “Solar Impulse” took off from a military airport Monday in Payerne, Switzerland, on its fifth test flight. The company that made the plane plans to circumnavigate the world on solar energy alone. (Laurent Gillieron/European Pressphoto Agency)

 

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TROOPS GRADUATE: Female Afghan National Army personnel attended their graduation ceremony in Kabul Thursday. The ANA plans to grow to 240,000 troops from 100,000 with funding from NATO and the U.S. (Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

 

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CIVIC DUTY: Soldiers cast absentee ballots at a polling station in Incheon, South Korea, Thursday. Local elections will be held across the country June 2. (Ha Sa-hun/Yonhap/Reuters)

 

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RECOVERY MISSION: Soldiers looked for bodies Wednesday along Taiwan’s Highway No. 9 after it was damaged by landslides caused by the deadly Typhoon Megi. (Military News Agency/Reuters)

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MOTHER AND CHILD: First-time mother Mjukuu, a western lowland gorilla, rested with her newborn baby at the London Zoo Wednesday. (Iona Stewart/Zoological Society of London via Associated Press)

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CHANNELING A TIGER: A folk artist dressed as a tiger posed at a cultural fair at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts in New Delhi Thursday. (Gurinder Osan/Associated Press)

 

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SOLDIER IN THE SAND: Pfc. Brandon Voris, 19, of Lebanon, Ohio, walked through a sandstorm at a remote outpost near Kunjak, Afghanistan, Thursday. (Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters)

 

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GOOD GROOMING: Poodle Djego got a haircut at the Berlin Pet Show Friday. (Stephanie Pilick/European Pressphoto Agency)

 

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The Necklace Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Romano Corradi (IAC), et al., IPHAS
Explanation: The small constellation Sagitta sports this large piece of cosmic jewelry, dubbed the Necklace Nebula. The newly discovered example of a ring-shaped planetary nebula is about 15,000 light-years distant. Its bright ring with pearls of glowing gas is half a light-year across. Planetary nebulae are created by sun-like stars in a final phase of stellar evolution. But the Necklace Nebula's central star, near the center of a ring strongly tilted to our line of sight, has also been shown to be binary, a close system of two stars with an orbital period of just over a day. Astronomers estimating the apparent age of the ring to be around 5,000 years, also find more distant gas clouds perpendicular to the ring plane, seen here at the upper left and lower right. Those clouds were likely ejected about 5,000 years before the clouds forming the necklace. This false color image combines emission from ionized hydrogen in blue, oxygen in green, and nitrogen in red.

 

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Night Lights
Credit: ISS Expedition 25, NASA
Explanation: Constellations of lights sprawl across this night scene, but they don't belong in the skies of planet Earth. Instead, the view looks down from the International Space Station as it passed over the United States along the northern Gulf Coast on October 29. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is docked in the foreground. Behind its extended solar panels, some 360 kilometers below, are the recognizable city lights of New Orleans. Looking east along the coast to the top of the frame finds Mobile, Alabama while Houston city lights stand out to the west, toward the bottom. North (left) of New Orleans, a line of lights tracing central US highway I55 connect to Jackson, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee. Of course, the lights follow the population centers, but not everyone lives on planet Earth all the time these days. November 2nd marked the first decade of continuous human presence in space on board the International Space Station.

 

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AP

NEW DELHI, INDIA - Indian laborers build a scaffolding that will eventually be a large television screen on the facade of a building in Connaught Place, New Delhi. AP Photo/Kevin Frayer.

 

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The Air Force One carrying U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrives at the Palam Airport in New Delhi on Sunday. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

The red carpet being rolled out for the U.S. President at the Palam airport in New Delhi on Sunday. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama being received by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Palam airport in New Delhi on Sunday. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Soldiers with mine-sweepers and sniffer dogs sanitise Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi before the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife. Photo: AP

 

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After arriving in New Delhi, the Obamas left for their first engagement in New Delhi, Humayun's Tomb on Sunday. Photo: PTI

U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama during their visit to the 16th century monument Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi on Sunday. “It is spectacular. If our guys have to build it in seven years, it would be pretty tough. Good contractor,” Mr. Obama said after visiting the monument. Photo: AP

U.S. President Barack Obama meets school children during his visit to Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi on Sunday. Photo: