The last historic flight of the space shuttle Discovery will forever be preserved by this absolutely fantastic photograph taken by U.K. stargazer Rob Bullen. Using an 8.5” telescope, which he guided by hand, Bullen captured this iconic image of Discovery moving into position to dock with the International Space Station.

Even better, the tip about this amazing photograph hit the internet via Wil Wheaton himself! Good lookin’ out, Ensign Crusher!

[via Discovery Magazine]

Stubby the Rocket is the Mascot of Tor.com and the voice of many of the staff. Stubby is notoriously difficult to photograph.

Boston.com’s The Big Picture is my favourite web site. And so it was much to my delight to wake up this morning to find that they’d launched their 2010 Hubble Space Telescope advent calendar! What is it, you ask? Every day this holiday season, The Big Picture will be posting a gob-smackingly amazing photo taken by the famous Hubble Telescope. If you’re as much a space nut as I am, you can’t miss it!

Can’t wait? You can whet your appetite with the advent calendars from 2008 and 2009.

For fans of wonderful photography (and who isn’t?), The Big Picture is an absolute must-bookmark website. Between photo-journalistic coverage of all the current conflicts and social events going on in the world, to beautiful collections showcasing the wonders of our world and the people, animals and landscapes that define it, The Big Picture is sure to leave you at times cheered and humbled, melancholy and amazed.

Aidan Moher is the editor of A Dribble of Ink, a humble little blog that exists in some dusty corner of the web. He hasn’t won any awards, or published any novels. But he’s, uhh... working on that.

He is also a contributor at SF Signal and the lackey for io9’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich has announced the winners of its Astronomy Photographer of the Year Award for 2010. The vistas captured both in space and about space are stunning in their scope and startling in their contrast. The winners range from the hectic galactic neighborhood of Orion’s belt, to the silent mountains of our moon, to a tranquil snowy plane ripped open by auroras.

Click here for an excellent five minute audio slideshow of the winners, with helpful narration from Dr Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory’s Public Astronomer. You can see photography from the other entries here.

Image of star trail by Flickr user and Astronomy Photographer of the Year entrant Jonah J.Ingles-Le Nobel

A little while ago, my daughter and I went to a cemetery, as we often do. Cemeteries are great places to take kids. They are spacious, peaceful, meditative and perfect places to play zombie tag.*

It was a lovely dark gray rainy morning at a tiny gem of a graveyard in Westwood, hidden between tall office buildings. Driving past on Wilshire Boulevard, you’d never know that you were mere feet from Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, the final resting place of some Hollywood A-listers. Los Angeles and its surrounding cities boast a great many celebrity graves, especially in Forest Lawn and Hollywood Forever, both of which are great for spotting the dead stars, but the smaller Westwood Village and Woodlawn in Santa Monica are my favorites.

I’ve learned, in my time as a grave-spotter of the famous, that big stars often have small graves. Bing Crosby and Bela Lugosi have modest plaques in the same row at Holy Cross. Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote and Dean Martin are entombed in marble walls, but without any other significant ostentation. Al Jolson’s grave is probably the largest and gaudiest I have ever seen. You can see it from the freeway. Some tombstones are funny. Merv Griffin’s reads “I will not be right back after this message” and Rodney Dangerfield’s says “There goes the neighborhood.”

[meet you at the cemetery gates]

Construction sign warns of zombies - “This crime is a class C misdemeanor in Texas, and Hartley said it endangers the public.”

Mars Spirit rover disoriented after glitch - When pressed, the Spirit rover admitted it couldn’t recall what it had done last night, and is afraid to see the photos.

Here’s the button - Neil Gaiman pontificates on the completely innocuous household item. I’ll confess, though, that I spent most of the video envying his gorgeous library...

Mikhail Maiofis Illustrations - I’m not entirely sure what these are, but they’re splendid. See also: Symphony of the Absurd.

War Haunted - WWII photos faded into modern ones. Eerie.

Whiskey power - “Recently the Rothes consortium of whisky and scotch distillers announced that they have partnered with Helius Enery to install a power plant fueled by none other than, well, whisky by-products!”

Transformers toys - A peek at the new movie’s merchandising. Now I know at least one good thing will come of this film!

First weather report from exoplanet - HOT. No, really freaking HOT.

Checkout Jeff Bridges’ webdiary “Making Iron Man,”  a series of behind-the-scenes photos—fascinating as both documentry and as photography.

Bridges also maintains a hand-drawn blog that makes it look like he must be a delight to be around.

Via Coudal Partners.