... On April 12, 1981, space flight entered a new era with the first launch of Space Shuttle Columbia. ... This gorgeous view of stars, nebulae, and the Milky Way comes from the dark night sky above the lovely island of La Palma in the Canaries archipelago. ... An evocative nebula in the southern sky, the sprawling cosmic Tarantula is an energetic star forming region some 168,000 light-years distant in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. NGC 6334: The Bear Claw Nebula . ... April . ...