Picture of the Day:

 The Bomb Before It Exploded Over Nagasaki

JAN 6 2012, 7:12 AM ET

It seems so obvious that before the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki it had to exist, whole, somewhere, yet seeing a picture of it in that pre-exploded state, with all its attendant destructive power still locked inside, is shocking, horrifying, in a way distinct from the more familiar images of the mushroom cloud. The picture above, from the National Archives contribution to Wikimedia, shows three men as they transport Fat Man, as the bomb was called, on the island of Tinian in August of 1945. U.S. Air Force pilot Charles Sweeney flew over Nagasaki on August 9th and dropped it on the city, killing some 39,000 people and injuring thousands more.
Below, recent Pictures of the Day:

JANUARY 10, 2012

NASA

FULL SCREEN

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Special Delivery to the U.S. Space Program
On the average day, the images NASA shares on its website or the photo-sharing site Flickr are of space. But not this one -- a humorous reminder that before we get those gorgeous images of faraway galaxies, there is the more this-worldly logistics of building and carefully transporting the hardware that captures the data. The above box arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, decked out with exhortations to "Handle with extreme care." Inside, a "critical space item" -- a high gain antenna for a new satellite currently under construction.

Image: National Archives/Wikimedia Commons.