The MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile captured this richly colorful view of the bright star cluster NGC 3532. Some of the stars still shine with a hot bluish color, but many of the more massive ones have become red giants and glow with a rich orange hue.
MSH 11-62 and G327.1-1.1: Two new Chandra images of supernova remnants reveal intricate structures left behind after massive stars exploded.
A long observation with Chandra of the supernova remnant MSH 11-62 reveals an irregular shell of hot gas, shown in red, surrounding an extended nebula of high energy X-rays, shown in blue. Even though scientists have yet to detect any pulsations from the central object within MSH 11-62, the structure around it has many of the same characteristics as other pulsar wind nebulas. The reverse shock and other, secondary shocks within MSH 11-62 appear to have begun to crush the pulsar wind nebula, possibly contributing to its elongated shape. (Note: the orientation of this image has been rotated by 24 degrees so that north is pointed to the upper left.)
The Chandra image of G327.1-1.1 shows an outward-moving shock wave (faint red color) and a bright pulsar wind nebula (blue). The pulsar wind nebula appears to have been distorted by the combined action of a reverse shock wave, which may have flattened it, and by the motion of the pulsar, which created a comet, or lobster-like tail. An asymmetric supernova explosion may have given a recoil kick to the pulsar, causing it to move rapidly and drag the pulsar wind nebula along with it. Two structures resembling lobster claws protrude from near the head of the pulsar wind nebula. The origin of these features, which may be produced by the interaction of the pulsar wind with the reverse shock, is unknown.
The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.
The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (see PIA02590). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.
The scene shows the stunning diversity of Europa's surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.
Color variations across the surface are associated with differences in geologic feature type and location. For example, areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas include non-ice components in higher concentrations. The polar regions, visible at the left and right of this view, are noticeably bluer than the more equatorial latitudes, which look more white. This color variation is thought to be due to differences in ice grain size in the two locations.
Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view. The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types.
This global color view consists of images acquired by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment on the spacecraft's first and fourteenth orbits through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Image scale is 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) per pixel. North on Europa is at right.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows four globular clusters in the dwarf galaxy Fornax.
New observations of the clusters – large balls of stars that orbit the centers of galaxies – show they are very similar to those found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The finding is at odds with leading theories on how these clusters form – in these theories, globular clusters should be nestled among large quantities of old stars – and so the mystery of how these objects came to exist deepens.
Left to right: Fornax 1, Fornax 2, Fornax 3 and Fornax 5. Their positions within the galaxy are shown in image heic1425g.
This very detailed simulation of large scale structure was created as part of the Illustris simulation. The distribution of dark matter is shown in blue and the gas distribution in orange. This simulation is for the current state of the Universe and is centered on a massive galaxy cluster. The region shown is about 300 million light-years across.
This high-resolution geological map of Vesta is derived from Dawn spacecraft data. Brown colors represent the oldest, most heavily cratered surface. Purple colors in the north and light blue represent terrains modified by the Veneneia and Rheasilvia impacts, respectively. Light purples and dark blue colors below the equator represent the interior of the Rheasilvia and Veneneia basins. Greens and yellows represent relatively young landslides or other downhill movement and crater impact materials, respectively. This map unifies 15 individual quadrangle maps published this week in a special issue of Icarus. Map is a Mollweide projection, centered on 180 degrees longitude using the Dawn Claudia coordinate system.
These incredible images show the breathtaking journey of Rosetta’s Philae lander as it approached and then rebounded from its first touchdown on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014.
The mosaic comprises a series of images captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera over a 30 minute period spanning the first touchdown. The time of each of image is marked on the corresponding insets and is in GMT. A comparison of the touchdown area shortly before and after first contact with the surface is also provided.
The images were taken with Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera when the spacecraft was 17.5 km from the comet center, or roughly 15.5 km from the surface. They have a resolution of 28 cm/pixel and the enlarged insets are 17 x 17 m.
From left to right, the images show Philae descending towards and across the comet before touchdown. The image taken after touchdown, at 15:43 GMT, confirms that the lander was moving east, as first suggested by the data returned by the CONSERT experiment, and at a speed of about 0.5 m/s.
The final location of Philae is still not known, but after touching down and bouncing again at 17:25 GMT, it reached there at 17:32 GMT. The imaging team is confident that combining the CONSERT ranging data with OSIRIS and navcam images from the orbiter and images from near the surface and on it from Philae’s ROLIS and CIVA cameras will soon reveal the lander’s whereabouts.
The insets are provided separately via the blog: OSIRIS spots Philae drifting across the comet.
This image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was acquired by the Philae lander of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission during Philae's descent toward the comet on November 12, 2014. Philae's ROLIS (ROsetta Lander Imaging System) took the image at 14:38:41 UTC (6:38:41 a.m., PST) at a distance of approximately two miles (three kilometers) from the surface. The landing site is imaged with a resolution of about 10 feet (three meters) per pixel.
The ROLIS instrument is a down-looking imager that acquires images during the descent and doubles as a multi-spectral close-up camera after the landing. The aim of the ROLIS experiment is to study the texture and microstructure of the comet's surface. It was developed by the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin.
The lander separated from the orbiter at 09:03 UTC (1:03 a.m. PST) for touch down on comet 67P seven hours later.
Rosetta and Philae had been riding through space together for more than 10 years. Philae is the first probe to achieve a soft landing on a comet, and Rosetta is the first to rendezvous with a comet and follow it around the sun. The information collected by Philae at one location on the surface will complement that collected by the Rosetta orbiter for the entire comet.
A patch of relatively smooth ground on the nucleus surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko appears in this image taken by the navigation camera on the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft during the second half of October 2014. The spacecraft has been orbiting this comet since August 2014 and will release its lander, Philae, on November 12 to land on the comet's nucleus.
This image was taken from a distance of less than six miles (10 kilometers) from the surface. It is one of a series of images from Rosetta's navigation camera showing the varied and dramatic terrain of the nucleus. Some light contrast enhancements have been made to emphasize certain features and to bring out features in the shadowed areas. In reality, the comet is extremely dark - blacker than coal. The images, taken in black-and-white, are grey-scaled according to the relative brightness of the features observed, which depends on local illumination conditions, surface characteristics and composition of the given area.
Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the sun and its planets formed. Rosetta's lander will obtain the first images taken from a comet's surface and will provide the first analysis of a comet's composition by drilling into the surface. Rosetta also will be the first spacecraft to witness at close proximity how a comet changes as it is subjected to the increasing intensity of the sun's radiation. Observations will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role comets may have played in seeding Earth with water, and perhaps even life.
The MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope has provided researchers with the best view yet of a spectacular cosmic crash. Observations reveal for the first time the motion of gas as it is ripped out of the galaxy ESO 137-001 as it plows at high speed into a vast galaxy cluster. The results are the key to the solution of a long-standing mystery — why star formation switches off in galaxy clusters.
In this picture the colors show the motions of the gas filaments — red means the material is moving away from Earth compared to the galaxy and blue that it is approaching.
Note that the upper-left and lower-right parts of this picture have been filled in using the Hubble image of this object.
This is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA — sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. These new ALMA observations reveal substructures within the disc that have never been seen before and even show the possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system.
This artist’s view from an imagined planet around a nearby star shows the brilliant glow of exozodiacal light extending up into the sky and swamping the Milky Way. This light is starlight reflected from hot dust created as the result of collisions between asteroids, and the evaporation of comets. The presence of such thick dust clouds in the inner regions around some stars may pose an obstacle to the direct imaging of Earth-like planets in the future.
