Ministry of Space Exploration

NGC 3324

2012-02-03T00:00:00.002+08:00

The Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory has imaged a region of star formation called NGC 3324. The intense radiation from several of NGC 3324's massive, blue-white stars has carved out a cavity in the surrounding gas and dust. The ultraviolet radiation from these young hot stars also cause the gas cloud to glow in rich colors.

Photo credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see A Pocket of Star Formation.

Distant Star-Forming Galaxies in the Early Universe

2012-02-02T00:00:00.068+08:00

The LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-meter Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope reveals distant galaxies undergoing the most intense type of star formation activity known, called a starburst. This image shows these distant galaxies, found in a region of sky known as the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace). The galaxies seen by LABOCA are shown in red, overlaid on an infrared view of the region as seen by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope.

By studying how some of these distant starburst galaxies are clustered together, astronomers have found that they eventually become so-called giant elliptical galaxies — the most massive galaxies in today’s Universe.

The galaxies are so distant that their light has taken around ten billion years to reach us, so we see them as they were about ten billion years ago. Because of this extreme distance, the infrared light from dust grains heated by starlight is redshifted into longer wavelengths, and the dusty galaxies are therefore best observed in submillimeter wavelengths of light. The galaxies are thus known as submillimeter galaxies.

Photo credit: ESO, APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO), A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center

Note: For more information, see The Wild Early Lives of Today's Most Massive Galaxies.

Atlantis

2012-02-01T00:00:00.004+08:00

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station on July 10, 2011. In the foreground, a Russian Progress module, an unpiloted vehicle used for resupplying, is also docked with the space station.

Photo credit: NASA

Western Europe at Night

2012-01-31T00:00:00.003+08:00

With hardware from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station appearing in the near foreground, a night time European panorama reveals city lights from Belgium and the Netherlands at bottom center. the British Isles partially obscured by solar array panels at left, the North Sea at left center, and Scandinavia at right center beneath the end effector of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System or Canadarm2. This image was taken by the station crew on January 22, 2012.

Photo credit: NASA

Opportunity's Three-Year Trek Across Mars

2012-01-30T00:00:00.003+08:00

During the three-year trek of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, rover planners captured a horizon photograph at the end of each drive. 309 images taken during the 13-mile journey appear in this video.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University

Mercury and Vesta

2012-01-29T00:00:00.002+08:00

In March 2011, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. In July of the same year, the Dawn spacecraft became the first to orbit a main-belt asteroid, Vesta. Both MESSENGER and Dawn are missions in the Discovery program, NASA's lowest-cost category of planetary mission.

The image above shows Mercury on the left, and Vesta on the right. Both surfaces are marked by impact craters, but the most immediately noticeable difference is that Vesta has a much more irregular shape. This is a consequence of Mercury's far larger gravity, which has squeezed the planet into a sphere. Vesta's weak gravity is less able to overcome the strength of the rocks. Mercury's mass is about 1300 times greater than that of Vesta.

MESSENGER image of planet Mercury (left)
Date acquired: September 29, 2009
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 162741055
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filter: 7 (748 nanometers)
Scale: Mercury's diameter is 4880 km (3030 mi.)

Dawn image of asteroid Vesta (right)
Date acquired: July 18, 2011
Instrument: Dawn Framing Camera, clear filter
Scale: Vesta's diameter is about 530 km (329 mi.)

Photo credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Dawn Vesta image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Blue Marble 2012

2012-01-28T00:00:00.002+08:00

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Suomi NPP is NASA's next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.

Photo credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

High-Energy Emission From the Vela Pulsar Wind Nebula

2012-01-27T00:00:00.002+08:00

This image shows the Vela pulsar wind nebula as observed with ESA's INTEGRAL observatory (blue pixellated image) and with other high-energy astronomical facilities (colored contours).

The INTEGRAL image shows emission detected at hard X-ray energies, between 18 and 40 keV, with the IBIS imager on board INTEGRAL, after subtraction of the point-like source corresponding to the inner nebula. The contours show soft X-ray emission detected by the German ROSAT telescope between 0.5 and 2 keV (green) and by the Birmingham Spacelab 2 telescope between 2.5 and 12 keV (cyan), and very-high energy gamma-ray emission detected with the H.E.S.S. Telescopes above 1 TeV (magenta).

The Vela pulsar wind nebula is a cloud of highly energetic electrons and positrons that are injected by the pulsar into its surroundings and radiate across the electromagnetic spectrum. The location of the Vela pulsar is marked with a cross.

The image measures roughly two degrees on the horizontal side. North is up and East is to the left.

Photo credit: ESA/INTEGRAL/IBIS-ISGRI/F. Mattana et al./ROSAT/H.E.S.S./Spacelab 2

Note: For more information, see INTEGRAL Reveals New Facets of the Vela Pulsar Wind Nebula.

Greeley Haven in False Color on Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary

2012-01-26T00:00:00.003+08:00

This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward (left) to northeastward (right) from the location where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named "Greeley Haven."

Opportunity's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) took the component images as part of full-circle view being assembled from Greeley Haven.

The view includes sand ripples and other wind-sculpted features in the foreground and mid-field. The northern edge of the the "Cape York" segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater forms an arc across the upper half of the scene.

Opportunity landed on Mars on January 25, 2004, Universal Time and EST (January 24, PST). It has driven 21.4 miles (34.4 kilometers) as of its eighth anniversary on the planet. In late 2011, the rover team drove Opportunity up onto Greeley Haven to take advantage of the outcrop's Sun-facing slope to boost output from the rover's dusty solar panels during the Martian winter.

Research activities while at Greeley Haven include a radio-science investigation of the interior of Mars, inspections of mineral compositions and textures on the outcrop, and monitoring of wind-caused changes on scales from dunes to individual soil particles.

The image combines exposures taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University

Note: For a true-color image of the same view, see PIA15281: Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary View From 'Greeley Haven'.

Space Station Model from 1961

2012-01-25T00:00:00.003+08:00

A model of an inflatable space station concept with a solar power system collector in 1961. It was 24 feet in diameter with internal fabric bulkhead which could be separately pressurized in an emergency.

Photo credit: NASA

Note: The Minister is unfamiliar with either this picture or the test model for this very early space station concept. The photo was taken in 1961 at the Langley Research Center. While this concept space station was apparently only to be used in case of an emergency, one wonders at some of the practical issues in using such a piece of equipment, such as entering and exiting the torus, life support (air circulation, water and food, lavatory facilities), communications, and so on. The weight and storage space must have also been cost-prohibitive to be carried up into space on every manned mission. ... An interesting idea, much before its time.

Update (26 January 2012): Interestingly enough, Wired has a few more pictures of the inflatable space station shown above in its photoarticle, Strange Forgotten Space Station Concepts That Never Flew.

Measuring the Strength and Direction of Solar Magnetic Fields

2012-01-24T00:00:00.004+08:00

This movie shows how magnetic fields evolved on the surface of the Sun at an active region in February of 2011.

The blue arrows show where magnetic fields rise up off the surface and the red arrows show the magnetic field lines returning to the surface.

Video credit: NASA/SDO and the HMI science team

Ancient White Dwarf Stars

2012-01-23T00:00:00.002+08:00

Pushing the limits of its powerful vision, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy in this image from 2002. These extremely old, dim "clockwork stars" provide a completely independent reading on the age of the universe without relying on measurements of the expansion of the universe.

The ancient white dwarf stars, as seen by Hubble, turn out to be 12 to 13 billion years old. Because earlier Hubble observations show that the first stars formed less than 1 billion years after the universe's birth in the big bang, finding the oldest stars puts astronomers well within arm's reach of calculating the absolute age of the universe.

Though previous Hubble research sets the age of the universe at 13 to 14 billion years based on the rate of expansion of space, the universe's birthday is such a fundamental and profound value that astronomers have long sought other age-dating techniques to cross-check their conclusions.

The new age-dating observations were done using Hubble to hunt for elusive ancient stars hidden inside a globular star cluster located 5,600 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

Photo credit: NASA and H. Richer (University of British Columbia)

The Golden Sands of Dasht-e Kavir

2012-01-22T00:00:00.002+08:00

The curving sands in central northern Iran’s salt desert, Dasht-e Kavir, can be seen in this image from the Ikonos-2 satellite. Here, clays and sand soils have a high surface salt content owing to the concentration of minerals from high summer evaporation. Iran is one of the world’s most important mineral producers. Earth-observing satellites are useful for finding and monitoring natural resources like minerals.

Photo credit: European Space Imaging (EUSI)

The Helix Nebula in Infrared

2012-01-21T00:00:00.002+08:00

ESO's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) has captured this unusual view of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a planetary nebula located 700 light-years away. The colored picture was created from images taken through Y, J and K infrared filters. While bringing to light a rich background of stars and galaxies, the telescope's infrared vision also reveals strands of cold nebular gas that are mostly obscured in visible images of the Helix.

Photo credit: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Note: For more information, see The Helix in New Colors.

Galaxy Supercluster PLCK G214.6+37.0

2012-01-20T00:00:00.040+08:00

This image shows one of the newly discovered superclusters of galaxies, PLCK G214.6+37.0, detected by Planck and confirmed by XMM-Newton. This is the first supercluster to be discovered through its Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The effect is the name for the cluster’s silhouette against the cosmic microwave background radiation. Combined with other observations, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect allows astronomers to measure properties such as the temperature and density of the cluster’s hot gas where the galaxies are embedded. The right panel shows the X-ray image of the supercluster obtained with XMM-Newton, which reveals that three galaxy clusters comprise this supercluster. The bright orange blob in the left panel shows the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich image of the supercluster, obtained by Planck. The X-ray contours are also superimposed on the Planck image.

Image credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration; XMM-Newton image: ESA

Note: The Planck space observatory ran out of coolant this past January 14th for its High Frequency Instrument (HFI), ending that particular mission. However, the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) continues to work.

Messier 16 - The Eagle Nebula

2012-01-19T00:00:00.001+08:00

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton’s X-ray images shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself. Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the life-cycle of stars.

Photo credit: Far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger

Note: For more information, see A New View of an Icon; also, The Eagle Nebula as Never Seen Before.

The Tinker Bell Triplet

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000+08:00

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a stunning rare case of a triple merger of galaxies. This system, which astronomers have dubbed 'The Bird' - although it also bears resemblance with a cosmic Tinker Bell - is composed of two massive spiral galaxies and a third irregular galaxy.

In this image, a 30-min VLT/NACO K-band exposure has been combined with archive HST/ACS B and I-band images to produce a three-color image of the 'Bird' interacting galaxy system. The NACO image has allowed astronomers to not only see the two previously known galaxies, but to identify a third, clearly separate component, an irregular, yet fairly massive galaxy that seems to form stars at a frantic rate. The final color image was produced by Henri Boffin (ESO).

Photo credit: ESO

Phytoplankton Blooms East of the Falkland Islands

2012-01-17T00:00:00.002+08:00

In this Envisat image, acquired on 2 December 2011, a phytoplankton bloom swirls a figure-of-8 in the South Atlantic Ocean about 600 km east of the Falkland Islands. Different types and quantities of phytoplankton exhibit different colors, such as the blues and greens in this image.

Earth-observing satellites like Envisat can monitor these algal blooms. Once a bloom begins, an ocean color sensor can make an initial identification of its chlorophyll pigment, and therefore its species and toxicity.

Photo credit: ESA

Re-Thinking an Alien World

2012-01-16T00:00:00.096+08:00

Forty light years from Earth, a rocky world named "55 Cancri e" circles perilously close to a stellar inferno. Completing one orbit in only 18 hours, the alien planet is 26 times closer to its parent star than Mercury is to the Sun. If Earth were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F. Researchers have long thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of parched rock.

Now they’re thinking again. New observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that 55 Cancri e may be wetter and weirder than anyone imagined.

Spitzer recently measured the extraordinarily small amount of light 55 Cancri e blocks when it crosses in front of its star. These transits occur every 18 hours, giving researchers repeated opportunities to gather the data they need to estimate the width, volume and density of the planet.

According to the new observations, 55 Cancri e has a mass 7.8 times and a radius just over twice that of Earth. Those properties place 55 Cancri e in the "super-Earth" class of exoplanets, a few dozen of which have been found. Only a handful of known super-Earths, however, cross the face of their stars as viewed from our vantage point in the cosmos, so 55 Cancri e is better understood than most.

When 55 Cancri e was discovered in 2004, initial estimates of its size and mass were consistent with a dense planet of solid rock. Spitzer data suggest otherwise: About a fifth of the planet's mass must be made of light elements and compounds--including water. Given the intense heat and high pressure these materials likely experience, researchers think the compounds likely exist in a "supercritical" fluid state.

A supercritical fluid is a high-pressure, high-temperature state of matter best described as a liquid-like gas, and a marvelous solvent. Water becomes supercritical in some steam turbines--and it tends to dissolve the tips of the turbine blades. Supercritical carbon dioxide is used to remove caffeine from coffee beans, and sometimes to dry-clean clothes. Liquid-fueled rocket propellant is also supercritical when it emerges from the tail of a spaceship.

On 55 Cancri e, this stuff may be literally oozing--or is it steaming?--out of the rocks.

With supercritical solvents rising from the planet’s surface, a star of terrifying proportions filling much of the daytime sky, and whole years rushing past in a matter of hours, 55 Cancri e teaches a valuable lesson: Just because a planet is similar in size to Earth does not mean the planet is like Earth.

It’s something to re-think about.

Video credit: NASA; text credit: NASA

Andre Kuipers in the Cupola

2012-01-15T00:00:00.003+08:00

ESA astronaut André Kuipers posing in the Cupola module of the International Space Station during the PromISSe mission. The Cupola is an ESA-built observatory and was added to the Space Station in February 2010. The seven windows are used for experiments and observations but also offer breath-taking views for astronauts. It is a favorite place for off-duty astronauts to relax and take photos. The astronauts’ cameras can be seen amongst all the equipment and wires.

Photo credit: NASA/ESA

Planets Everywhere

2012-01-14T00:00:00.004+08:00

This artist's cartoon view gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way. The planets, their orbits and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations. A six-year search that surveyed millions of stars using the micro-lensing technique concluded that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception. The average number of planets per star is greater than one.

Illustration credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Note: For more information, see Planet Population is Plentiful. See also Study Shows Our Galaxy Has at Least 100 Billion Planets.

BoRG-58: The Most Distant Galaxy Cluster

2012-01-13T00:00:00.007+08:00

The composite image at left, taken in visible and near-infrared light, reveals the location of five galaxies clustered together just 600 million years after the Universe's birth in the Big Bang. The circles pinpoint the galaxies.

The sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spied the galaxies in a random sky survey. The developing cluster is the most distant ever observed.

The average distance between them is comparable to that of the galaxies in the Local Group, consisting of two large spiral galaxies, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, and a few dozen small dwarf galaxies.

The close-up images at right, taken in near-infrared light, show the galaxies. Simulations show that the galaxies will eventually merge and form the brightest central galaxy in the cluster, a giant elliptical similar to the Virgo cluster's Messier 87.

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe, comprising hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. The developing cluster presumably will grow into a massive galactic city, similar in size to the nearby Virgo Cluster, a collection of more than 2000 galaxies.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA, M. Trenti (University of Cambridge, UK and University of Colorado, Boulder, USA), L. Bradley (STScI), and the BoRG team

Note: For more information, see Hubble Pinpoints Furthest Protocluster of Galaxies Ever Seen.

Galaxy Cluster ACT-CL J0102−4915 - "El Gordo"

2012-01-12T00:00:00.002+08:00

This picture of the galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102−4915 combines images taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope with images from the SOAR Telescope and X-ray observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray image shows the hot gas in the cluster and is shown in blue. This newly discovered galaxy cluster has been nicknamed El Gordo — the "big" or "fat one" in Spanish. It consists of two separate galaxy subclusters colliding at several million kilometers per hour, and is so far away that its light has traveled for seven billion years to reach the Earth.

Photo credit: ESO/SOAR/NASA

Note: For more information, see El Gordo — A “Fat” Distant Galaxy Cluster. Also, see El Gordo (ACT-CL J0102-4915):
NASA's Chandra Finds Largest Galaxy Cluster in Early Universe.

NGC 3603

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000+08:00

Thousands of sparkling young stars nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603. This stellar "jewel box" is one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 3603 is a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, about 20,000 light-years away. This image shows a young star cluster surrounded by a vast region of dust and gas. The image reveals stages in the life cycle of stars. The nebula was first discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834. The image spans roughly 17 light-years.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage

A New Map of the Moon

2012-01-10T00:00:00.001+08:00

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter science team released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created. This new topographic map shows the surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon with a pixel scale close to 328 feet.

Although the moon is Earth's closest neighbor, knowledge of its morphology is still limited. Due to the limitations of previous missions, a global map of the moon’s topography at high resolution has not existed until now. With LRO's Wide Angle Camera and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument, scientists can now accurately portray the shape of the entire moon at high resolution.

For more information on the new lunar map, visit the LRO site.

Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU

Floral-Shaped Volcano on Cerberus Fossae

2012-01-09T00:00:00.001+08:00

This is a small volcano superposed on the flanks of a larger one of the Cerberus Tholi.

This smaller feature has a single vent, aligned along a Cerberus Fossae trough, and it has flows radiating away from this vent in all directions, somewhat looking like a flower.

These flows appear somewhat darker than their surroundings, though this might be owing to roughness as much as to relative youth. Note that even at Context Camera (CTX) scale, we can see that there are some small impact craters superimposed on this feature, indicating that it is not entirely young.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_023811_1880.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Note: Cerberus Tholi is a group of seven volcanic hills located in Elysium Planitia. Cerberus Tholi is located south of the eastern end of Cerberus Fossae, and roughly encircle Tombaugh Crater.

Egirdir Golu, Turkey from the ISS Cupola

2012-01-08T00:00:00.002+08:00

This unusual image was photographed through the Cupola on the International Space Station by one of the Expedition 30 crew members.

The lake just above the bracket-mounted camera at center is Egirdir Golu in Turkey, located at 38.05 degrees north latitude and 30.89 degrees east longitude. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is docked to the station at lower right and part of the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) can be seen just above it.

The photo was taken on December 29, 2011.

Photo credit: NASA

The Flames of Betelgeuse

2012-01-07T00:00:00.002+08:00

This picture of the dramatic nebula around the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse was created from images taken with the VISIR infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This structure, resembling flames emanating from the star, forms because the behemoth is shedding its material into space. The earlier NACO observations of the plumes are reproduced in the central disc. The small red circle in the middle has a diameter about four and half times that of the Earth’s orbit and represents the location of Betelgeuse’s visible surface. The black disc corresponds to a very bright part of the image that was masked to allow the fainter nebula to be seen.

Photo credit: ESO/P. Kervella

The Smoky Pink Core of Messier 17, the Omega Nebula

2012-01-06T00:00:00.000+08:00

This image of the Omega Nebula (Messier 17), captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), is one of the sharpest of this object ever taken from the ground. It shows the dusty, rosy central parts of the famous star-forming region in fine detail.

Photo credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see The Smoky Pink Core of the Omega Nebula.

Titan and Dione

2012-01-05T00:00:00.002+08:00

Saturn's third-largest moon, Dione, can be seen through the haze of the planet's largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The north polar hood can be seen on Titan appearing as a detached layer at the top of the moon here. See PIA08137 and PIA09739 to learn more about Titan's atmosphere and the north polar hood.

See PIA10560 and PIA07638 to learn more about and see a closer view of the wisps on Dione's trailing hemisphere, which appear as bright streaks here.

This view looks toward the sides of Titan (3,200 miles or 5,150 kilometers across) and Dione (698 miles or 1,123 kilometers across) facing away from Saturn. North is up on the moons. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ring plane.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 21, 2011, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Titan and 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) from Dione. Image scale is 9 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel on Titan and 12 miles (19 kilometers) on Dione.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The Bright Rays of Mena

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000+08:00

The young rays of Mena crater contrast brightly against the surrounding surface, though the rays will gradually fade with time. The asymmetric pattern of the rays, with a gap in the south-western direction, may be due to the angle at which the impact that formed the crater occurred, or to the fact that Mena formed on the rim of a larger pre-existing impact crater, as seen in this image.

Date acquired: November 12, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 229581348, 229581352, 229581356
Image ID: 1003074-1003076
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filters: 9, 7, 6 (1000, 750, 430 nanometers) as red, green, blue
Center Latitude: -0.97°
Center Longitude: 234.0° E
Resolution: 257 meters/pixel
Scale: Mena has a diameter of 15 km (9 miles)
Incidence Angle: 29.7°
Emission Angle: 16.3°
Phase Angle: 46.0°

Photo credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Comet Lovejoy from the International Space Station

2012-01-03T00:00:00.001+08:00

Comet Lovejoy is visible near Earth's horizon in this nighttime image photographed by NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, Expedition 30 commander, on board the International Space Station on December 22, 2011.

Photo credit: NASA

Echo II

2012-01-02T00:00:00.002+08:00

Echo II is shown here undergoing a tensile stress test in a dirigible hanger at Weekesville, North Carolina. A dirigible is a type of aerostat or "lighter-than-air" aircraft. The 135-foot rigidized balloon satellite was sent into orbit as a passive communications experiment by NASA on January 25, 1964.

When folded, the satellite was packed into the 41-inch diameter canister shown in the foreground.

Photo credit: NASA

Note: One of the Minister's first space-related memories when he was a child was watching one of the two Echo satellites orbiting the Earth one night when he should have been in bed. One of his bedroom windows faced west. He had gotten up in the middle of the night, and saw one of the two Echos (he isn't sure which one) soaring up from the horizon until the satellite went out of sight. Enthralled, the Minister stayed up much of the night and was able to see the satellite rise six times before he finally went back to bed. He remembers telling his mother the next morning that he had watched "the moon" rising again and again in the sky.

NGC 4151 - Ring of Fire

2012-01-01T00:00:00.002+08:00

This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred.

A recent study shows the X-ray emission probably was caused by an outburst powered by the supermassive black hole located in the white region in the center of the galaxy. Evidence for this idea comes from the elongation of the X-rays running from the top left to the bottom right and details of the X-ray spectrum. There are also signs of interactions between a central source and the surrounding gas, particularly the yellow arc of H II emission located above and to the left of the black hole.

NGC 4151 is located about 43 million light years away from the Earth and is one of the nearest galaxies that contains an actively growing black hole. Because of this proximity, it offers one of the best chances of studying the interaction between an active supermassive black hole and the surrounding gas of its host galaxy. Such interaction, or feedback, is recognized to play a key role in the growth of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. If the X-ray emission in NGC 4151 originates from hot gas heated by the outflow from the central black hole, it would be strong evidence for feedback from active black holes to the surrounding gas on galaxy scales. This would resemble the larger scale feedback, observed on galaxy cluster scales, from active black holes interacting with the surrounding gas, as seen in objects like the Perseus Cluster.

Photo credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Wang et al.; Optical: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma/Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

Nebula N90 and SXP 1062

2011-12-31T00:00:00.083+08:00

A composite image of a portion of the Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a peripheral region of this satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The Wing is part of the tidal feature that connects the SMC to its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The Wing is located at the outskirts of the SMC and is characterized by a low density of stars, gas and dust, and by low metallicity. It displays signs of recent star formation episodes that took place over the past few million years.

On the left side of the image is the iconic N90 nebula, home to NGC 602, a bright, young open cluster of stars. On the right is the newly-discovered X-ray pulsar SXP 1062, visible as a bright point-like X-ray source (shown in blue). SXP 1062 accretes mass from its stellar companion, a massive, hot, blue 'Be' star, the two objects forming a Be/X-ray binary. The X-ray emission from this object has been detected using data from ESA's XMM-Newton as well as NASA's Chandra space-based observatories.

The diffuse glow surrounding the X-ray pulsar, also visible in blue, derives from the hot gas that fills the remnant of the supernova that created the pulsar. The supernova remnant itself is also visible as a bubble-shaped feature (shown in red) enclosing the pulsar. Other point-like X-ray sources are visible in blue and are background, extragalactic objects.

This image combines a three-color composite based on optical data from NOAO's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), obtained using two special filters that reveal the glow of oxygen and hydrogen, with X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton, which are overlaid in blue.

Photo credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L. Oskinova et al & ESA/XMM-Newton; Optical: AURA/NOAO/CTIO/Univ.Potsdam/L. Oskinova et al

Note: For more information, see Strangely Slow Pulsar Discovered Nestled in Young Supernova Remnant. A similar article on the above image can be found at one of the Chandra websites; see SXP 1062: Celestial Bauble Intrigues Astronomers.

Abell 2052

2011-12-30T00:00:00.002+08:00

The galaxy cluster Abell 2052 is found some 480 million light years from Earth. At the center of Abell 2052 is a giant elliptical galaxy, and within that is a supermassive black hole. X-ray data from Chandra show the hot gas that fills the space within the cluster. Pulling away, we see a huge spiral structure around this central elliptical galaxy. This spiral, which is over one million light years across, was created when a smaller spiral smashed into Abell 2052. This caused the hot gas in the cluster to slosh back and forth, similar to how wine moves when a glass is tugged from side to side. This sloshing turns out to be very important. First, it helps redistribute the hot gas, which, in turn, affects the number of new stars being formed in the central galaxy. The sloshing also spreads elements like oxygen and iron throughout the cluster, enriching future generations of stars and planets with the building blocks necessary for life as we know it.

Video credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

Note: For more information, see Abell 2052: A Galaxy Cluster Gets Sloshed

X-Ray Pulsar SXP 1062 Embedded in a Supernova Remnant

2011-12-29T00:00:00.008+08:00

This image is a composite view of the newly discovered X-ray pulsar SXP 1062 still embedded in the remnant of the supernova that created it. SXP 1062 accretes mass from its stellar companion, a massive, hot, blue 'Be' star, the two objects forming a Be/X-ray binary.

The X-ray emission from this object has been detected using data from ESA's XMM-Newton as well as NASA's Chandra space-based observatories. A later study of optical images of the source and its surroundings revealed the bubble-shaped signature of the supernova remnant around the binary system. Since supernova remnants shine only for a few tens of thousands of years before dispersing into the interstellar medium, not many pulsars have been detected while still enclosed in their expanding shell. This is the first clear example of such a pair in the SMC.

This false-color image combines the X-ray view, based on data from XMM-Newton (corresponding to the blue channel), with optical data from NOAO's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), obtained using two special filters that reveal the glow of oxygen (corresponding to the green channel) and hydrogen (corresponding to the red channel).

The bubble-shaped feature is the supernova remnant that encloses the pulsar. The diffuse glow at the center represents X-ray emission from both the pulsar and the hot gas that fills the remnant of the supernova. Other point-like X-ray sources are background, extragalactic objects.

Characterized by a surprisingly slow rotation period of 1062 seconds, this pulsar is located in the Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a peripheral region of this satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The Wing is part of the tidal feature that connects the SMC to its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Photo credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/L. Oskinova, University of Potsdam, Germany/M. Guerrero, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain (X-ray); Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/R. Gruendl & Y. H. Chu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (optical)

Note: For more information, see Strangely Slow Pulsar Discovered Nestled in Young Supernova Remnant.

Barnard 3 - The Wreath Nebula

2011-12-28T00:00:00.002+08:00

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission presents the "Wreath nebula." Though this isn't the nebula's official name (it's actually called Barnard 3, or IRAS Ring G159.6-18.5), one might picture a wreath in these bright green and red dust clouds -- a ring of evergreens donned with a festive red bow, a jaunty sprig of holly, and silver bells throughout. Interstellar clouds like these are stellar nurseries, places where baby stars are being born.

The green ring (evergreen) is made of tiny particles of warm dust whose composition is very similar to smog found here on Earth. The red cloud (bow) in the middle is probably made of dust that is more metallic and cooler than the surrounding regions. The bright star in the middle of the red cloud, called HD 278942, is so luminous that it is likely what is causing most of the surrounding ring to glow. In fact its powerful stellar winds are what cleared out the surrounding warm dust and created the ring-shaped feature in the first place. The bright greenish-yellow region left of center (holly) is similar to the ring, though more dense. The bluish-white stars (silver bells) scattered throughout are stars located both in front of, and behind, the nebula.

Regions similar to this nebula are found near the band of the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky. The "wreath" is slightly off this band, near the boundary between the constellations of Perseus and Taurus, but at a relatively close distance of only about 1,000 light-years, the cloud is a still part of our Milky Way.

The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Soyuz TMA-03M Approaching the ISS

2011-12-27T00:00:00.001+08:00

Filmed from the ISS, the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft on its final approach to dock. Andre Kuipers, Oleg Kononenko and Don Pettit launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on Wednesday 21 December 2011, and completed 35 orbits of the Earth before eventual docking at the ISS on 23 December 2011. Completing the crew compliment aboard ISS, they will be in orbit for five months.

Photo credit: ESA

Comet Lovejoy Over Paranal Observatory

2011-12-26T00:00:00.002+08:00

ESO optician Guillaume Blanchard captured this marvelous wide-angle photo of Comet Lovejoy just two days ago on 22 December 2011. Comet Lovejoy has been the talk of the astronomy community over the past few weeks. It was first discovered on 27 November by the Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy and was classified as a Kreutz sungrazer, with its orbit taking it very close to the Sun, passing a mere 140,000 kilometers from the Sun’s surface.

Photo credit: G. Blanchard(eso.org/~gblancha)/ESO

Note: For more information, see Christmas Comet Lovejoy Captured at Paranal.

Hard X-Ray All-Sky Map by INTEGRAL/SPI

2011-12-25T00:00:00.001+08:00

This image shows the entire sky at hard X-ray energies, between 50 and 100 keV, as observed with the spectrometer on board INTEGRAL (SPI). The image is based on six years worth of data collected with this instrument.

The two main contributions to the emission at these energies are clearly visible: point sources, galactic and extragalactic alike, and diffuse emission. Point sources are scattered across the sky, albeit mainly concentrated along the Galactic Plane; the diffuse emission also traces the Galactic Plane and is fainter, at these energies, than the emission arising from point sources.

In order to study the diffuse emission in great detail and to break it down into the individual physical processes that contribute to it, astronomers need to carefully scrutinize the data and remove the contamination due to point sources.

Photo credit: ESA/INTEGRAL/SPI

Note: For more information, see INTEGRAL Deciphers Diffuse Signature of Cosmic-Ray Electrons.

Galaxy GN-108036

2011-12-24T00:00:00.002+08:00

This image shows one of the most distant galaxies known, called GN-108036, dating back to 750 million years after the Big Bang that created our universe. The galaxy's light took 12.9 billion years to reach us.

The galaxy was discovered and confirmed using the Subaru telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, respectively, both located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. After the galaxy was discovered, astronomers looked at infrared observations of it taken by NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, and were surprised by how bright the galaxy appeared. This brightness resulted from an extreme burst of star formation -- a rare event for such an early cosmic era. In fact, GN-108036 is the most luminous galaxy found to date at these great distances.

Astronomers refer to a galaxy's distance by its "redshift," a number that refers to how much the light has been stretched to longer, redder wavelengths by the expansion of the universe. Galaxies with higher redshifts are more distant, and are seen farther back in time. GN-108036 has a redshift of 7.2, making it one of only a handful of galaxies detected this far away and this early in cosmic history.

The callout image above shows a field of galaxies, known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS. A close-up of the Hubble image, and a Spitzer image, are called out at right. In the Spitzer image, infrared light captured by its Infrared Array Camera at wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns is colored green and red, respectively. In the Hubble image, visible light taken by its Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument at 0.6 and 0.9 microns is blue and green, respectively, while infrared light captured by Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 at 1.6 microns is red. GN-108036 is only detected in the infrared, and is completely invisible in the optical Hubble images, explaining its very red color in this picture.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/University of Tokyo

Closer and Closer to the Vesta Surface

2011-12-23T00:00:00.003+08:00

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has spiraled closer and closer to the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. These images were obtained by Dawn's framing camera in the three phases of its campaign since arriving at Vesta in mid-2011.

The two images on the left represent an identical area, first observed during Dawn's survey orbit (far left image). That orbit aimed to obtain a global characterization of the asteroid. The picture in the center is from Dawn's high-altitude mapping orbit (HAMO) when the surface was systematically imaged during September and October 2011 from an altitude of about 430 miles (700 kilometers) with about 230 feet (70 meters-per-pixel) resolution for global high-resolution stereo image data that were used to develop a global shape model and topographic maps.

Since December 12, 2011, the orbiter has been circling Vesta in a slightly elliptical orbit known as low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO) at an average 130 miles (210 kilometers) above the asteroid's surface. The image on the right was obtained on December 13 from an altitude of 124 miles (199 kilometers) to the surface and has a resolution of 75 feet (23 meters) per pixel. It covers an area about 12 miles by 12 miles (19 kilometers by 19 kilometers).

The low altitude image has a resolution more than three times better than the resolution from the HAMO phase. There is a lot more detail in the image, like small impact craters or slumping at the steep-flanked mountain in the image center that can be identified in the two images to the left. The center of the LAMO image is at about 45.5 degrees south latitude and 325.1 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Comparison Between Kepler-20e, Kepler-20f, Venus and the Earth

2011-12-22T00:00:00.001+08:00

This chart compares the first Earth-size planets found around a Sun-like star to planets in our own solar system, Earth and Venus. NASA's Kepler mission discovered the newfound planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus with a radius .87 times that of Earth. Kepler-20f is a bit larger than Earth at 1.03 times the radius of Earth. Venus is very similar in size to Earth, with a radius of .95 times that our planet.

Prior to this discovery, the smallest known planet orbiting a Sun-like star was Kepler-10b with a radius of 1.42 that of Earth, which translates to 2.9 times the volume.

Both Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f circle in close to their star, called Kepler-20, with orbital periods of 6.1 and 19.6 days, respectively. Astronomers say the two little planets are rocky like Earth but with scorching temperatures.

There are three other larger, likely gaseous planets also know to circle the same star, known as Kepler-20b, Kepler-20c and Kepler-20d.

Illustration credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more illustrations in this series, see PIA14887: An Unusual Planetary System (Artist's Concept), PIA14888: Kepler-20e -- The Smallest Exoplanet (Artist's Concept), and PIA14889: Kepler-20f -- An Earth-size World (Artist's Concept).

Expedition 30 Soyuz Rolls to the Pad

2011-12-21T00:00:00.003+08:00

The Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft is rolled out by train on its way to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Monday, December 19, 2011. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Expedition 30 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut and Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers is scheduled for 8:16 a.m. EST on Wednesday, December 21.

Photo credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Update: The Expedition 30 spacecraft launched successfully; a video of the launch can be found here.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot

2011-12-20T00:00:00.003+08:00

This Voyager 2 image shows the region of Jupiter extending from the equator to the southern polar latitudes in the neighborhood of the Great Red Spot. A white oval, different from the one observed in a similar position at the time of the Voyager 1 encounter, is situated south of the Great Red Spot. The region of white clouds now extends from east of the red spot and around its northern boundary, preventing small cloud vortices from circling the feature. The disturbed region west of the red spot has also changed since the equivalent Voyager 1 image. It shows more small scale structure and cloud vortices being formed out of the wave structures. The picture was taken on July 3, 1979 from 6 million kilometers (3.72 million miles).

Photo credit: NASA/JPL

Gas Cloud Approaching the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way

2011-12-19T00:00:00.013+08:00

This simulated view shows a gas cloud (just above center, with its orbit shown in red) that has been observed approaching the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This is the first time ever that the approach of such a doomed cloud to a supermassive black hole has been observed and it is expected to break up completely during 2013. The stars orbiting the black hole are also shown along with blue lines marking their orbits. The stars and the cloud are shown in their actual positions in 2011.

Video credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see A Black Hole's Dinner is Fast Approaching.

Comet Lovejoy Grazes the Sun (and Survives)

2011-12-18T00:00:00.007+08:00

Comet Lovejoy skimmed across the Sun's edge about 140,000 km above the surface late December 15 and early December 16, 2011, furiously brightening and vaporizing as it approached the Sun. It is the brightest sungrazing comet that SOHO has ever seen, with a nucleus about twice as wide as a football field. It unexpectedly survived the pass and cruised out from behind the Sun some hours later. Comets are ancient balls of dust and ice.

Video credit: NASA; text credit: NASA

Note: For more information, see Comet Lovejoy Plunges into the Sun and Survives.

Sh2-106

2011-12-17T00:00:00.003+08:00

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Sh 2-106, or S106 for short. This is a compact star forming region in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan). A newly-formed star called S106 IR is shrouded in dust at the center of the image, and is responsible for the surrounding gas cloud's hourglass-like shape and the turbulence visible within. Light from glowing hydrogen is colored blue in this image.

Photo credit: NASA/ESA

Note: Another, wide-angle view of Sh2-106 can be found here; for more information, see Young Star Rebels Against its Parent Cloud [heic1118].

NGC 253

2011-12-16T00:00:00.001+08:00

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has captured in sharp detail the beauty of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253. This new portrait is probably the best wide-field view of this object and its surroundings ever taken. It demonstrates that the VST, the newest telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, provides broad views of the sky while also offering impressive image quality. Luminous regions of ongoing star formation are spread throughout NGC 253, which is pumping out new stars at a furious pace. The data were processed using the VST-Tube system developed by A. Grado and collaborators at the INAF-Capodimonte Observatory.

Photo credit: ESO/INAF-VST; Acknowledgement: A. Grado/L. Limatola/INAF-Capodimonte Observatory

Note: For more information, see A Galaxy Blooming with New Stars

NGC 2467

2011-12-15T00:00:00.002+08:00

Area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas. The image, looking like a colorful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (center) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region — the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionized gas. The bright star at the center of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

Photo credit: ESO

Messier 83 - The Southern Pinwheel

2011-12-14T00:00:00.002+08:00

This spectacular spiral galaxy is known to astronomers as Messier 83. Colloquially, it is also called the Southern Pinwheel due to its similarity to the more northerly Pinwheel galaxy Messier 101. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows us, in spectacular detail, the infrared structure of what many think of as our own Milky Way galaxy's smaller cousin.

Living in the middle of the Milky Way's disk, we see our galaxy only from an obstructed vantage point that is both inside-out and edge-on. We see Messier 83 nearly face-on, giving us a chance to really map out its disk in great detail. This information helps astronomers figure out what our own galaxy would look like if we could warp out to a better vantage point.

Like the Milky Way, Messier 83 is classified as a barred spiral galaxy due to the bar-like pattern of stars that run through its center. This bar region is more interesting in the infrared since we can also see the open "s" shaped curve of dust (red) cutting through the more linear stellar bar (blue-cyan).

This arc of inner dust connects up with the more tightly wound spiral arms in the outer disk, seen here as bright green-red ridges. Between the main spiral arms we also see a complex webbing of dust that permeates the entire disk.

While Messier 83 is about 15 million light years away, it is actually one of the closest barred spiral galaxies in the sky. This gives astronomers an excellent chance to study a galaxy that, although half as big, seems very similar in structure to our own Milky Way galaxy.

Infrared light with wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns are displayed in blue and green showing primarily the glow from starlight. 8 micron light is rendered in red; the contribution from starlight at 8 microns was subtracted out from the data to better show the dust structures near the galaxy's center.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: A similar version of this photo can be found here.

Rotation of Jupiter

2011-12-13T00:00:00.002+08:00

Jupiter observed with the 1 meter telescope at the Pic du Midi observatory and a Basler Scout Camera; images taken between October 10 and October 15, 2011.

Video credit: S2P/IMCCE/OPM/JL Dauvergne/Elie Rousset/Eric Meza/Philippe Tosi/François Colas/Jean Pajus/Xavi Nogués/Emil Kraaikamp

Vampire Star 17 Leporis

2011-12-12T00:00:00.006+08:00

This zoom sequence starts with a broad view of the spectacular Milky Way. We close in on the small constellation of Lepus (The Hare), next to the familiar figure of Orion (The Hunter) and focus on the star, SS Leporis, which is faintly visible to the unaided eye. The final stage takes an extraordinarily close look at this unusual double star using the VLT Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. These remarkably sharp images — 50 times sharper than those from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope — not only allow astronomers to watch the two stars in orbit around each other, but also show the larger of the two as a clear disc.

Video credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/PIONIER/IPAG. Music: John Dyson (from the album Moonwind)

Note: For more information, see Vampire Star Reveals its Secrets.

Supernova Remnant Puppis A

2011-12-11T00:00:00.002+08:00

About 3,700 years ago people on Earth would have seen a brand-new bright star in the sky. As it slowly dimmed out of sight, it was eventually forgotten, until modern astronomers found its remains -- called Puppis A. Seen as a red dusty cloud in this image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, Puppis A is the remnant of a supernova explosion.

Puppis A (pronounced PUP-pis) was formed when a massive star ended its life in an extremely bright and powerful explosion. The expanding shock waves from that explosion are heating up the dust and gas clouds surrounding the supernova, causing them to glow and creating the beautiful red cloud we see here. Much of the material from that original star was violently thrown out into space. However, some of the material remained in an incredibly dense object called a neutron star. This particular neutron star (too faint to be seen in this image) is moving inexplicably fast: over 3 million miles per hour! Astronomers are perplexed over its absurd speed, and have nicknamed the object the "Cosmic Cannonball."

Some of the green-colored gas and dust in the image is from yet another ancient supernova -- the Vela supernova remnant. That explosion happened around 12,000 years ago and was four times closer to us than Puppis A. If you had X-ray vision like the comic book hero Superman, both of these remnants would be among the largest and brightest objects you would see in the sky.

This image was made from observations by all four infrared detectors aboard WISE. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is primarily from stars, the hottest objects pictured. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is primarily from warm dust.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Is Vesta the "Smallest Terrestrial Planet?"

2011-12-10T00:00:00.001+08:00

NASA's Dawn spacecraft spent the last four years voyaging to asteroid Vesta – and may have found a planet.

Vesta was discovered over two hundred years ago but, until Dawn, has been seen only as an indistinct blur and considered little more than a large, rocky body. Now the spacecraft's instruments are revealing the true complexity of this ancient world.

"We're seeing enormous mountains, valleys, hills, cliffs, troughs, ridges, craters of all sizes, and plains," says Chris Russell, Dawn principal investigator from UCLA. "Vesta is not a simple ball of rock. This is a world with a rich geochemical history. It has quite a story to tell!"

In fact, the asteroid is so complex that Russell and members of his team are calling it the "smallest terrestrial planet."

Vesta has an iron core, notes Russell, and its surface features indicate that the asteroid is "differentiated" like the terrestrial planets Earth, Mercury, Mars, and Venus.

Differentiation is what happens when the interior of an active planet gets hot enough to melt, separating its materials into layers. The light material floats to the top while the heavy elements, such as iron and nickel, sink to the center of the planet.

Researchers believe this process also happened to Vesta.

The story begins about 4.57 billion years ago, when the planets of the Solar System started forming from the primordial solar nebula. As Jupiter gathered itself together, its powerful gravity stirred up the material in the asteroid belt so objects there could no longer coalesce. Vesta was in the process of growing into a full-fledged planet when Jupiter interrupted the process.

Although Vesta’s growth was stunted, it is still differentiated like a true planet.

"We believe that the Solar System received an extra slug of radioactive aluminum and iron from a nearby supernova explosion at the time Vesta was forming," explains Russell. "These materials decay and give off heat. As the asteroid was gathering material up into a big ball of rock, it was also trapping the heat inside itself."

As Vesta’s core melted, lighter materials rose to the surface, forming volcanoes and mountains and lava flows.

"We think Vesta had volcanoes and flowing lava at one time, although we've not yet found any ancient volcanoes there," says Russell. "We're still looking. Vesta's plains seem similar to Hawaii's surface, which is basaltic lava solidified after flowing onto the surface.

Vesta has so much in common with the terrestrial planets, should it be formally reclassified from "asteroid" to "dwarf planet"?

"That's up to the International Astronomical Union, but at least on the inside, Vesta is doing all the things a planet does."

If anyone asks Russell, he knows how he would vote.

Text credit: NASA; video credit: NASA

VFTS 102

2011-12-09T00:00:00.007+08:00

This is an artist's concept of the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102 rotates at about two million kilometers per hour. Centrifugal force from this dizzying spin rate has flattened the star into an oblate shape, and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

Illustration credit: NASA/ESA and G. Bacon (STScI)

Note: For more information and photographs, see VLT Finds Fastest Rotating Star.

Special Note: This is the 500th post here at Ministry of Space Exploration.

Voyager 1 Reaches the Stagnation Region

2011-12-08T00:00:00.002+08:00

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space, which scientists are calling the stagnation region. In the stagnation region, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our Sun has slowed and turned inward for the first time, our solar system's magnetic field has piled up and higher-energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space. This image shows that the inner edge of the stagnation region is located about 113 astronomical units (10.5 billion miles or 16.9 billion kilometers) from the Sun. Voyager 1 is currently about 119 astronomical units (11 billion miles or 17.8 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The distance to the outer edge is unknown.

Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Kepler-22b

2011-12-07T00:00:00.003+08:00

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's habitable zone -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth, making it the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our Sun.

Scientists do not yet know if the planet has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition. It's possible that the world would have clouds in its atmosphere, as depicted here in the artist's interpretation.

Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames

Note: For more information, see Kepler Confirms First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star ; also, PIA14882: Kepler-22b -- Comfortably Circling within the Habitable Zone.

Young Stellar Grouping in Cygnus X

2011-12-06T00:00:00.001+08:00

Cygnus X hosts many young stellar groupings. The combined outflows and ultraviolet radiation from the region's numerous massive stars have heated and pushed gas away from the clusters, producing cavities of hot, lower-density gas.

In this 8-micron infrared image, ridges of denser gas mark the boundaries of the cavities. Bright spots within these ridges show where stars are forming today.

Photo credit: NASA/IPAC/MSX

Note: This image was taken by the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) and the data processed by Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).

Apollo 17 Splashdown

2011-12-05T00:00:00.002+08:00

The Apollo 17 spacecraft, containing astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. Schmitt, glided to a safe splashdown at 2:25 p.m. EST on December 19, 1972, 648 kilometers (350 nautical miles) southeast of American Samoa.

The astronauts were flown by recovery helicopter to the U.S.S. Ticonderoga slightly less than an hour after the completion of NASA's sixth and last manned lunar landing in the Apollo program.

Photo credit: NASA

Phlegra Montes

2011-12-04T00:00:00.001+08:00

Phlegra Montes is a range of gently curving mountains and ridges on Mars. They extend from the northeastern portion of the Elysium volcanic province to the northern lowlands. The High-Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express collected the data for these images on 1 June 2011 during orbit 9465. This perspective view has been calculated from the Digital Terrain Model derived from the stereo channels.

Photo credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Southern Enceladus in Radar View

2011-12-03T00:00:00.004+08:00

NASA's Cassini spacecraft obtained these views of the south polar area of Saturn's moon Enceladus in visible and near-visible (ultraviolet and infrared) light and synthetic-aperture radar (SAR). The region is south of 45 degrees South latitude. The SAR image, acquired November 6, 2011, is shown as an arc running from upper left to lower right, accented in light blue. Bright and dark edges of this arc are artifacts of the radar imaging process. The background image was taken with visible-light (PIA08342), with color added for emphasis (see below). Visible-light images, like we normally see in photographs, are mostly bright or dark depending on their target's chemical composition, while brightness in SAR images usually depends on how rough or smooth the surface is. The SAR swath is about 15 miles (25 kilometers) wide and is centered at 655 South latitude, 295 West longitude.

The color in the background image is used to separate different materials using ultraviolet, visible and infrared images taken from 2004 to 2009 (see PIA13423). Blue colors represent icy material that originated in the plumes and fell back to the surface. Since these images were taken using illumination by sunlight, they sense ice particles and other roughness in the wavelength range of 50 to 100 microns. The SAR swath uses microwaves 2 centimeters long in wavelength to "light" the surface, so it senses roughness in that range. In addition, the SAR may be seeing that roughness slightly under the surface.

From east-to-west (bottom right to top left), the SAR image crosses near-south-polar terrain close to many of the active sulci, which are long fissures. Throughout the scene, the surface is covered with a network of linear and near-linear grooves and fractures, interpreted to be due to extension, or pulling apart, of Enceladus' crust. These are dominated by a set of larger grooves, about a mile (kilometer) wide, running many tens of miles (kilometers) in length, and smaller grooves about 700 feet (200 meters) wide. A v-shaped region near the lower (eastern) end of the SAR swath, bounded by large faults, appears brighter to radar than most other areas, most likely the result of a rougher surface in the 2-centimeter-wavelength scale. Within, the terrain appears to be slightly more broken up, possibly the result of more dynamic tectonic forces disrupting the surface. The few-miles-wide (few-kilometers-wide) fault bounding the westernmost edge (top) edge of this area looks similar to the four active sulci that run parallel to it, suggesting that it is formed by the same processes; this feature is discussed in PIA15171. A similar fault about 1 to 2 miles (2 to 3 kilometers) wide runs along the center of much of the SAR swath for at least 47 miles (75 kilometers). Farther west still, the swath crosses another v-shaped, SAR-bright region bounded by large faults, including part of the Mosul Sulci system (see PIA15170). Once again, the network of fractures within the bright region appear to be rougher and more broken up. It also coincides with unusually colored terrain surrounding the active sulci (seen in the background images), and so possibly indicates a relatively young or active surface.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Note: For other images in this series, see PIA15170: Enceladus Sparkle and PIA15171: Groovy Enceladus.

Astronaut Testing the SAFER Backpack

2011-12-02T00:00:00.002+08:00

Astronaut Mark Lee tests the new backpack called Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), a system designed for use in the event a crew member becomes untethered while conducting an EVA. The Lidar-In-Space Technology Experiment (LITE) is shown in the foreground. The LITE payload employs lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging, a type of optical radar using laser pulses instead of radio waves to study Earth's atmosphere. Unprecedented views were obtained of cloud structures, storm systems, dust clouds, pollutants, forest burning, and surface reflectance. The STS-64 mission marked the first untethered U.S. EVA in 10 years, and was launched on September 9, 1994, aboard the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery.

Photo credit: NASA

NGC 104

2011-12-01T00:00:00.002+08:00

A color-corrected image of the the second largest and second brightest globular cluster, or tight grouping of stars, seen in Earth's night sky. Called NGC 104 or 47 Tucanae, the light for this image was gathered in 1986 by ESO's 1-m Schmidt Telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile. The telescope is now decommissioned.

Photo credit: ESO

Kraken Mare

2011-11-30T00:00:00.000+08:00

The Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and spies the huge Kraken Mare in the moon's north.

Kraken Mare, a large sea of liquid hydrocarbons, is visible as a dark area near the top of the image. See PIA12811 and PIA11626 to learn more.

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Titan (3,200 miles across, or 5,150 kilometers,). North on Titan is up and rotated 29 degrees to the left.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on September 14, 2011 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (12 kilometers) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Eta Carinae

2011-11-29T00:00:00.003+08:00

This new image of the luminous blue variable Eta Carinae was taken with the NACO near-infrared adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, yielding an incredible amount of detail. The images clearly shows a bipolar structure as well as the jets coming out from the central star. The image was obtained by the Paranal Science team and processed by Yuri Beletsky (ESO) and Hännes Heyer (ESO). It is based on data obtained through broad (J, H, and K; 90 second exposure time per filters) and narrow-bands (1.64, 2.12, and 2.17 microns; probing iron, molecular and atomic hydrogen, respectively; 4 min per filter).

Photo credit: ESO

The Center of the Milky Way

2011-11-28T00:00:00.002+08:00

The central parts of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, as observed in the near-infrared with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. By following the motions of the most central stars over more than 16 years, astronomers were able to determine the mass of the supermassive black hole that lurks there.

Photo credit: ESO/S. Gillessen et al.

Launch of the Mars Science Laboratory ("Curiosity")

2011-11-27T01:00:00.003+08:00

The Minister needs to get to bed, but he first wants to add two videos of the Mars Rover Curiosity launching successfully from Cape Canaveral today. Captions for the videos will come later. This first video is from NASAtelevision:

This second video is a much longer version:

Eberswalde Crater

2011-11-27T00:00:00.000+08:00

Eberswalde crater on Mars formed more than 3.7 billion years ago. The rim of the crater is intact only in the north-eastern part. The rest has been buried by ejecta from the larger, more recent Holden impact crater nearby. The image was acquired by Mars Express around 25°S/326°E during orbit 7208 on 15 August 2009. The images have a ground resolution of about 22m per pixel.

Photo credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

NGC 2264 - The Cone Nebula and the Christmas Tree Star Cluster

2011-11-26T00:00:00.002+08:00

This color image of the region known as NGC 2264 — an area of sky that includes the sparkling blue baubles of the Christmas Tree star cluster and the Cone Nebula — was created from data taken through four different filters (B, V, R and H-alpha) with the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla Observatory, 2400 m high in the Atacama Desert of Chile in the foothills of the Andes. The image shows a region of space about 30 light-years across.

Photo credit: ESO

Cygnus X-1

2011-11-25T00:00:00.002+08:00

Over three decades ago, Stephen Hawking placed, and eventually lost, a bet against the existence of a black hole in Cygnus X-1. Today, astronomers are confident the Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole. In fact, a team of scientists has combined data from radio, optical, and X-ray telescopes including Chandra to determine the black hole's spin, mass, and distance more precisely than ever before. With these key pieces of information, the history of the black hole has been reconstructed. This new information gives astronomers strong clues about how the black hole was born, how much it weighed, and how fast it was spinning. This is important because scientists still would like to know much more about the birth of black holes.

Video credit: Optical: DSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Note: For more information, see Cygnus X-1: NASA's Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement.

Topography of Mars

2011-11-24T00:00:00.003+08:00

Color coding in this image of Mars represents differences in elevation, measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. While surface liquid water is rare and ephemeral on modern Mars, the topography of Mars reveals large, ancient valley networks and outflow channels. These are evidence that liquid water was more common and played a much more important role in Mars' past.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: The view of this map is somewhat unusual; we are looking from the north to the south. The "blue land" to the left is Acidalia Planitia (dark blue) and Chryse Planitia (light blue). The "green land" on the far left limb is Arabia Terra, while the green and yellow land to the middle right is Lunae Planum (lower right) and Xanthe Terra (upper middle right, with the large craters). The long blue and green streak in the "red land" is Valles Marineris; that leads to the various chasmata and chaotic terrains that lie near the top (southernmost) limb of the planet. The green "dogleg" at the bottom right is Echus Chasma (far right) and Kasei Valles (middle right), which flowed into Chryse Planitia.

Hypothesized Formation of the First Stars

2011-11-23T00:00:00.000+08:00

Scientists are simulating how the very first stars in our universe were born. This diagram shows a still from one such simulation. The cube on the right is a blown up region at the center of the box on the left.

The stars we see today formed out of collapsing clouds of gas and dust. In the very early universe, however, the stars had fewer ingredients available. There wasn't any dust yet, or heavy elements, both of which help cool the gas in a cloud so that it can collapse. Instead, the very first stars formed from nothing but hydrogen and helium gas. Astronomers theorize that, in order to overcome their lack of cooling ingredients, these stars would have needed more mass to form. The first stars were thought to have been more massive than even the most massive stars observed today.

At the very center of each box shown here is the forming star - the star itself is too small to see at this scale. The red areas show hot gas with temperatures as high as 50,000 Kelvin (90,000 degrees Fahrenheit), heated by, and surrounding, the forming star. Blue shows much cooler gas, with the darkest blue showing the densest portions of cool gas, shaped like a disk surrounding the seedling star.

As the star pulls matter from the disk onto it, it grows more massive. Meanwhile, some gas -- shown in the red areas -- is so hot that it expands and escapes. Eventually, large amounts of the surrounding gas become too hot and escape. At this point, the star stops growing -- it has finished "baking."

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, have used these simulations to show that the first stars, during their formation, had a greater impact on surrounding gas than previously thought. The higher gas temperatures would have caused the stars to stop growing sooner. As a result, the first stars were not likely hundreds of times the mass of the Sun, but only tens of times its mass.

None of these first stars still exist today. After a few million years they exploded in fiery supernovae, spewing heavier elements cooked in their interiors out into the surrounding gas.

For technical details and videos visit http://www-tap.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~hosokawa/firststarstop_e.html.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kyoto University

The Carina Nebula

2011-11-22T00:00:00.050+08:00

Observations made with the APEX telescope in sub-millimeter-wavelength light at a wavelength of 870 µm reveal the cold dusty clouds from which stars form in the Carina Nebula. This site of violent star formation, which plays host to some of the highest-mass stars in our galaxy, is an ideal arena in which to study the interactions between these young stars and their parent molecular clouds.

The APEX observations, made with its LABOCA camera, are shown here in orange tones, combined with a visible light image from the Curtis Schmidt telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory. The result is a dramatic, wide-field picture that provides a spectacular view of Carina’s star formation sites. The nebula contains stars equivalent to over 25,000 Suns, and the total mass of gas and dust clouds is that of about 140,000 Suns.

Photo credit: ESO/APEX/T. Preibisch et al. (Submillimetre); N. Smith, University of Minnesota/NOAO/AURA/NSF (Optical)

Note: For more information, see The Cool Clouds of Carina. See also Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus): 30 Doradus and The Growing Tarantula Within .

Vesta's Domitia Crater

2011-11-21T00:00:00.003+08:00

These Dawn FC (framing camera) images show the Domitia crater in Vesta's northern hemisphere and the topography of the surrounding region, which includes the "Snowman" craters. Domitia crater is the roughly 50km diameter crater in the top of the image, slightly offset from the center of the image. It is a highly degraded crater and its rim is nearly totally obscured by smaller, younger impact craters. Domitia crater is both large and distinctive so its name is used to name the quadrangle in which it is located. The left image is an albedo image, which is taken directly through the clear filter of the FC. Such an image shows the albedo (e.g. brightness/darkness) of the surface. The right image uses the same albedo image as its base but then a color-coded height representation of the topography is overlain onto it. The topography is calculated from a set of images that were observed from different viewing directions, called stereo images. The various colors correspond to the height of the area that they color. For example, the white area in the bottom right of the image is the highest area and the dark blue top edge of the image is the lowest area. The bottom edge of Domitia crater is located on the boundary between the dark and light blue so it defines a sharp topography/height boundary.

This image is in Vesta's Domitia, Marcia and Numisia quadrangles and the center latitude and longitude of the image is 22.3°N, 198.7°E. NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on August 29th 2011. This image was taken through the camera's clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 2740 km and the image has a resolution of about 250 meters per pixel. This image was acquired during the Survey phase of the mission.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

30 Doradus in Infrared and X-Rays

2011-11-20T00:00:00.001+08:00

The star-forming region, 30 Doradus, is one of the largest located close to the Milky Way and is found in the neighboring galaxy Large Magellanic Cloud. About 2,400 massive stars in the center of 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, are producing intense radiation and powerful winds as they blow off material.

Multi-million-degree gas detected in X-rays (blue) by the Chandra X-ray Observatory comes from shock fronts -- similar to sonic booms -- formed by these stellar winds and by supernova explosions. This hot gas carves out gigantic bubbles in the surrounding cooler gas and dust shown here in infrared emission from the Spitzer Space Telescope (orange).

30 Doradus is also known as an HII (pronounced "H-two") region, created when the radiation from hot, young stars strips away the electrons from neutral hydrogen atoms (HI) to form clouds of ionized hydrogen (HII). It is the most massive and largest HII region in the Local Group of galaxies, which contains the Milky Way, Andromeda and about 30 other smaller galaxies including the two Magellanic Clouds. Because of its proximity and size, 30 Doradus is an excellent target for studying the effects of massive stars on the evolution of an HII region.

The Tarantula Nebula is expanding, and researchers have recently published two studies that attempt to determine what drives this growth. The most recent study concluded that the evolution and the large-scale structure of 30 Doradus is determined by the bubbles of hot, X-ray bright gas confined by surrounding gas, and that pressure from radiation generated by massive stars does not currently play an important role in shaping the overall structure. A study published earlier in 2011 came to the opposite conclusion and argued that radiation pressure is more important than pressure from hot gas in driving the evolution of 30 Doradus, especially in the central regions near the massive stars. More detailed analysis and deeper Chandra observations of 30 Doradus may help decide between these different ideas.

Photo credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L. Townsley et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL/PSU/L. Townsley et al.

Saturn's Northern Hemisphere Storm

2011-11-19T00:00:00.003+08:00

Saturn's northern storm marches through the planet's atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

See PIA14905 to learn more about this storm and watch its development over several months. Earlier in the Cassini mission, the spacecraft chronicled a smaller storm in the southern hemisphere, called the "Dragon Storm." See PIA06197 to learn more about that storm and to see a similar, false-color view.

Saturn's atmosphere and its rings are shown here in a false-color composite made from 12 images taken in near-infrared light through filters that are sensitive to varying degrees of methane absorption. Red and orange colors in this view indicate clouds that are deep in the atmosphere. Yellow and green colors, most noticeable along the top edge of the view, indicate intermediate clouds. White and blue indicate high clouds and haze. The rings appear as a thin horizontal line of bright blue because they are outside of the atmosphere and not affected by methane absorption.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ring plane.

The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light. The images filtered at 890 nanometers are projected as blue. The images filtered at 728 nanometers are projected as green, and images filtered at 752 nanometers are projected as red.

The images were taken on January 11, 2011, over about 50 minutes, at a distance of approximately 569,000 miles (915,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 45 degrees. The images were re-projected to the same viewing geometry, so that scale in this final mosaic is 63 miles (102 kilometers) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Note: For other photos in this series, see PIA12828: Storm Head in False Color, PIA12829: Storm Tail in False Color, PIA14901: Eleven Hours Later, PIA14902: Birth of a Behemoth Storm, PIA14903: Encircling a Giant, PIA14904: Nearly True Color Storm Close-Up, PIA14905: Chronicling Saturn's Northern Storm, PIA14906: Churning Psychedelia, and PIA14907: Kaleidoscopic Rainbows.

Astrophysical Shock Waves

2011-11-18T00:00:00.010+08:00

This composition shows a number of diverse astronomical sources where shocks have been detected. Shock waves arise when supersonic flows of plasma are faced with an obstacle, such as a planet or a star with a magnetic field, or when they encounter a slower moving flow.

Depicted in the composition are: a bow shock around the very young star, LL Ori, in the Great Orion Nebula (upper row, left image); shock waves around the Red Spider Nebula, a warm planetary nebula (upper row, central image); very thin shocks on the edge of the expanding supernova remnant SN 1006 (central row, left image); artist's impressions of the bow shock created by the Solar System as it moves through the interstellar medium of the Milky Way (upper row, right image) and of Earth's bow shock, formed by the solar wind as it encounters our planet's magnetic field (central row, right image); shock-heated shells of hot gas on the edge of the lobes of the radio galaxy Cygnus A (lower row, left image); a bow shock in the hot gas in the merging galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the 'Bullet Cluster'.

The image of a galaxy (NGC 6744) in the center of the composition serves to give a rough idea of the relative scales, sub- and super-galactic alike, of the shock waves present across the Universe.

Illustration credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA (LL Ori); ESA & Garrelt Mellema, Leiden University, the Netherlands (Red Spider Nebula); CEA/DSM/DAPNIA/SAp and ESA/XMM-Newton (SN 1006); ESA & Lotfi Ben Jaffel, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris-CNRS-INSU, Martin Kornmesser & Lars Lindberg Christensen (Solar System); ESA/AOES Medialab (Earth's bow shock); ESO (NGC 6744); NRAO/AUI (Cygnus A); NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al. (Bullet Cluster).

Bachu and the Tian Shan Mountains

2011-11-17T00:00:00.003+08:00

Varied elevations of Bachu in western China in an image developed using data from the two ERS satellites. The ERS missions pioneered the technique of processing satellite radar data into digital elevation models, as shown here of Bachu and the nearby Tian Shan mountains. A digital elevation model is a 3D relief map to study changes in the terrain.

Photo credit: ESA/DLR

Update: Another ESA photo of the Tian Shan mountains can be found here.

Time-Lapse Views of the Earth

2011-11-16T00:00:00.000+08:00

Another great video compilation of the Earth from the International Space Station. The photos were taken by Ron Garan, Satoshi Furukawa and the crew of Expeditions 28 & 29 from August to October, 2011. Below is a list of the different sequences and the ground they cover:

1. Aurora Borealis pass over the United States at night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to central South America at night
6. Aurora Australis from the southern to the northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night pass over central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and central United States at night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at night
13. Pass over eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Middle East at night
15. Night pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia at night

Images credit: NASA; Editing: Michael König; Music: Jan Jelinek | Do Dekor, faitiche back

Tiny Galaxies Brimming with Star Birth

2011-11-15T00:00:00.000+08:00

This image reveals 18 tiny galaxies uncovered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The puny galaxies, shown in the postage-stamp-sized images, existed 9 billion years ago and are brimming with star birth.

The dwarf galaxies are typically a hundred times less massive than the Milky Way galaxy but are churning out stars at such a furious pace that their stellar population would double in just 10 million years. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys spied the galaxies in a field called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). The galaxies' locations in the GOODS field are marked in the large image.

The galaxies stood out in the Hubble images because the energy from all the new stars caused the oxygen in the gas surrounding them to light up like a bright fluorescent sign. The rapid star birth likely represents an important phase in the formation of dwarf galaxies, the most common galaxy type in the cosmos.

The galaxies are among 69 dwarf galaxies found in the GOODS and other fields.

Images of the individual galaxies were taken November 2010 to January 2011. The large image showing the location of the galaxies was taken between September 2002 and December 2004, and between September 2009 and October 2009.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA, A. van der Wel (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy), H. Ferguson and A. Koekemoer (Space Telescope Science Institute), and the CANDELS team

Note: For more information, see Hubble Uncovers Tiny Galaxies Bursting with Starbirth in Early Universe; also, see Hubble Spies Tiny Galaxies Aglow with Star Birth.

Development of the Inner Solar System

2011-11-14T00:00:00.007+08:00

This artist’s impression shows four stages of the development of the inner Solar System over a period of nearly five billion years. The top panel shows the earliest stage where the debris disc around the Sun was composed of gas and tiny particles, typically less than one millimeter across. At the second stage the particles have formed large clumps, roughly 100 kilometers across and, similar to the asteroid Lutetia. These bodies in turn formed the rocky planets including the Earth, shown in the third panel down. Over the subsequent four billion years the surface of the Earth developed to what we know now under the influence of meteor bombardment that delivered volatile materials including water, and the evolution of life on its surface.

The rare spectral properties show that Lutetia started life as a fragment of the material that was forming the inner planets but was ejected. It is now found as an unusual interloper in the main belt of asteroids, much further from the Sun.

Illustration credit: ESO/L. Calçada and N. Risinger

Note: For more information, see Lutetia: a Rare Survivor from the Birth of the Earth.

Tharsis Tholus

2011-11-13T00:00:00.003+08:00

Tharsis Tholis towers 8 km above the surrounding terrain with a base that stretches 155 x 125 km and a central caldera measuring 32 x 34 km. The image was created using a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) obtained from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Elevation data from the DTM is color-coded: purple indicates the lowest lying regions and beige the highest. The scale is in meters. In these images, the relief has been exaggerated by a factor of three.

Photo credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Note: For more information (and a lot of other, great images), see Battered Tharsis Tholus Volcano on Mars.

Mars Science Laboratory atop the Atlas V

2011-11-12T00:00:00.003+08:00

In the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41, the payload fairing containing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft was attached to its Atlas V rocket on November 3, 2011.

The spacecraft was prepared for launch in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Its components include a car-sized rover, Curiosity, which has 10 science instruments designed to search for evidence about whether Mars has had environments favorable to microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life.

Launch of the Mars Science Laboratory aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is planned for November 25 from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

IC 4601 - Dusty Reflections in the Scorpion's Claws

2011-11-11T00:00:00.000+08:00

Between the claws of the dreaded scorpion imagined by the ancient Greeks lies this giant dust cloud, imaged by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Scorpius is prominent in the summer night sky in North America. In visible light, this cloud, or nebula, appears dark with a ghostly blue shine about it. These types of nebulae are called "reflection," because they are reflecting the light of nearby stars. The dust within the cloud reflects mostly blue light.

However, WISE sees infrared light invisible to the eye. In infrared light, we can see the dust itself glowing rather than simply reflecting light. The green and red colors in this image show dust at different temperatures, with the green dust being warmer than the red dust. The dust is warmed by the light of nearby stars. This interstellar dust contains the heavy elements that planets are made of, and plays a major role in the creation of new stars.

The nebula, known as IC 4601, is part of a larger complex of clouds where new stars are being born. Some of the red stars in this image may in fact be baby stars wrapped in blankets of dust. Perhaps the dreaded scorpion can be thought of as rocking the baby stars to sleep.

This image was made from observations by all four infrared detectors aboard WISE. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is primarily from stars, the hottest objects pictured. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is primarily from warm dust.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

NGC 4522 Stripped

2011-11-10T00:00:00.000+08:00

This image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows galaxy NGC 4522 being stripped of its star-forming material. Astronomers refer to this process as "ram-pressure stripping" - where surrounding hot-gas shoves star-forming gas out of the galaxy's outer disk. NGC 4522 is located approximately 50 million light-years away in the Virgo galaxy cluster.

In this image, the galaxy's older stellar population is marked by tints of yellow. Meanwhile, the bluish-white ridge near NGC 4522's center reveals a population of very young stars - most likely less than a million years old. The bluish-white coloration also indicates that new stars are actively forming in this area.

The light-blue haze beyond the white-ridge represents the galaxy's outer disk. This area is currently not a site of active star formation, but is still very bright in the ultraviolet, indicating that some stars in this region are very young and likely formed very recently, within the last 50-100 million years.

This image is a three color composite where yellow represents R-band visible-light data from the Kitt Peak National Observatory's 0.9-meter telescope. Green shows near-ultraviolet light data, and blue reveals far-ultraviolet light data from GALEX.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Yale University/H. Crowl (Yale University)

Note: This image was used as an example in a recent Science@NASA article entitled Stellar Extremophiles.

Asteroid 2005 YU55

2011-11-09T00:00:00.001+08:00

This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California on November 7, 2011, at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, or 1.38 million kilometers, from Earth.

The asteroid safely will safely fly past our planet slightly closer than the moon's orbit on November 8. The last time a space rock this large came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time. The next known approach of an asteroid this size will be in 2028.

The image was taken on November 7 at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the asteroid was approximately 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) away from Earth. Tracking of the aircraft carrier-sized asteroid began at Goldstone at 9:30 a.m. PDT on November 4 with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) antenna and lasted about two hours, with an additional four hours of tracking planned each day from November 6 - 10.

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes some of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet. JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Jupiter and Io

2011-11-08T00:00:00.000+08:00

Jupiter's four largest satellites, including Io, the golden ornament in front of Jupiter in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, have fascinated Earthlings ever since Galileo Galilei discovered them in 1610 in one of his first astronomical uses of the telescope. This true-color composite frame, made from narrow angle images taken on December 12, 2000, captures Io and its shadow in transit against the disk of Jupiter. The distance of the spacecraft from Jupiter was 19.5 million kilometers. The image scale of the high resolution image is 117 kilometers per pixel. The entire body of Io, about the size of Earth's Moon, is periodically flexed as it speeds around Jupiter and feels, as a result of its non-circular orbit, the periodically changing gravitational pull of the planet. The heat arising in Io's interior from this continual flexure makes it the most volcanically active body in the solar system, with more than 100 active volcanoes. The white and reddish colors on its surface are due to the presence of different sulfurous materials. The black areas are silicate rocks.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Hurricane Rina from the ISS

2011-11-07T00:00:00.003+08:00

External cameras on the International Space Station captured views of Hurricane Rina at 2:39 p.m. EDT on October 25, 2011, as the complex flew 248 miles over the Caribbean Sea east of Belize. The late season hurricane, which continues to intensify, was located 300 miles east-southeast of Chetumal, Mexico, barely moving west-northwest at a glacial three miles an hour. Rina is packing winds of 105 miles an hour, and is forecast to intensify to a major hurricane as it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula. Hurricane warnings have been issued for the Yucatan from north of Punta Gruesa, Mexico, to Cancun.

Video credit: NASA

Half-Moon

2011-11-06T00:00:00.002+08:00

This image of the Moon was taken with by Rosetta's OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) at 07:36 CET on 13 November 2007, about nine hours after Rosetta's closest approach to Earth during one of its gravity assist maneuvers.

OSIRIS has been designed to image faint objects, so a neutral density filter was placed in the optical path to reduce the sensitivity of the camera to one fiftieth. The above image was acquired through the far-focus red filter of the camera (750 nanometers).