Dark Hot Spot in Jupiter's Atmosphere

The dark hot spot in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft is a window deep into Jupiter's atmosphere. All around it are layers of higher clouds, with colors indicating which layer of the atmosphere the clouds are in. The bluish clouds to the right are in the upper troposphere, or perhaps higher still, in the stratosphere. The reddish gyre under the hot spot to the right and the large reddish plume at its lower left are in the lower troposphere. In addition, a high, gauzy haze covers part of the frame. An annotated version of this image highlights the hot spot in the middle with an arrow and boxes around the plume and the gyre.

This image was taken on December 13, 2000, by Cassini's imaging science subsystem.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/GSFC

Note: For more information, see 'Hot Spots' Ride a Merry-Go-Round on Jupiter.

ALMA/HST Images of Gravitationally-Lensed Star-Forming Galaxies

This montage combines data from ALMA with images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, for five distant galaxies. The ALMA images, represented in red, show the distant, background galaxies, being distorted by the gravitational lens effect produced by the galaxies in the foreground, depicted in the Hubble data in blue. The background galaxies appear warped into rings of light known as Einstein rings, which encircle the foreground galaxies.

Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NRAO/NAOJ), J. Vieira et al.

Note: For more information, see ALMA Rewrites History of Universe's Stellar Baby Boom.

GX 339-4 Black Hole Binary System

This artist's impression shows the GX 339-4 binary system, which consists of a 7-solar-mass black hole that accretes mass from its companion, a low-mass star, shown on the left. The process takes place via an accretion disc and also triggers the release of powerful jets of highly-energetic particles.

Different regions in the jets and disc emit radiation at different wavelengths: the base of the jets, closer to the black hole, emit light at shorter wavelengths (infrared, shown here in yellow) than the extremity of the jets, which shine brightly in radio waves (shown here in red). Similarly, the most central part of the disc, closer to the black hole, shines brightly in X-rays (shown here in violet), whereas the outer parts shine most brightly at longer wavelengths (ultraviolet and optical, shown here in blue).

Observations performed using ESA's Herschel space observatory have provided the first view of GX 339-4 at far-infrared wavelengths, allowing astronomers to probe the jets down to their base, where the far-infrared emission originates. This is an important addition to the understanding of black-hole jets and of the physical processes that take place very close to a black hole.

Illustration credit: SA/ATG medialab

Note: For more information, see Herschel Gets to the Bottom of Black-Hole Jets.

Comet C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS) by STEREO-B

NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft photographed "wild striations" in the tail of Comet Pan-STARRS as it passed by the sun.

Video credit: NASA

Note: For more information, see Sunset Comet; also, APOD: CME, Comet and Planet Earth.

Ring Galaxy Zw II 28

Galaxies can take many forms — elliptical blobs, swirling spiral arms, bulges, and discs are all known components of the wide range of galaxies we have observed using telescopes like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. However, some of the more intriguing objects in the sky around us include ring galaxies like the one pictured above — Zw II 28.

Ring galaxies are mysterious objects. They are thought to form when one galaxy slices through the disc of another, larger, one — as galaxies are mostly empty space, this collision is not as aggressive or as destructive as one might imagine. The likelihood of two stars physically colliding is minimal, and it is instead the gravitational effects of the two galaxies that causes the disruption.

This disruption upsets the material in both galaxies, causing it to redistribute to form a dense central core, encircled by bright stars. All this commotion causes clouds of gas and dust to collapse and triggers new periods of intense star formation in the outer ring, which is thus full of hot, young, blue stars and regions that are actively giving rise to new stars.

The sparkling pink and purple loop of Zw II 28 is not a typical ring galaxy due to its lack of a visible central companion. For many years it was thought to be a lone circle on the sky, but observations using Hubble have shown that there may be a possible companion lurking just inside the ring, where the loop appears to double back on itself. The galaxy has a knotty, swirling ring structure, with some areas appearing much brighter than others.

Photo credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

WISE J104915.57-531906

WISE J104915.57-531906 is at the center of the larger image, which was taken by the NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This is the closest star system discovered since 1916, and the third closest to our sun. It is 6.5 light-years away.

At first, the light appeared to be from a single object, but a sharper image from Gemini Observatory in Chile revealed that it was from a pair of cool star-like bodies called brown dwarfs.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Gemini Observatory/AURA/NSF

Note: For more information, see Closest Star System Found in a Century.

Thrust Fault Scarp on Mercury

The figure above shows an oblique view of a 280 km long scarp. The color scale on this figure represents elevation in which red is high and blue is low. This scarp is interpreted to be a surface-breaking thrust fault. Thrust faults are surface manifestations of the shrinkage of the planet resulting from the cooling of its interior. Notice that the terrain on the left side of the scarp stands about 2 km higher than that of the right side of the scarp. To give you a sense of the scale of this scarp, the state of Delaware has been superposed on the figure.

Center Latitude: 58.18°
Center Longitude: 307.69° E
Scale: The crater that is being cross-cut by this scarp is about 108 km (67 mi.) in diameter.

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

47 Tucanae in X-Rays

47 Tucanae: A globular cluster located about 15,000 light years from Earth.

New results from Chandra and other X-ray telescopes have provided one of the most reliable determinations yet of the relation between the radius of a neutron star and its mass. Neutron stars, the ultra-dense cores left behind after massive stars collapse, contain the densest matter known in the Universe outside of a black hole. This image contains data from a long Chandra observation of 47Tucanae, a globular cluster where one of the eight neutron stars in the study is found. Lower-energy X-rays are red, those with intermediate energies are green, and the highest-energy X-rays are shown in blue.

Scale: Image is 2.3 arcmin across. (about 10 light years)

Image credit: NASA/CXC/Michigan State/A.Steiner et al

Note: For more information, see 47 Tucanae: Probing Extreme Matter Through Observations of Neutron Stars.

Hot Blue Stars in IC 5052

This image, speckled with blue, white, and yellow light, shows part of the spiral galaxy IC 5052. Surrounded by distant stars and galaxies, it emits a bright blue-white glow which highlights its narrow, intricate structure. It is viewed side-on in the constellation of Pavo (The Peacock), in the southern sky.

When spiral galaxies are viewed from this angle, it is very difficult to fully understand their properties and how they are arranged. IC 5052 is actually a barred spiral galaxy – its pinwheeling arms do not begin from the center point but are instead attached to either end of a straight "bar" of stars that cuts through the galaxy's middle. Approximately two thirds of all spirals are barred, including the Milky Way.

Bursts of pale blue light are visible across the galaxy's length, partially blocked out by weaving lanes of darker gas and dust. These are pockets of extremely hot newborn stars. The bars present in spirals like IC 5052 are thought to help these formation processes by effectively funneling material from the swirling arms inwards towards these hot stellar nurseries.

Photo credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: S. Meunier

Neutron Star in an X-Ray Binary

This image shows an artist's impression of a highly obscured high-mass X-ray binary, consisting of a neutron star that is accreting mass from its companion, a blue supergiant star.

Highly obscured high-mass X-ray binaries exhibit very faint emission at soft X-ray energies and as a result had eluded searches in this portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. They were discovered in 2003 via hard X-ray observations with INTEGRAL. Astronomers believe that the soft X-rays are absorbed by the wind released by the companion star, which embeds the neutron star.

Illustration credit: ESA/AOES Medialab

Note: For more information, see High Mass X-Ray Binaries Trace the Milky Way's Spiral Arms.

Abell 68

Abell 68, pictured here in infrared light, is a galaxy cluster. The effect of its gravity on light means it boosts Hubble's power, extending the telescope's ability to observe distant and faint objects. The fuzzy collection of blobs in the middle and upper left of the image is a swarm of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and vast amounts of dark matter. Distorted shapes visible throughout the field of view are distant galaxies whose light has been bent and amplified by the cluster.

Annotations:

1 and 2: This galaxy is visible twice, thanks to its light following two separate paths around an elliptical galaxy before reaching us. The image marked 2 is heavily distorted into the shape of an alien from the cult 1970s video game Space Invaders. The lensed galaxy lies at a redshift of around 1.6. The lensing galaxy significantly closer, at a redshift of around 0.26.

3: This galaxy appears to be melting, with purple liquid dripping from it. In fact, the purple droplets are clouds of gas being stripped out of the galaxy and heated up. This phenomenon, called ram pressure stripping, occurs when a galaxy passes through a denser patch of intergalactic gas, which strips out the gas from within the galaxy.

4: The series of long, light streaks here are background galaxies, the images of which have been heavily distorted by the lensing effects of the cluster in the foreground. These lie at a range of redshifts between around 2 and 6.

The unannotated version of the above image:

Photo credit: NASA & ESA. Acknowledgement: N. Rose

Note: For more information, see Gravitational Telescope Creates Space Invader Mirage.

Map of the Large Magellanic Cloud

This photograph shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way. The positions of eight faint and rare cool eclipsing binary stars are marked with crosses (these objects are too faint to appear directly in this picture). By studying how their light changes, and other properties of these systems, astronomers can measure the distances to eclipsing binaries very accurately. A long series of observations of these objects has now led to the most accurate determination so far of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud — a crucial step in the determination of distances across the Universe.

Image credit: ESO/R. Gendler

Note: For more information, see Measuring the Universe More Accurately Than Ever Before.

Europa

This view of Jupiter's moon Europa features several regional-resolution mosaics overlaid on a lower resolution global view for context. The regional views were obtained during several different flybys of the moon by NASA's Galileo mission, and they stretch from high northern to high southern latitudes. Prominent here are the long, arcuate (or arc-shaped) and linear markings called lineae (Latin for strings or threads), which are a signature feature of Europa's surface. Color saturation has been enhanced to bring out the subtle red coloration present along many of the lineae. The color data extends into the infrared, showing bluish ice (indicating larger ice grains) in the polar regions.

The terrain in this view stretches from the side of Europa that always trails in its orbit at left (west), to the side that faces away from Jupiter at right (east). In addition to the lineae, the regional-scale images contain many interesting features, including lenticulae (small spots), chaos terrain, maculae (large spots), and the unusual bright band known as Agenor Linea in the south.

The regional-resolution mosaics enhance the amount of detail visible in a previously released view of the same region on Europa, [see PIA02590]. While the earlier image uses much of the same low-resolution data, its images are projected from a different angle and are processed with greater color saturation.

This view is an orthographic projection centered on 5.53 degrees south latitude, 214.5 degrees west longitude and has a resolution of 1600 feet (500 meters) per pixel. An orthographic view is like the view seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope.

The mosaic was constructed from individual images obtained by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft during six flybys of Europa between 1996 and 1999 (flybys designated G1, E11, E14, E15, E17, and E19).

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Note: For more new information on Europa, see A Window into Europa's Ocean Right at the Surface, PIA16826: Taste of the Ocean on Europa's Surface (Artist's Concept) and Long-stressed Europa Likely Off-kilter at One Time.

Venus Through Saturn's Rings

Peering over the shoulder of giant Saturn, through its rings, and across interplanetary space, NASA's Cassini spacecraft spies the bright, cloudy terrestrial planet, Venus. The vast distance from Saturn means that Venus only shows up as a white dot, just above and to the right of the image center.

Venus, along with Mercury, Earth, and Mars, is one of the rocky 'terrestrial' planets in the solar system that orbit relatively close to the sun. Though Venus has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide that reaches nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius) and a surface pressure 100 times that of Earth, it is considered a twin to our planet because of their similar size, mass, rocky composition and orbit. Venus is covered in thick sulfuric acid clouds, making it very bright.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 17 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on November 10, 2012.

This is a true-color picture of Saturn and Venus. A false-color mosaic including an image very similar to this one can be seen at PIA14934.

The bright arc is the limb of Saturn. A portion of the rings is seen in silhouette against the face of Saturn, which itself is faintly illuminated by sunlight scattered off the rings. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 498,000 miles (802,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 178 degrees. Image scale is 28 miles (44 kilometers) per pixel.

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

Note: For another interesting view of Venus by Cassini, click here.

VLT and Hubble Images of the Protoplanet System HD 100546

This composite image shows a view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (left) and from the NACO system on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (right) of the gas and dust around the young star HD 100546. The Hubble visible-light image shows the outer disc of gas and dust around the star. The new infrared VLT picture of a small part of the disc shows a candidate protoplanet. Both pictures were taken with a special coronagraph that suppresses the light from the brilliant star. The position of the star is marked with a red cross in both panels.

Image credit: ESO/NASA/ESA/Ardila et al.

Note: For more information, see The Birth of a Giant Planet?

Supermassive Black Hole in NGC 1365

ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR have detected a supermassive black hole spinning at almost the speed of light in the heart of spiral galaxy NGC 1365. The rate at which a black hole spins encodes the history of its formation. An extremely rapid rotation could result from either a steady and uniform flow of matter spiraling in via an accretion disc (as shown in this artist impression) or as a result of the merger of two galaxies and their smaller black holes.

Also depicted in this image is an outflowing jet of energetic particles, believed to be powered by the black hole's spin. The regions near black holes contain compact sources of high energy X-ray radiation thought, in some scenarios, to originate from the base of these jets. The nature of the X-ray emission enables astronomers to see how fast matter is swirling in the inner region of the disc, and ultimately to measure the black hole's spin rate.

Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see Speedy Black Hole Holds Galaxy's History. Also, PIA16695: Black Holes: Monsters in Space (Artist's Concept), PIA16696: How to Measure the Spin of a Black Hole (Artist's Concept), and PIA16697: Two Models of Black Hole Spin (Artist's Concept). Also, PIA16698: Complementary X-Ray Vision, PIA16699: NuSTAR's Improved View, and PIA16870: Two X-Ray Observatories are Better Than One. Also, NASA's NuSTAR Helps Solve Riddle of Black Hole Spin.

ESO 456-67

It may look like something from The Lord of the Rings, but this fiery swirl is actually a planetary nebula known as ESO 456-67. Set against a backdrop of bright stars, the rust-colored object lies in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), in the southern sky.

Despite the name, these ethereal objects have nothing at all to do with planets; this misnomer came about over a century ago, when the first astronomers to observe them only had small, poor-quality telescopes. Through these, the nebulae looked small, compact, and planet-like — and so were labeled as such.

When a star like the Sun approaches the end of its life, it flings material out into space. Planetary nebulae are the intricate, glowing shells of dust and gas pushed outwards from such a star. At their centers lie the remnants of the original stars themselves — small, dense white dwarf stars.

In this image of ESO 456-67, it is possible to see the various layers of material expelled by the central star. Each appears in a different hue — red, orange, yellow, and green-tinted bands of gas are visible, with clear patches of space at the heart of the nebula. It is not fully understood how planetary nebulae form such a wide variety of shapes and structures; some appear to be spherical, some elliptical, others shoot material in waves from their polar regions, some look like hourglasses or figures of eight, and others resemble large, messy stellar explosions — to name but a few.

Photo credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgment: Jean-Christophe Lambry

Initial Radar 'Images' of Asteroid 2012 DA14

This 73-frame movie of asteroid 2012 DA14 was generated from data obtained by NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar on the night of February 15 to 16, 2013.

This collage of 72 individual radar-generated images of asteroid 2012 DA14 was created using data from NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California. The data were collected on the night of February 15 to 16, 2013, after the asteroid had made its closest approach to Earth and was exiting the Earth-moon system. During the observations, the space rock's distance to Earth increased from 74,000 to 195,000 miles (120,000 to 314,000 kilometers).

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see NASA Releases Radar Movie of Asteroid 2012 DA14.

Kepler-37 Planetary System

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star like our sun, approximately 210 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

The line up compares artist's concepts of the planets in the Kepler-37 system to the moon and planets in the solar system. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. Kepler-37c, the second planet, is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring almost three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d, the third planet, is twice the size of Earth.

A "year" on these planets is very short. Kepler-37b orbits its host star every 13 days at less than one-third the distance Mercury is to the sun. The other two planets, Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, orbit their star every 21 and 40 days. All three planets have orbits lying less than the distance Mercury is to the sun, suggesting that they are very hot, inhospitable worlds.

Illustration credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see PIA16693: A Tiny Planet (Artist's Concept) and NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System.

Chromosphere in Alpha Centauri A

One of the great curiosities in solar science is that our Sun's outer atmosphere – the corona – is heated to millions of degrees when its visible surface is 'only' about 6000 degrees. Even stranger is a curious temperature minimum of 4000 degrees lying between the two layers, in the chromosphere. Now, using ESA's Herschel space observatory, scientists have made the first discovery of an equivalent cool layer in the atmosphere of the Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A.

Illustration credit: ESA

Note: For more information, see A Cool Discovery About the Sun's Next-Door Twin.