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Named for the Greek god of fear, Phobos is one of Mars' two moons (Deimos, named for the god of terror, is the other), and it's only about 13 miles (21 kilometers) across. Stickney Crater, the indentation on the moon's lower right, is about 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) wide in this image from the HiRISE aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its small size, Phobos is of great interest to scientists: Is it a captured asteroid, or a chunk of Mars that broke off after a massive impact? A Japanese mission is scheduled to launch to Phobos in the near future, and the moon has been proposed as a staging ground for astronauts before they go to Mars.
Image credit: NASNA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
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This 2017 enhanced-color image from the fifth Juno flyby of Jupiter shows a mysterious dark spot which seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko
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Images of knobbly rocks and rounded hills are delighting scientists as NASA’s Curiosity rover climbs Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Mars’ Gale Crater. The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, highlights those features in a panorama captured on July 3, 2021 (the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission).
This location is particularly exciting: Spacecraft orbiting Mars show that Curiosity is now somewhere between a region enriched with clay minerals and one dominated by salty minerals called sulfates. The mountain’s layers in this area may reveal how the ancient environment within Gale Crater dried up over time. Similar changes are seen across the planet, and studying this region up close has been a major long-term goal for the mission.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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Andromeda, a large spiral galaxy much like our Milky Way Galaxy, is relatively nearby and can be easily seen with binoculars in the autumn sky. The galaxy's central region is called the galactic bulge because the stars form a ball a few thousand light years in diameter that extends above and below the disk of the galaxy. In this Chandra/Spitzer composite, red represents Spitzer's 24 micron mid-infrared data, green represents low-energy X-rays from Chandra (0.5-2.0 keV), and blue represents high-energy X-rays from Chandra (2.0-4.0 keV).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/UMass/Z.Li & Q.D.Wang; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The spacecraft used its infrared instrument during recent flybys of Jupiter’s mammoth moon to create this latest map, which comes out a decade after Juno’s launch.
The science team for NASA’s Juno spacecraft has produced a new infrared map of the mammoth Jovian moon Ganymede, combining data from three flybys, including its latest approach on July 20. These observations by the spacecraft’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, which “sees” in infrared light not visible to the human eye, provide new information on Ganymede’s icy shell and the composition of the ocean of liquid water beneath.
JIRAM was designed to capture the infrared light emerging from deep inside Jupiter, probing the weather layer down to 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below Jupiter’s cloud tops. But the instrument can also be used to study the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (known collectively as the Galilean moons in honor of their discoverer, Galileo).
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
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"A mind of limits, a camera of thoughts" is the name of this contribution from citizen scientist Prateek Sarpal. Jupiter inspires artists and scientists with its beauty. In this image, south is up, and the enhanced color evokes an exotic marble and childhood joy.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Prateek Sarpal, © CC NC SA
Some of the most stunning views of our sky occur at sunset, when sunlight pierces the clouds, creating a mixture of bright and dark rays formed by the clouds' shadows and the beams of light scattered by the atmosphere.
Astronomers studying nearby galaxy IC 5063 are tantalized by a similar effect in images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In this case, a collection of narrow bright rays and dark shadows is seen beaming out of the blazingly bright center of the active galaxy.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully; Acknowledgment: Gagandeep Anand
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In this view of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captures swirling clouds in the region of the giant planet’s northern hemisphere known as “Jet N4.”
Jupiter spins once every 10 hours, and this fast rotation creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones that stretch across the face of the planet. More than a dozen prevailing winds sweep over Jupiter, some reaching more than 300 miles per hour (480 kilometers per hour) at the equator.
Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created this enhanced-color image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. The raw image was taken on Sept. 11, 2019 at 8:31 p.m. PDT (11:31 p.m. EDT), as Juno performed its 22nd close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 7,540 miles (12,140 kilometers) from the cloud tops at a latitude of 45 degrees.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts the open star cluster NGC 330, which lies around 180,000 light-years away inside the Small Magellanic Cloud. The cluster – which is in the constellation Tucana (the Toucan) – contains a multitude of stars, many of which are scattered across this striking image.
Because star clusters form from a single primordial cloud of gas and dust, all the stars they contain are roughly the same age. This makes them useful natural laboratories for astronomers to learn how stars form and evolve. This image uses observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and incorporates data from two very different astronomical investigations. The first aimed to understand why stars in star clusters appear to evolve differently from stars elsewhere, a peculiarity first observed with Hubble. The second aimed to determine how large stars can be before they become doomed to end their lives in cataclysmic supernova explosions.
Hubble images show us something new about the universe. This image, however, also contains clues about the inner workings of Hubble itself. The crisscross patterns surrounding the stars in this image, known as diffraction spikes, were created when starlight interacted with the four thin vanes supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai, A. Milone
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W3 Main is a region of a massive star formation about 6,000 light years from Earth in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way. The bright, point-like X-ray sources represent an extensive population of several hundred young stars, many of which were not found in earlier studies. Because its X-ray sources are all at the same distance, yet span a range of masses, ages, and other properties, W3 is an ideal laboratory for understanding recent and ongoing star formation in one of the Milky Way's spiral arms.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Penn State/L.Townsley et al.
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A long Chandra exposure in 2006 of M87 revealed a shock wave in high-energy X-rays as well as evidence for a series of outbursts from the central supermassive black hole. The image shows a series of loops and bubbles in the hot, X-ray emitting gas. These are relics of small outbursts from close to the black hole. Other remarkable features are seen in M87 for the first time including narrow filaments of X-ray emission, which may be due to hot gas trapped to magnetic fields. One of these filaments is over 100,000 light years long, and extends below and to the right of the center of M87 in almost a straight line.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/W.Forman et al.
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When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Neptune's strange moon Triton three decades ago, it wrote a planetary science cliffhanger.
Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft ever to have flown past Neptune, and it left a lot of unanswered questions. The views were as stunning as they were puzzling, revealing massive, dark plumes of icy material spraying out from Triton's surface. But how? Images showed that the icy landscape was young and had been resurfaced over and over with fresh material. But what material, and from where?
How could an ancient moon six times farther from the Sun than Jupiter still be active? Is there something in its interior that is still warm enough to drive this activity?
A new mission competing for selection under NASA's Discovery Program aims to untangle these mysteries. Called Trident, like the three-pronged spear carried by the ancient Roman sea god Neptune, the team is one of four that is developing concept studies for new missions. Up to two will be selected by summer 2021 to become a full-fledged mission and will launch later in the decade.
Investigating how Triton has changed over time would give scientists a better understanding of how solar system bodies evolve and work.
This global color mosaic of Neptune's moon Triton was taken in 1989 by Voyager 2 during its flyby of the Neptune system.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA/JPL/USGS
This 2003 composite X-ray (blue and green) and optical (red) image of the active galaxy, NGC 1068, shows gas blowing away in a high-speed wind from the vicinity of a central supermassive black hole. Regions of intense star formation in the inner spiral arms of the galaxy are highlighted by both optical and X-ray emission.
The elongated shape of the gas cloud is thought to be due to the funneling effect of a torus, or doughnut-shaped cloud, of cool gas and dust that surrounds the black hole. The torus, which appears as the elongated white spot in the accompanying 3-color X-ray images, has a mass of about 5 million Suns. Radio observations indicate that the torus extends from within a few light years of the black hole out to about 300 light years.
The X-rays observed from the torus are scattered and reflected X-rays that are probably coming from a hidden disk of hot gas formed as matter swirls very near the black hole. The torus is one source of the gas in the high-speed wind, but the hidden disk may also be involved. X-ray heating of gas further out in the galaxy contributes to the slower, outer parts of the wind.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/UCSB/P.Ogle et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/A.Capetti et al.
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On February 24, 1987, observers in the southern hemisphere saw a new object in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. This was one of the brightest supernova explosions in centuries and soon became known as Supernova 1987A (SN 87A). The Chandra data (blue) show the location of the supernova's shock wave — similar to the sonic boom from a supersonic plane — interacting with the surrounding material about four light years from the original explosion point. Optical data from Hubble (orange and red) also shows evidence for this interaction in the ring.
Image credit: NASA/CXC; Optical: NASA/STScI
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Dione appears cut in two by Saturn's razor-thin rings, seen nearly edge-on in a view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This scene was captured from just 0.02 degrees above the ring plane.
The bright streaks of Dione's wispy terrain are seen near the moon's limb at right. The medium-sized crater Turnus (63 miles, 101 kilometers, wide) is visible along Dione's terminator.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 25, 2015. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115 degrees. Image scale is 8.6 miles (13.8 kilometers) per pixel.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Astronomers found a roaming comet taking a rest stop before possibly continuing its journey. The wayward object made a temporary stop near giant Jupiter. The icy visitor has plenty of company. It has settled near the family of captured asteroids known as Trojans that are co-orbiting the Sun alongside Jupiter. This is the first time a comet-like object has been spotted near the Trojan asteroid population. Hubble Space Telescope observations reveal the vagabond is showing signs of transitioning from a frigid asteroid-like body to an active comet, sprouting a long tail, outgassing jets of material, and enshrouding itself in a coma of dust and gas.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Bolin (Caltech)
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On April 9, 2022, as NASA's Juno mission completed its 41st close flyby of Jupiter, its JunoCam instrument captured what it would look like to ride along with the spacecraft. Citizen scientist Andrea Luck created this animated sequence using raw JunoCam image data.
At about 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) in diameter, Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. At the point of closest approach on April 9, Juno was just over 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) above Jupiter's colorful cloud tops. At that moment, it was traveling at about 131,000 MPH (210,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.
By comparison, at closest approach Juno was more than 10 times closer to Jupiter than satellites in geosynchronous orbit are to Earth, traveling at a speed about five times faster than the Apollo missions did when they left Earth for the Moon.
JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at www.nasa.gov/juno and missionjuno.swri.edu/. For more about this finding and other science results, see www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings/.
Image credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by AndreaLuck © CC BY--
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Thick white clouds are present in this JunoCam image of Jupiter's equatorial zone. At microwave frequencies, these clouds are transparent, allowing Juno's Microwave Radiometer to measure water deep into Jupiter's atmosphere. The image was acquired during Juno's flyby on Dec. 16, 2017.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
NASA’s Juno spacecraft saw this striking vista during its most recent close flyby of Jupiter. This view highlights the contrast between the colorful South Equatorial Belt and the mostly white Southern Tropical Zone, a latitude that also features Jupiter’s most famous phenomenon, the persistent, anticyclonic storm known as the Great Red Spot.
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. The raw image was taken on July 20, 2019, at 9:37 p.m. PDT (July 21, 2019, at 12:37 a.m. EDT) as the Juno spacecraft performed its 21st close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 26,697 miles (42,965 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds, above a latitude of 46 degrees south.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
While appearing as a delicate and light veil draped across the sky, this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope actually depicts a small section of the Cygnus supernova blast wave, located around 2,400 light-years away. The name of the supernova remnant comes from its position in the northern constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), where it covers an area 36 times larger than the full Moon.
The original supernova explosion blasted apart a dying star about 20 times more massive than our Sun between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. Since then, the remnant has expanded 60 light-years from its center. The shockwave marks the outer edge of the supernova remnant and continues to expand at around 220 miles per second. The interaction of the ejected material and the low-density interstellar material swept up by the shockwave forms the distinctive veil-like structure seen in this image.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Blair; acknowledgment: Leo Shatz
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The first of the gas-giant orbiter’s back-to-back flybys will provide a close encounter with the massive moon after over 20 years.
On Monday, June 7, at 1:35 p.m. EDT (10:35 a.m. PDT), NASA’s Juno spacecraft will come within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede. The flyby will be the closest a spacecraft has come to the solar system’s largest natural satellite since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made its penultimate close approach back on May 20, 2000. Along with striking imagery, the solar-powered spacecraft’s flyby will yield insights into the moon’s composition, ionosphere, magnetosphere, and ice shell. Juno’s measurements of the radiation environment near the moon will also benefit future missions to the Jovian system.
Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetosphere – a bubble-shaped region of charged particles surrounding the celestial body.
Left to right: The mosaic and geologic maps of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede were assembled incorporating the best available imagery from NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft and NASA’s Galileo spacecraft.
Image Credit: USGS Astrogeology Science Center/Wheaton/NASA/JPL-Caltech
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What will be the next star in our Milky Way galaxy to explode as a supernova? Astronomers aren't certain, but one candidate is in Eta Carinae, a volatile system containing two massive stars that closely orbit each other. This image has three types of light: optical data from Hubble (appearing as white), ultraviolet (cyan) from Hubble, and X-rays from Chandra (appearing as purple emission). The previous eruptions of this star have resulted in a ring of hot, X-ray emitting gas about 2.3 light years in diameter surrounding these two stars.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Ultraviolet/Optical: NASA/STScI; Combined Image: NASA/ESA/N. Smith (University of Arizona), J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute) and A. Pagan
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This extraordinary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy cluster Abell 2813 (also known as ACO 2813) has an almost delicate beauty, which also illustrates the remarkable physics at work within it. The image spectacularly demonstrates the concept of gravitational lensing.
Among the tiny dots, spirals, and ovals that are the galaxies belonging to the cluster, there are several distinct crescent shapes. These curved arcs of light aren’t curved galaxies. They are strong examples of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.
Gravitational lensing occurs when an object’s mass causes light to bend. The curved crescents and “S” shapes are light from galaxies that lie beyond Abell 2813. The galaxy cluster has so much mass that it acts as a gravitational lens, bending light from more distant galaxies around it. These distortions can appear as many different shapes, such as long lines or arcs.
This visual evidence, that mass causes light to bend, is famously used as proof of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Coe
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Appearing within the boundless darkness of space in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope snapshot, NGC 34 looks more like an otherworldly, bioluminescent creature from the deep oceans than a galaxy. Lying in the constellation Cetus (the Sea Monster), the galaxy’s outer region appears almost translucent, pinpricked with stars and strange wispy tendrils.
The main cause for this galaxy’s odd appearance lies in its past. If we were able to reverse time by a few million years, we would see two beautiful spiral galaxies on a direct collision course. When these galaxies collided into one another, their intricate patterns and spiral arms were permanently disturbed. This image shows the galaxy's bright center, a result of this merging event that has created a burst of new star formation and lit up the surrounding gas. As the galaxies continue to intertwine and become one, NGC 34’s shape will become more like that of a peculiar galaxy, devoid of any distinct shape.
In the vastness of space, collisions between galaxies are quite rare events, but they can be numerous in mega-clusters containing hundreds or even thousands of galaxies.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al.
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Sorry Charlie Brown, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is taking a peek at what might best be described as the "Greater Pumpkin," that looks like a Halloween decoration tucked away in a patch of sky cluttered with stars. What looks like two glowing eyes and a crooked carved smile is a snapshot of the early stages of a collision between two galaxies. The entire view is nearly 109,000 light-years across, approximately the diameter of our Milky Way.
The overall pumpkin-ish color corresponds to the glow of aging red stars in two galaxies, cataloged as NGC? 2292 and NGC? 2293, which only have a hint of spiral structure. Yet the smile is bluish due to newborn star clusters, spread out like pearls on a necklace, along a newly forming dusty arm. The glowing eyes are concentrations of stars around a pair of supermassive black holes. The scattering of blue foreground stars makes the "pumpkin" look like it got all glittery for a Halloween party.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai
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This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features an impressive portrait of M1-63, an example of a bipolar planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scutum (the Shield). A nebula like this one is formed when the star at its center sheds huge quantities of material from its outer layers, leaving behind a spectacular cloud of gas and dust.
It is believed that a binary system of stars at the center of the bipolar nebula is capable of creating hourglass or butterfly-like shapes like the one in this image. This is because the material from the shedding star is funneled toward its poles, with the help of the companion, creating the distinctive double-lobed structure seen in nebulae such as M1-63.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Stanghellini
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Jupiter's clouds have a luminous beauty in this image taken by Juno's JunoCam camera on its 20th close pass by Jupiter. Enhanced colors give a vertical dimension to the clouds. Tiny bright white clouds are the highest, casting shadows on the next layer of clouds. Splashes of orange may be the color of the deepest clouds in this image, viewed through openings in the pastel layer.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY
This large expanse of space captured with the Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy SDSS J225506.80+005839.9. Unlike many other extravagant galaxies and stunning nebulae imaged by Hubble, this galaxy does not have a short, popular name, and is only known by its long name given in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which refers to its coordinates in the sky. This galaxy – visible in the center right portion of the image – and its many wondrous neighboring galaxies lie in the constellation of Pisces (the Fish).
This is a post-starburst galaxy, which is a product of galaxies that have merged within the past billion years. This merger event drove gas to the galaxy's center and created an abundance of new stars, of which the brightest are visible in the remnant galaxy's core. The visible shells and tails surrounding the galaxy are also a result of this merger event.
Residing far beyond our own Milky Way at a distance of about 500 million light-years, it is almost impossible to glimpse this galaxy without the assistance of Hubble, and, like thousands of similar faint and very distant galaxies, it was only discovered and cataloged in recent years. Many millions of galaxies still await our discovery as we build a wondrous picture of our night sky.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Zabludoff
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Much of Mars is covered by sand and dust but in some places stacks of sedimentary layers are visible. In this image, exquisite layering is revealed emerging from the sand in southern Holden Crater. Sequences like these offer a window into Mars' complicated geologic history.
Holden Crater was once a candidate landing area for the Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory, and is still an intriguing choice today.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features an impressive portrait of M1-63, a beautifully captured example of a bipolar planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scutum (the Shield). A nebula like this one is formed when the star at its center sheds huge quantities of material from its outer layers, leaving behind a spectacular cloud of gas and dust.
It is believed that a binary system of stars at the center of the bipolar nebula is capable of creating hourglass or butterfly-like shapes like the one in this image. This is because the material from the shedding star is funneled toward its poles, with the help of the companion, creating the distinctive double-lobed structure seen in nebulae such as M1-63.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Stanghellini
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #nebula
Psyche, the NASA mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid of the same name, recently passed a crucial milestone that brings it closer to its August 2022 launch date. Now the mission is moving from planning and designing to high-gear manufacturing of the spacecraft hardware that will fly to its target in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Mission scientists and engineers worked together to plan the investigations that will determine what makes up the asteroid Psyche, one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt. Scientists think that, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, Psyche is largely metallic iron and nickel – similar to Earth's core – and could be the heart of an early planet that lost its outer layers.
In this image, an electric Hall thruster, identical to those that will be used to propel the Psyche spacecraft, undergoes testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The blue glow is produced by the xenon propellant, a neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma TVs.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Scientists used data gathered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during 13 years of exploring the Saturn system to make detailed images of the icy moon – and to reveal geologic activity.
New composite images made from NASA's Cassini spacecraft are the most detailed global infrared views ever produced of Saturn's moon Enceladus. And data used to build those images provides strong evidence that the northern hemisphere of the moon has been resurfaced with ice from its interior.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/LPG/CNRS/University of Nantes/Space Science Institute
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This packed image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases the galaxy cluster ACO S 295, as well as a jostling crowd of background galaxies and foreground stars. Galaxies of all shapes and sizes populate this image, ranging from stately spirals to fuzzy ellipticals. This galactic menagerie boasts a range of orientations and sizes, with spiral galaxies such as the one at the center of this image appearing almost face on, and some edge-on spiral galaxies visible only as thin slivers of light.
The galaxy cluster dominates the center of this image, both visually and physically. The cluster’s huge mass has gravitationally lensed the light from background galaxies, distorting and smearing their shapes. In addition to providing astronomers with a natural magnifying glass with which to study distant galaxies, gravitational lensing has subtly framed the center of this image, producing a visually striking scene.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Pacaud, D. Coe
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Like a drop of dew hanging on a leaf, Tethys appears to be stuck to Saturn's A and F rings from this perspective in this 2014 image from the Cassini mission. For more than a decade, Cassini shared the wonders of Saturn and its family of icy moons—taking us to astounding worlds where methane rivers run to a methane sea and where jets of ice and gas are blasting material into space from a liquid water ocean that might harbor the ingredients for life.
Saturn's moon Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), like the ring particles, is composed primarily of ice. The gap in the A ring through which Tethys is visible is the Keeler gap, which is kept clear by the small moon Daphnis (not visible here).
This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 43 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2014.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
New research on nine craters of Saturn's largest moon provides more details about how weathering affects the evolution of the surface – and what lies beneath.
Scientists have used data from NASA's Cassini mission to delve into the impact craters on the surface of Titan, revealing more detail than ever before about how the craters evolve and how weather drives changes on the surface of Saturn's mammoth moon.
Some of the new results reinforce what scientists knew about the craters – that the mixture of organic material and water ice is created by the heat of impact, and those surfaces are then washed by methane rain. But while researchers found that cleaning process happening in the midlatitude plains, they discovered that it's not happening in the equatorial region; instead, those impact areas are quickly covered by a thin layer of sand sediment.
That means Titan's atmosphere and weather aren't just shaping the surface of Titan; they're also driving a physical process that affects which materials remain exposed at the surface, the authors found.
This composite image shows an infrared view of Saturn's moon Titan from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, captured in 2015. Several places on the image, visible through the moon’s hazy atmosphere, show more detail because those areas were acquired near closest approach.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Idaho
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The upper layers in the atmospheres of gas giants - Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune - are hot, just like Earth's. But unlike Earth, the Sun is too far from these outer planets to account for the high temperatures. Their heat source has been one of the great mysteries of planetary science.
New analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft finds a viable explanation for what's keeping the upper layers of Saturn, and possibly the other gas giants, so hot: auroras at the planet's north and south poles. Electric currents, triggered by interactions between solar winds and charged particles from Saturn's moons, spark the auroras and heat the upper atmosphere. (As with Earth's northern lights, studying auroras tells scientists what's going on in the planet's atmosphere.)
This false-color composite image, constructed from data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows the glow of auroras streaking out about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the cloud tops of Saturn's south polar region. It is among the first images released from a study that identifies images showing auroral emissions out of the entire catalogue of images taken by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASI/University of Arizona/University of Leicester
This spectrogram shows the largest quake ever detected on another planet. Estimated at magnitude 5, this quake was discovered by NASA’s InSight lander on May 4, 2022, the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Image Credit: NASA
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Hubble Space Telescope's glamour shots of the universe are so revealing they nearly always have a discovery behind them.
In this image, a remote galaxy is greatly magnified and distorted by the effects of gravitationally warped space. After its public release, astronomers used the picture to measure the galaxy's distance of 9.4 billion light-years. This places the galaxy at the peak epoch of star formation in cosmic evolution.
In this particular snapshot, a science discovery followed the release of a Hubble observation of a striking example of a deep-space optical phenomenon dubbed an "Einstein ring." The photo was released in December 2020 as an example of one of the largest, nearly complete Einstein rings ever seen.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Jha; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz
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This image, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, features the spiral galaxy NGC 4680. Two other galaxies, at the far right and bottom center of the image, flank NGC 4680. NGC 4680 enjoyed a wave of attention in 1997, as it played host to a supernova explosion known as SN 1997bp. Australian amateur astronomer Robert Evans identified the supernova and has identified an extraordinary 42 supernova explosions.
NGC 4680 is actually a rather tricky galaxy to classify. It is sometimes referred to as a spiral galaxy, but it is also sometimes classified as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies fall somewhere in between spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies. While NGC 4680 does have distinguishable spiral arms, they are not clearly defined, and the tip of one arm appears very diffuse. Galaxies are not static, and their morphologies (and therefore their classifications) vary throughout their lifetimes. Spiral galaxies are thought to evolve into elliptical galaxies, most likely by merging with one another, causing them to lose their distinctive spiral structures.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.
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New results from NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter suggest our solar system's largest planet is home to what's called "shallow lightning." An unexpected form of electrical discharge, shallow lightning originates from clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, whereas lightning on Earth originates from water clouds.
Other new findings suggest the violent thunderstorms for which the gas giant is known may form slushy ammonia-rich hailstones Juno's science team calls "mushballs"; they theorize that mushballs essentially kidnap ammonia and water in the upper atmosphere and carry them into the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere.
In the center of this JunoCam image, small, bright "pop-up" clouds seen rise above the surrounding features. Clouds like these are thought to be the tops of violent thunderstorms responsible for shallow lighting.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill © CC BY
Over a year ago, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by a strange object at the edge of our solar system. Just a hazy form resembling a snowman on the day of the spacecraft’s closest approach, Arrokoth is now taking shape to be a fascinating and revelatory member of the region of the solar system beyond Neptune's orbit known as the Kuiper Belt. Untouched by the usual turmoil and impacts of most small objects, this pristinely preserved world could tell us about the earliest years of our solar system's formation.
New research published in a series of papers in Science begins to reveal Arrokoth's mysteries, including its formation, geography, composition, various basic properties and more. Scientists from NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley worked alongside researchers from across the world to provide a comprehensive first look at this object.
Also known as MU69, the object consists of two lobes connected by a thin "neck" and has days that run almost 16 hours, while a full orbit around the solar system takes 298 years. Its orbit lies 44 times further away from the Sun than our own Earth, and based on the craters we see across its surface, Arrokoth is estimated to be about 4 billion years old.
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko
During its 33rd low pass over the cloud tops of Jupiter on April 15, 2021, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured the intriguing evolution of a feature in the giant planet’s atmosphere known as “Clyde’s Spot.”
The feature is informally named for amateur astronomer Clyde Foster of Centurion, South Africa, who discovered it in 2020 using his own 14-inch telescope. On June 2, 2020, just two days after Foster’s initial discovery, Juno provided detailed observations of Clyde’s Spot (upper image), which scientists determined was a plume of cloud material erupting above the top layers of the Jovian atmosphere just southeast of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which is currently about 1.3 times as wide as Earth. These powerful convective outbreaks occasionally occur in this latitude band, known as the South Temperate Belt. The initial plume subsided quickly, and within a few weeks it was seen as a dark spot.
Many features in Jupiter’s highly dynamic atmosphere are short lived, but the April 2021 observation from the JunoCam instrument (lower image) revealed that nearly one year after its discovery, the remnant of Clyde’s Spot had not only drifted away from the Great Red Spot but had also developed into a complex structure that scientists call a folded filamentary region. This region is twice as big in latitude and three times as big in longitude as the original spot, and has the potential to persist for an extended period of time.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY
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The life of a planetary nebula is often chaotic, from the death of its parent star to the scattering of its contents far out into space. Captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESO 455-10 is one such planetary nebula, located in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).
The oblate shells of ESO 455-10, previously held tightly together as layers of its central star, not only give this planetary nebula its unique appearance, but also offer information about the nebula. Seen in a field of stars, the distinct asymmetrical arc of material over the north side of the nebula is a clear sign of interactions between ESO 455-10 and the interstellar medium.
The interstellar medium is the material such as diffuse gas between star systems and galaxies. The star at the center of ESO 455-10 allows Hubble to see the interaction with the gas and dust of the nebula, the surrounding interstellar medium, and the light from the star itself. Planetary nebulae are thought to be crucial in galactic enrichment as they distribute their elements, particularly the heavier metal elements produced inside a star, into the interstellar medium which will in time form the next generation of stars.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Stanghellini
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3C442A is a system with two merging galaxies in the center. X-ray data from Chandra show that a role reversal is taking place in the middle of 3C442A. Chandra detects hot gas that has been pushing aside the radio-bright gas. This is the opposite of what is typically found in these systems when jets from the supermassive black hole in the center create cavities in the hot gas surrounding the galaxy. Astronomers believe an impending merger with another galaxy has caused the unusual dynamics in this system.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bristol/Worrall et al.
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Cleopatra’s Eye, or NGC 1535, is a planetary nebula in the constellation Eridanus. This nebula has an unusual structure that is similar to the better-known NGC 2392, with an outer region and a brighter inner center.
A planetary nebula forms when a star approximately the size of our Sun dies, exhaling its outer layers into space as the core turns into a white dwarf star. Through early telescopes these objects resembled planets – giving them their name – but planetary nebulae are unrelated to actual planets.
Hubble observed this nebula as part of a study of over 100 planetary nebulae with nearby stars. The proximity of the stars indicated a possible gravitational connection between the nearby stars and the central stars of the nebulae. Observations of the distance between NGC 1535’s central star and its possible companion suggest that Cleopatra’s Eye is indeed part of a gravitationally bound binary star system.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond and R. Ciardullo (Pennsylvania State University), et. al.; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
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Could dying stars hold the secret to looking younger? New evidence from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests that white dwarf stars could continue to burn hydrogen in the final stages of their lives, causing them to appear more youthful than they actually are. This discovery could have consequences for how astronomers measure the ages of star clusters, which contain the oldest known stars in the universe.
These results challenge the prevalent view of white dwarfs as inert, slowly cooling burned-out stars where nuclear fusion has stopped. Now, an international group of astronomers has discovered the first evidence that white dwarfs can slow down their rate of aging by burning hydrogen on their surfaces.
To investigate the physics underpinning white dwarf evolution, astronomers compared cooling white dwarfs in two massive collections of stars: the globular clusters M13 and M3. These two clusters share many physical properties such as age and metallicity, but the populations of stars which will eventually give rise to white dwarfs are different. This makes M13 and M3 together a perfect natural laboratory in which to test how different populations of white dwarfs cool.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and G. Piotto et al.
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The galaxy UGCA 193, seen here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is a galaxy in the constellation of Sextans (the Sextant). Looking rather like a waterfall, UGCA 193 appears to host many young stars, especially in the lower portion of this view, creating a striking blue haze and the sense that the stars are falling from “above.”
The blue color of UGCA 193 indicates the stars that we see are hot — some more than six times hotter than our Sun. We know that cooler stars appear to our eyes as redder, and hotter stars appear bluer. A star’s surface temperature and color are also linked to its mass, with heavier stars “burning” at higher temperatures, resulting in a blue glow from their surfaces.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully; Acknowledgment: Gagandeep Anand
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NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this stunningly detailed look at a cyclonic storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere during its 23rd close flyby of the planet (also referred to as “perijove 23”).
Juno observed this vortex in a region of Jupiter called the “north north north north temperate belt,” or NNNNTB, one of the gas giant planet’s many persistent cloud bands. These bands are formed by the prevailing winds at different latitudes. The vortex seen here is roughly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide.
Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, but some of the color in its clouds may come from plumes of sulfur and phosphorus-containing gases rising from the planet's warmer interior.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
A 2002 composite X-ray (blue), radio (pink and green), and optical (orange and yellow) image of the galaxy Centaurus A presents a stunning tableau of a galaxy in turmoil. A broad band of dust and cold gas is bisected at an angle by opposing jets of high-energy particles blasting away from the supermassive black hole in the nucleus. Two large arcs of X-ray emitting hot gas were discovered in the outskirts of the galaxy on a plane perpendicular to the jets.
The arcs of multimillion degree gas appear to be part of a projected ring 25,000 light years in diameter. The size and location of the ring indicate that it may have been produced in a titanic explosion that occurred about ten million years ago.
Such an explosion would have produced the high-energy jets, and a galaxy-sized shock wave moving outward at speeds of a million miles per hour. The age of 10 million years for the outburst is consistent with optical and infrared observations that indicate that the rate of star formation in the galaxy increased dramatically at about that time.
Scientists have suggested that all this activity may have begun with the merger of a small spiral galaxy and Centaurus A about 100 million years ago. Such a merger could eventually trigger both the burst of star formation and the violent activity in the nucleus of the galaxy. The tremendous energy released when a galaxy becomes "active" can have a profound influence on the subsequent evolution of the galaxy and its neighbors. The mass of the central black hole can increase, the gas reservoir for the next generation of stars can be expelled, and the space between the galaxies can be enriched with heavier elements.
Image credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/M. Karovska et al.); Radio 21-cm image (NRAO/VLA/J.Van Gorkom/Schminovich et al.), Radio continuum image (NRAO/VLA/J. Condon et al.); Optical (Digitized Sky Survey U.K. Schmidt Image/STScI)
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This 2007 set of Chandra images shows evidence for a light echo generated by the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, a.k.a. Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"). Astronomers believe a mass equivalent to the planet Mercury was devoured by the black hole about 50 years earlier, causing an X-ray outburst which then reflected off gas clouds near Sagittarius A*.
The large image shows a Chandra view of the middle of the Milky Way, with Sagittarius A* labeled. The smaller images show close-ups of the region marked with ellipses. Clear changes in the shapes and brightness of the gas clouds are seen between the 3 different observations in 2002, 2004 and 2005. This behavior agrees with theoretical predictions for a light echo produced by Sagittarius A* and helps rule out other interpretations.
While the primary X-rays from the outburst would have reached Earth about 50 years ago, before X-ray observatories were in place to see it, the reflected X-rays took a longer path and arrived in time to be recorded by Chandra.
The clouds of gas featured in the image are glowing by a process called fluorescence. Iron in these clouds has been bombarded either by X-rays from a source that had an outburst in the past or by very energetic electrons. The electrons or photons hit the iron atoms, knocking out electrons close to the nucleus, causing electrons further out to fill the hole, emitting X-rays in the process.
The detection of variability in these fluorescing gas clouds rules out the possibility that they were bombarded by energetic electrons. It also helps rule out other explanations for the X-ray emission, including the possibility that the gas clouds are the remnants of exploded stars or that the light echo came not from Sagittarius A* but from a neutron star or black hole pulling matter away from a binary companion.
Studying this light echo gives a crucial history of activity from Sagittarius A*, and it also illuminates and probes the poorly understood gas clouds near the center of the galaxy.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Caltech/M.Muno et al.
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