The Ahmad Baba crater, named after a 16th/17th century African writer, is a classic peak rising basin on the planet Mercury. This picture was taken by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft at low altitude (just 184 km above Mercury’s surface) during its second extended mission exploring the planet Mercury.
The advanced capabilities of Curiosity Mars rover have allowed us to do more in the (unmanned) exploration of this planet than has ever been possible. This picture by the Mars Hand Lens Imager shows the shallow drill hole (and the residue piled up around it) completed by the Curiosity Mars rover. This experiment is part of the Mars Science Laboratory initiative and will be evaluating a rock target called “Windjana“. Curiosity is expected to drill deeper (up to 2.5 inches) and evaluate both the drilling and the martian samples it collects.
Every 76 years, the famous Halley’s Comet makes its way through the inner solar-system and is visible from Earth. This periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Sir Edmond Halley, after whom the comet is named. This picture of Comet Halley (1P/Halley) was taken in 1986 which was its most recent foray into this part of our solar system. The European Space Agency space craft Giotto snapped this picture and became one of the first spacecraft ever to encounter and photograph the nucleus of a comet. Giotto was able to pass and image Halley’s nucleus as it receded from the Sun.
A millennium ago, about 160,000 light years away from the Milky Way galaxy, a supernova exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud (a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way). The Spitzer space telescope’s advanced instruments picked up the infrared light emitted by dust from the remnants (red), the ambient background areas (green, yellow) and the remaining stars (blue). The closely grouped set of blue stars in the lower right of the image is the cluster known as NGC 1850. Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) was used to compile the data for this picture.
The Magellan spacecraft took this picture of planet Venus (also known as the Morning star and Evening star) in early 1996. It focuses on the Eistla region on Venus located at 12.3 north latitude, 8.3 degrees east longitude and represents an area 160 km by 250 km on Venus. This picture shows the distinctive “pancake domes” – referred to as such due to their flat tops. These volcanic domes can be up to 65 km across but only go about 1 km in height and were formed by volcanic extrusions of sticky/viscous lava on planet Venus.
