In what is believed to be a first, the high resolution camera on-board the Mars Orbiter may have discovered frost on a non-polar region of the planet. While photographing a crater in the Northern Plains, it may have discovered a thin layer of bright frost on part of the crater’s wall. Since carbon dioxide is not stable under (Martian) summer conditions, this is likely a patch of water ice.
NASA’s Cassini orbiter has taken many wonderful pictures of Saturn and its moons with this snapshot of Titan being one of them. The near-infrared, color mosaic of the giant planet sized Titan was taken by an interesting camera on the orbiter called the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). This camera takes pictures in 352 colours at the same time with wavelengths in the 300-5100 nano meter range, which is greater than what can be discerned by the human eye. This image shows the sun glinting off of Titan’s northern polar seas.
This tripod like piece of equipment is actually the gnomon, one of the Apollo lunar geology hand tools, and photometric chart assembly used as a photographic reference to establish local vertical Sun angle, scale and lunar color. This picture is from the area at Station 4 (Shorty Crater) where the now famous orange soil was found by Apollo 17 crewmen Moon. This was during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA-2) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. What look like astronaut footsteps are visible in the lower left portion of this picture from the moon.
NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury continues its exploration of the planet by photographing its surface, including this picture taken close to the Rustaveli crater area. The largest crater here is about 1.5 miles across while the smaller ones range down to 20 or 30 meters. The white streak in the largest crater, visible against the darkenss of the crater’s abyss, is a cosmic ray hitting the Narrow Angle Camera’s CCD sensor.
The Messier 82 (M82, NGC 3034) is a star-burst galaxy located about 12 million light-years away from Earth, in the Ursa Major constellation. The above image was captured using the x-ray spectrum by Chandra Observatory. The image below is of the same galaxy but this time it is a composite visible light image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
