Space pictures
Curiosity Rover was traveling from Yellowknife Bay towards Mount Sharp last September and took this picture of the buttes and layers of the martian surface using its Mastcam. The picture has been adjusted to reflect colours of the rocks that are similar to what we would see on Earth. And even with some dusty conditions, this is an awe inspiring shot from Mars as Curiosity approaches Mount Sharp.
We start off a new year, 2015, with an interesting cosmic alignment. Here we see two of Saturn’s moons; Tethys and Rhea nicely lined up with about a quarter of each in shadow. This picture was taken by the Cassini probe’s narrow-angle camera in red light at a distance of about 1.8 million kilometers from Rhea. The lit side of the moons is the one facing away from Saturn.
There has been a recent renaissance of private space companies, bringing with it many successes and a few failures. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of the new players with its Falcon 9 rocket. This picture shows the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on its way to resupply the International Space Station, just after the second stage separation of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Dragon was carrying the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) communication being managed by JPL. The OPALS components can be seen in the bay and were deployed as part of this April 2014 ISS supply mission.
This picture from the volcanic Mendelssohn basin on Mercury provides a good representation of the planet’s pockmarked surface which is full of impact craters of all sizes. In addition to that we can see a dark abyss from the rim and shadowed wall of a 25 kilometer wide crater that was photographed by the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) on the Messenger probe.
A perfect picture in time for the holidays. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus (or something else or nothing), this time of the year has a festive vibe in many places across our world and maybe even out of this world. This composite image from constellation Canis Major shows spiral galaxies in a one of a kind light show. NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are about 130 million light years away from Earth and were captured by three NASA missions. The x-ray spectrum data was provided by Chandra X-Ray observatory; visible spectrum by Hubble Space Telescope and infrared spectrum data by the Spitzer space telescope.
