Category Archives: Pictures

Space pictures

Pictures

Cygnus Loop Supernova

Image
Cygnus - NASA
Cygnus Loop Supernova Blast Wave

This very “psychedelic” looking image didn’t originate in any human mind, no matter how stimulated. Instead it gives us a peek into the marvel that is our universe. This composite image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and shows a stunning supernova in a part of the northern constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

The bubble-like expanding blast wave is believed to have resulted from a colossal stellar explosion, that occurred about 15,000 years ago. The supernova remnant is within the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and is 2,600 light-years away. Data from Hubble allowed astronomers to directly compare the actual structure of the shock with their theoretical model calculations. The supernova image shows the blast wave overrunning dense clumps of gas, where the different colours represent different gases at certain temperatures (red=sulfur; green=hydrogen; and blue=oxygen atoms).

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail
Pictures

Sun’s north pole

Image
North Pole Sun - NASA
North Pole of the Sun as photographed by the SECCHI Extreme UltraViolet Imager (EUVI) mounted on the STEREO-B spacecraft

Recent missions by NASA have provided us with brand new and unique views of the Sun. These three dimensional views of structures in the Sun’s atmosphere have resulted in an increased understanding of solar physics and better space weather forecasting. The above picture is the “virtual left eye” image of the Sun’s north pole; taken by SECCHI Extreme UltraViolet Imager (EUVI) mounted on the STEREO-B spacecraft. STEREO-B is located behind the Earth and follows it in orbit around the Sun while STEREO-A is ahead of the Earth, leading it around the Sun. The EUVI imager is sensitive to wavelengths of light in the extreme ultraviolet portion of the spectrum (including bands at wavelengths of 304, 171 and 195 Angstroms).

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail
Pictures

Khyber Pass from space

Image
Khyber Pass - NASA
NASA photograph of the Khyber Pass from outer space.

The Khyber Pass cuts through the Hindu Kush mountains (at an altitude of 3,500 feet) and connects Afghanistan and Pakistan. This rugged and historic route was photographed in October 2007 by NASA’s Terra spacecraft – looking from the Afghan side, eastwards into Pakistan. The Terra spacecraft took this thermal infrared image using its Japanese built ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) instrument.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail
Pictures

Kepler crater on the Moon

Image
Kepler crater - NASA
Picture of the Kepler Crater taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

Kepler crater on the moon is approximately 32 kilometers (20 miles) in diameter located at the lunar bearing 8.1°N, 322.0°E. It is named after the prolific German astronomer Johannes Kepler, famous for his three laws of planetary motion. This picture, taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), also shows a boulder that was ejected out onto its continuous ejecta blanket by the energy of this impact.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail
Pictures

Comet Don Quixote

Image
Comet Don Quixote - NASA
Comet Don Quixote as photographed by the Spitzer Space Telescope

Named after the classic 17th century Spanish book, the celestial Don Quixote was initially believed to be a large asteroid in deep space. But with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers discovered that what they initially believed was an asteroid was in fact a comet. The infrared imagery from Spitzer showed that Comet Don Quixote had the telltale features of a comet – a distinctive head and a (trailing) tail. In the above NASA pictures, the bright areas around Comet Don Quixote are stars and the horizontal line is from artifacts caused by image processing.

“Thou hast seen nothing yet.”
– Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail