Space pictures
On its 908th day on Mars, the Curiosity rover used this drill to bore into a rock called “Telegraph Peak“. A glitch in the system triggered by an irregularity in electrical current lead to several troubleshooting tests and delays in transferring the drilled samples for analysis. This picture was taken by the Mast Camera mounted on Curiosity.
Infrared images from instruments at Kitt Peak National Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope show us the beginnings of a new star. HOPS 383 is young protostar in the Orion star-formation complex.
This view of Mercury’s north polar region shows the drastic range of temperatures that are seen at the Solar System’s innermost planet. The red areas are greater than 400 K (127° Celsius) while the purple areas are about 50 k (-223° Celsius). While the extremely hot areas seem easy to fathom, the craters near Mercury’s poles have regions that remain permanently in shadow, and in these regions even the maximum temperatures can be extremely low. This picture was taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft using its Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS). The Prokofiev crater is the largest one in this picture and can be seen near the top center of the image. It has a diameter of 112 km and can have temperatures below 100 K (-173° clesius) with stable water ice.
Iapetus is an interesting satellite of Saturn in that it has both a light side and a dark side – a yin and yang. Italian mathematician, astronomer, engineer, and astrologer Giovanni Cassini was first to observe the dark-light difference when he discovered Iapetus in 1671. So it is fitting that this picture was taken by the space exploration mission partly named after him (Cassini-Huygens). The narrow angle camera on the Cassini orbiter took this photograph of Iapetus from a distance of approximately 4 million kilometers.
NASA’s Terra spacecraft which studies Earth captured a couple of volcanoes in Guatemala, including one – Fuego – that had just erupted. Located just 35 kilometers from the capital Guatemala City, the ash and steam released from Fuego closed down the city’s airport. Fuego is seen on the left hand side of the picture, with the smaller inset showing a thermal IR view from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument. Other active Guatemalan volcanoes shown in the image are the Acatenango (top), Volcano de Agua (middle), and Pacaya volcano (right).
