Category Archives: Pictures

Space pictures

Pictures

Dusty Milky Way galaxy

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Our Milky Way galaxy is full of dust as seen in this new all-sky map from Planck
Our Milky Way galaxy is full of dust as seen in this new all-sky map from Planck

Scientists are busy trying to interpret some of the data collected by the European Space Agency’s Planck mission and other telescopes seeking the hard to detect “curly” polarized light called B-modes which may originate from the very first moments of the birth of the universe. But in order to do so they must first sift through all the polarizing light, like this image which shows all the polarized dust in the Milky Way galaxy. This picture uses data that Planck was able to collect thanks to special instrumentation that can detect polarized light. This includes light of 353 gigahertz or 0.85-millimeter wavelengths, which is longer than what we see with our eyes.

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Pictures

Opportunity to study flat faced rock

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Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to study rock
Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to study rock

Mars exploration rover Opportunity gets ready for some more examination as it comes up to this flat-faced rock (center of the picture) on the red planet. Opportunity rover’s wide-angle, front hazard avoidance camera took this picture in early March 2015, on the 3,948th Martian day of the rover’s mission on Mars. This rock is located in an area dubbed “Marathon Valley” which the rover reached over the last month and plans to study for its unique mineral characteristics.

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Pictures

Dwarf planet Ceres

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Picture of Ceres taken by NASA
Picture of Ceres taken by NASA

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took this picture of Ceres, a dwarf planet in our solar system, using its framing cameras. These two instruments were designed as Dawn’s “eyes” and to help measure the size and shape of Vesta and Ceres, as the spacecraft explored our asteroid belt where the dwarf planet Ceres resides (between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter). This picture was taken from a distance of 83,000 kilometers.

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Pictures

Check out Saturn’s rings

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Cassini provides us with this look at the rings of Saturn
Cassini provides us with this look at the rings of Saturn

No matter how many pictures one may have seen of them, the rings of Saturn have a fascinating, almost mystical effect on many people. For this reason the Cassini space probe and its advanced imaging systems have been a boon for Saturn enthusiasts. The on board narrow angle camera took this picture of the rings in red light so that researchers could study the subtle color variations of Saturn’s rings (as they are all red). This shot captured the rings from a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers away from Saturn, looking toward the sunlit side of the planet’s rings and about 11 degrees above the ringplane.

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Pictures

X-rays stream off Sun

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Data from NuSTAR and SDO is used to show the x-rays streaming off the sun
Data from NuSTAR and SDO is used to show the x-rays streaming off the sun

X-ray astronomy is used to detect and study astronomical objects and the Sun provides us with plenty of such data as we try and learn more about it. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) provided data which was combined to form this picture of high energy x-rays streaming off the Sun. The high energy emissions, shown in blue (3 to 5 kilo-electron volts) and green (2 to 3 kilo-electron volts) are from NuSTAR’s data and come from gases that may be heated to over 3 million degrees. The SDO data in this composite image is the areas in red which consists of ultraviolet light  at 171 angstrom wavelength.

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