Explanation:
Big, bright, and beautiful, a Full Moon near perigee,
the closest point in its
elliptical orbit
around
our fair planet, rose on August 10.
This
remarkable picture records the scene
with a dreamlike
quality from the east coast of the United States.
The picture is actually a
composite of 10 digital frames made with exposures
from 1/500th second to 1 second long,
preserving contrast and detail over a
much wider than normal
range of brightness.
At a perigee distance of a mere 356,896 kilometers,
August's Full Moon was the closest, and so the largest and most super,
of the three Full Moons nearest perigee in 2014 now popularly
known as supermoons.
But if you missed August's super supermoon,
the next not-quite-so supermoon will be September 8.
Then, near the full lunar phase the
Moon's
perigee will be
a slightly more distant 358,387 kilometers.
That's only
about 0.4 percent less super (farther and smaller)
than the super supermoon.
Explanation:
What's happened in Hebes Chasma on Mars?
Hebes Chasma is a depression just north of the enormous
Valles Marineris canyon.
Since the depression is unconnected to other surface features, it is
unclear where the internal material went.
Inside Hebes Chasma is
Hebes Mensa,
a 5 kilometer high mesa that appears to have undergone an unusual partial collapse --
a collapse that might be providing clues.
The above image, taken by the robotic
Mars Express
spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, shows great details of the chasm and
the unusual horseshoe shaped indentation in the central mesa.
Material from the mesa appears to have flowed onto the floor of the
chasm, while a possible dark layer appears to have pooled like ink on a
downslope landing.
A recent
hypothesis holds
that salty rock composes some lower layers in Hebes Chasma, with the
salt dissolving in melted ice flows that drained through holes into an
underground
aquifer.
Explanation:
Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern
Saturn in late 2012, the
Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera recorded this
stunning,
false-color image of the ringed planet's north pole.
The composite of near-infrared image data
results in red hues for low clouds and green for high ones, giving the
Saturnian
cloudscape a vivid appearance.
Enormous
by terrestrial standards, Saturn's north polar
hurricane-like storm is deep, red,
and about 2,000 kilometers wide.
Clouds at its outer edge travel at over 500 kilometers per hour.
Other atmospheric vortices
also swirl inside the large, yellowish green,
six-sided jet stream
known as the hexagon.
Beyond the cloud tops at the upper right, arcs of the planet's
eye-catching rings appear bright blue.
Explanation:
Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744
is nearly 175,000 light-years
across, larger than
our own Milky Way.
It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern
constellation Pavo.
We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our
line of sight.
Orientation and composition give a strong sense of depth to
this
colorful galaxy portrait
that covers an area about the angular size
of the full moon.
This giant galaxy's yellowish core is dominated by the light from
old, cool stars.
Beyond the core, spiral arms filled with
young blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions sweep past
a smaller satellite galaxy at the lower left,
reminiscent of the Milky Way's satellite galaxy the Large
Magellanic Cloud.
Rings Around the Ring Nebula
Image Credit: Hubble, Large Binocular Telescope, Subaru Telescope; Composition & Copyright: Robert Gendler
Image Credit: Hubble, Large Binocular Telescope, Subaru Telescope; Composition & Copyright: Robert Gendler
Explanation:
It is a familiar sight to sky enthusiasts with even a small telescope.
There is much more to the
Ring Nebula (M57),
however, than can be seen through a
small telescope.
The easily visible
central ring is about one
light-year across,
but this remarkably deep exposure -
a collaborative effort combining data from three different large telescopes -
explores
the looping filaments
of glowing gas extending much farther from the nebula's
central star.
This remarkable
composite image includes narrowband hydrogen image,
visible light emission, and
infrared light emission.
Of course, in this
well-studied
example of a
planetary nebula,
the glowing material does not come from planets.
Instead, the
gaseous shroud represents outer layers
expelled from a dying, sun-like star.
The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years away toward the musical
constellation
Lyra.
Rosetta's Rendezvous
Image Credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team; MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Image Credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team; MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Explanation:
On August 3rd, the Rosetta spacecraft's narrow angle camera captured
this stunning image of the nucleus of Comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
After 10 years and 6.5 billion kilometers of travel
along gravity assist trajectories
looping through
interplanetary space, Rosetta had approached to within
285 kilometers of its target.
The curious
double-lobed shape of the nucleus is
revealed in amazing detail
at an image resolution of 5.3 meters per pixel.
About 4 kilometers across, the comet nucleus
is presently just over 400 million kilometers from Earth,
between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.
Now the first spacecraft
to achieve a delicate
orbit around a comet,
Rosetta will swing to within 50 kilometers and closer in the coming
weeks, identifiying candidate sites for landing its probe
Philae later this year.
Source - NASA
