Pictures from space! Our image of the day, Space.com Staff,
Space can be a wondrous place, and we’ve got the pictures to prove it! Take a look at our favorite pictures from space here, and if you’re wondering what happened today in space history don’t miss our On This Day in Space video show here!
“Stretched” spiral galaxy bursts with baby stars
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(Image credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble/L. Ho)Friday, May 1, 2020: A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope features the sparkling spiral galaxy NGC 4100, which is teeming with baby stars. The galaxy’s spiral arms are speckled with pockets of bright blue starlight radiating from hot newborn stars. NGC 4100 is located about 67 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major, and it belongs to a group of galaxies called the Ursa Major Cluster. It’s about three-quarters the size of the Milky Way, which is also a spiral galaxy, and it “looks almost stretched across the sky” in this new view, Hubble scientists said in a statement. The space telescope captured this image using its Advanced Camera for Surveys, and it was released today (May 1). — Hanneke Weitering
“Spiders” spotted on Mars
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(Image credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona)Thursday, April 30, 2020: Strange, spider-like features creep on the surface of Mars in this image taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These spidery landforms are what scientists call “araneiform” terrain, which literally translates to “spider-like.” The features arise because the Red Planet’s climate is so cold that during the Martian winter, carbon dioxide freezes from the atmosphere and accumulates as ice on the surface. When that ice begins to thaw in the spring, that carbon dioxide sublimates back into the atmosphere, or turns from a solid to a gas, leaving behind deep troughs in the terrain as gas is trapped below the surface. — Hanneke Weitering
Dwarf galaxy “steals the show” in Hubble image
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(Image credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble/T. Armandroff)Wednesday, April 29, 2020: In a deep-space image featuring countless distant galaxies of all shapes and sizes, a tiny dwarf galaxy takes center stage. The small elliptical galaxy in the foreground of this new Hubble Space Telescope image is known as PGC 29388. It contains between 100 million to a few billion stars, which pales in comparison to our Milky Way galaxy, which has 250 to 400 billion stars. “As beautiful as the surrounding space may be, the sparkling galaxy in the foreground of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope undeniably steals the show,” Hubble scientists said in a statement. The image was released on April 20, a few days before the telescope celebrated its 30th anniversary. — Hanneke Weitering
Milky Way sparkles over La Silla
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(Image credit: Petr Horalek/ESO)Tuesday, April 28, 2020: The arc of the Milky Way galaxy shimmers over the La Silla Observatory in Chile in this gorgeous night-sky view by European Southern Observatory (ESO) photo ambassador Petr Horalek. In the center of the image is the ESO 3.6-metre telescope, and to its left is the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler telescope. Visible beneath the righthand limb of the Milky Way’s starry arc are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Saturn is visible under the left side of the arc, with Jupiter glowing brightly just above it and slightly to the left. You can see more in a 360-degree panoramic version of this image here. — Hanneke Weitering
Venus meets the crescent moon
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(Image credit: Gianluca Masi/The Virtual Telescope Project)Monday, April 27, 2020: The bright “evening star” Venus shines near the crescent moon in this photo captured by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome. Venus and the moon made a close approach in the evening sky yesterday (April 26), and the planet will reach its greatest brightness of the year tomorrow (April 28). — Hanneke Weitering
Hubble captures a “cosmic reef”
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(Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI)Friday, April 24, 2020: Happy birthday, Hubble! To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA released this new image of a “cosmic undersea world” that is teeming with stars and colorful clouds of interstellar dust and gas. The image features the giant red nebula NGC 2014 and its smaller blue companion NGC 2020, both located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located 163,000 light-years from Earth. Hubble scientists have nicknamed the image the “Cosmic Reef,” because the large nebula “resembles part of a coral reef floating in a vast sea of stars,” Hubble officials said in a statement. — Hanneke Weitering
A Lyrid meteor and the Milky Way
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(Image credit: Courtesy of Tina Pappas Lee)Thursday, April 23, 2020: A “shooting star” crosses the Milky Way galaxy in this photo taken during the peak of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Photographer Tina Pappas Lee captured this view from Fripp Island, South Carolina, on Wednesday (April 22) at approximately 4:45 a.m. local time. Directly below the meteor, two of the brightest planets in the night sky, Jupiter and Saturn, are visible side by side. — Hanneke Weitering
Apollo 16’s “Earthrise”
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(Image credit: NASA)Wednesday, April 22, 2020: Happy Earth Day from space! This stunning view of Earth rising above the lunar horizon was captured by NASA’s Apollo 16 crew shortly before they landed on the moon 48 years ago. The astronauts snapped this picture, which appears to have been inspired by Apollo 13’s famous “Earthrise” photo, on April 20, 1972, the same day the lunar module Orion touched down on the surface with NASA astronauts John Young, Apollo 16 commander, and lunar module pilot Charlie Duke. Command module pilot Ken Mattingly stayed in orbit during their 71-hour stay on on the surface. — Hanneke Weitering
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(Image credit: NASA)Tuesday, April 21, 2020: A chain of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites orbits over Earth’s lime-green auroras in this photo captured by an astronaut at the International Space Station. The tiny satellite trails were captured on Monday (April 13) at 5:25 p.m. EDT (2125 GMT), as the station was passing over the southern Indian Ocean at an altitude of about 231 nautical miles (428 kilometers), NASA said in an image description. The satellites pictured here appear to belong to the fifth batch of approximately 60 satellites that SpaceX has launched for its new Starlink constellation, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who avidly tracks objects in Earth’s orbit. The company plans to launch its seventh batch of satellites on Wednesday (April 22). — Hanneke Weitering
Related:
No, they’re not aliens — SpaceX’s Starlink satellites surprise British skywatchers
Meteor and the Milky Way over La Silla
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(Image credit: M. Zamani/ESO)Monday, April 20, 2020: A “shooting star” streaks through the night sky near the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two of Earth’s galactic neighbors, in this photo from the La Silla Observatory in Chile. In the foreground of the image are two of the three new ExTrA (Exoplanets in Transits and their Atmospheres) telescopes at the observatory. — Hanneke Weitering
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(Image credit: Andrey Shelepin/NASA/GCTC)Friday, April 17, 2020: The Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft carrying three astronauts back from the International Space Station parachutes down to Earth before landing in Kazakhstan. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan and their Russian crewmember Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos safely touched down today at 1:16:43 a.m. EDT (0516 GMT or 11:16 a.m. local Kazakh time), southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan. — Hanneke Weitering
Hubble eyes a multiring galaxy
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(Image credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble/J. Greene)Thursday, April 16, 2020: The Hubble Space Telescope has captured this new view of a peculiar spiral galaxy with rings within its winding galactic arms. Known as NGC 2273, this galaxy is officially designated as a barred spiral, meaning that it has a central bar of stars and pinwheeling arms. But this galaxy also has several ring structures within its spiral arms. NGC 2273 hosts one inner ring along with two outer “pseudorings.” Astronomers believe these rings were created by spiral arms appearing to wind up tightly into a closed loop. — Hanneke Weitering
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(Image credit: NASA)Wednesday, April 15, 2020: Earth’s fluffy clouds and blue horizon provide a gorgeous backdrop for the Soyuz MS-16 crew spacecraft, seen here approaching the International Space Station with three Expedition 63 crewmembers on board. The Soyuz arrived at the orbiting lab on Thursday (April 9) with NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. An astronaut at the International Space Station captured this image from approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean, near the coast of Peru. — Hanneke Weitering
A shimmering dance
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(Image credit: NASA)Tuesday, April 14, 2020: An astronaut on the International Space Station captured this image of the aurora australis over the Indian Ocean on April 8, 2020. At the time, the space station was near the southernmost point in its orbit, and preparing for the arrival of three new crewmembers. — Meghan Bartels
Goodbye, Earth!
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(Image credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)Monday, April 13, 2020: On April 10, the European-Japanese spacecraft BepiColombo conducted a flyby of Earth, which slowed the probe’s speed enough to turn its trajectory toward the inner solar system. The next day, the spacecraft took its final image of Earth, a delicate bright crescent in the vastness of space. — Meghan Bartels
The day before launch
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(Image credit: NASA)Friday, April 10, 2020: Fifty years ago today, NASA astronauts Jack Swigert, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise posed with a model of the spacecraft they would launch on the next day for the mission dubbed Apollo 13. The flight was plagued with challenges even before launch, and the crew would experience a catastrophic explosion in the mission’s service module, but all three returned to Earth safely. — Meghan Bartels
Expedition 63 lifts off
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(Image credit: Andrey Shelepin/NASA/GCTC)Thursday, April 9, 2020: A Russian Soyuz rocket soars toward the International Space Station with three Expedition 63 crewmembers after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today (April 9) at 4:05 a.m. EDT (0805 GMT or 1:05 p.m. local Kazakh time). The Soyuz MS-16 crew capsule safely arrived at the orbiting laboratory about six hours later, with NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner on board. — Hanneke Weitering
“Pink Moon” seen from space
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(Image credit: NASA)Wednesday, April 8, 2020: The nearly-full Pink Moon rises over a cloud-covered Earth in this photo taken by an astronaut at the International Space Station. This photo was taken on Monday (April 6), one day before the supermoon, or a full moon that coincides with the moon’s perigee, the closest point to Earth in its orbit. Because the full moon of April is traditionally called the Pink Moon, last night’s supermoon has been referred to as the “Super Pink Moon.” — Hanneke Weitering
Juno spots hazy clouds on Jupiter
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(Image credit: Petr Horalek/ESO)Thursday, March 19, 2020: In this stunning night sky photo, the full arc of the Milky Way galaxy glitters over a photographer’s shadow at the construction site for the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), on the Chilean mountain Cerro Armazones. Scheduled to open in 2025, ELT will be “the world’s biggest eye on the sky,” with a 39-meter (128-foot) primary mirror. ELT will scan the skies in optical and near-infrared wavelengths of light to search for worlds beyond our solar system, particularly for potentially Earth-like exoplanets. It will also help astronomers study how planets, stars, galaxies and black holes formed in the early universe. — Hanneke Weitering
A stellar nursery in the Tarantula Nebula
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(Image credit: Jessica Meir/NASA/Twitter)Thursday, March 5, 2020: A new view of New York City captured from the International Space Station show’s the city’s skyline in incredible detail. NASA astronaut Jessica Meir photographed the city from the orbiting laboratory, which circles the Earth at an altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers). “Clear views of bustling #NYC day and night lately from @Space_Station,” Meir tweeted on Wednesday (March 4). “Central Park looks inviting. Midtown’s skyline reminds me of a metallic pin art impression.” — Hanneke Weitering
A portrait of Saturn’s moon Enceladus
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(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Wednesday, March 4, 2020: A new global view of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus shows the tiny satellite’s “tiger stripe” fissures and frosty plumes in stunning detail. This artist’s illustration of Enceladus was created from a global map that scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission stitched together from images that the spacecraft collected during its first 10 years of exploring the Saturn system. — Hanneke Weitering
Merging storms spotted on Jupiter
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(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/Tanya Oleksuik)Tuesday, March 3, 2020: Two white, oval-shaped storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere have been spotted merging into one. NASA’s Juno spacecraft caught these anticyclonic storms in the act using its JunoCam imager on Dec. 26, 2019, as the spacecraft was completing its 24th perijove, or close flyby of the planet. At the time, Juno was passing about 44,900 miles (72,200 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops at a latitude of about 60 degrees south.
NASA has been tracking the larger of the two merging storms for years, and scientists have watched it gobble up several smaller storms in the past, NASA said in a statement. It narrowly avoided a merger with this same storm just a few months before this image was captured, when the two made a close approach as they churned through the planet’s turbulent atmosphere. — Hanneke Weitering
Hubble spots a galactic “traffic jam”
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(Image credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble/P. Erwin et al.)Monday, March 2, 2020: A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope features the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3887, with its long, winding arms and bright galactic core. The German-English astronomer William Herschel discovered this galaxy, which is located 60 million light-years away from Earth, about 234 years ago. At the time, astronomers didn’t understand how such spiral arms could even exist, because they thought a galaxy’s spinning core would eventually wind them up so tightly that the spirals would disappear. It wasn’t until the 1960s that astronomers came up with an explanation.
“Rather than behaving like rigid structures, spiral arms are in fact areas of greater density in a galaxy’s disc, with dynamics similar to those of a traffic jam,” Hubble officials said in a statement. “The density of cars moving through a traffic jam increases at the center of the jam, where they move more slowly. Spiral arms function in a similar way; as gas and dust move through the density waves, they become compressed and linger, before moving out of them again.” — Hanneke Weitering
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