Here's more pictures from that never-fails-to-please astronomy site, "Astronomy Picture of the Day," link on the right sidebar. Above is the clearest picture yet of the surface of the Sun. Click all these pictures to enlarge.
Recently a gigantic rip appeared on the Sun's surface. Flares were ejected and the rent closed again.
Here's (above) the Earth and the Moon as seen from the Messenger probe near Mercury.
Above: not a ring nebula....a ring GALAXY! A number of these things are on record. Nobody knows how they formed, but it's speculated that bar-shaped arms may have been present earlier in the galaxies' development.
Above, a Martian plain as it was recently seen from the Opportunity rover. I mistook this for an aerial view when I first saw it. Click to enlarge.
Not recent (above), but still interesting: a Voyager picture of the odd wrinkling in Neptune's atmosphere.
It reminds me of the way that pond scum distorts near the shore.
Above, dark clouds in the Carina Nebula, home of supermassive stars. Do you see those canine shapes? I'm surprised that it's not called The Dog Nebula.
Here's (above) a vortex in the clouds over the South pole of Venus.
Above, Calypso, a moon of Saturn. Nobody knows why it's so smooth.
Last but not least: turbulent clouds in the Lagoon Nebula.
12 comments:
An interesting yet little-known fact about the spectacular color images from the Hubble telescope - the colors aren't natural, nor have they been captured by the Hubble's imaging system, which records only black and white. The colors are added in later processing, based partly on guesswork and partly to highlight important or interesting features. This is explained on the Hubble's own site here.
Paul: Yeah, you're right about the colors. Wouldn't it be great if they really were like that?
I remember back when I was a teen 50 years ago and got a telescope that let me see things like Mars as a little disc rather than a spot of light in the sky, and being able to make out the rings of Saturn and four of Jupiter's moons and a bit of the pale pastels of its surface. I was slightly disappointed that nothing was as colorful as in my astronomy books, but that was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the notion of seeing things so unimaginably far away and the inconceivable expanse of nothingness between. I'd gaze at them endlessly for those little moments when the full comprehension of that would hit me. It's the kind of feeling you get from nothing else on this earth - literally.
So you like astronomy Eddie? I do. One day I was at a museum and an old man told me there was no painter on Earth who could create those great nebulae. Hubble images prove that.
Have you seen this: here
It was taken in 2004 at dusk from Mars. Amazing.
By the way, the picture of the dunes is wrong. The one you show is Africa's Namib Desert. Cassini has only released radar images from the surface and those are black and white.
Science never fails to astound me. Those photos are absolutely beautiful and stunning, even if they were originally in black and white. Astronauts are sure lucky to actually be able to see some of it with their own eyes, I assume. I can't even begin to comprehend that feeling that me must go through when they first see this stuff out in space for themselves.
Space has some crazy colors.
Excellent stuff Eddie- Blimey we look very pathetic in the great scheme of things don't we?! I refer to the picture of the Earth and the Moon!
I'll be in L.A from the 17-26th of November, attending the CTN-X. I hope you'll be around, it would be wonderful to see you again. I need to give you back your underwear that you left at my house anyway.
Matt: It'll be great to see you and get my underwear back I'm looking forward to it!
Luis: Thanks for the correction on the Titan picture. The site also put up the radar picture you mentioned, but it wasn't very photogenic, so I removed the mention. Too bad, because the existence of equatorial sand dunes on Titan struck me as interesting.
Thanks also for the link to Earth as seen from Mars.
Here's a photo of a space-peanut Comet Hartley 2)http://tinyurl.com/363c43m Apparently only the fifth time a spacecraft has flown close to a comet. Awesome, no?
Naomi: A strange picture! The overall shape and the outgassing on the bootom made it look like a rocket-powered baby rattle.
Something no one has ever sufficiently explained to me: How the value of something active, alive and complex is inherently diminished by the amount of utterly empty space around it.
By that reasoning you could toss a baby into the Dead Sea, stand really far back and say, "Wow, little Herbie doesn't amount to much when you look at him this way, does he now?"
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