Here's two photos taken by the Curiosity Rover on Mars. What are those small stones on the ground? One is a ball and the others are star patterns of some sort.
Above is a picture of the four habitable moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It's not impossible that life may be found on these worlds, though in the case of Titan it would have to be life that could exist in liquid methane.
If you're surprised to see Ganymede on that list, that's because interior seas have recently been detected there.
Here's (above) surface detail on the Comet Churyumov-Gerisimenko. The Rosetta probe continues to map it in an attempt to find a suitable spot for its lander. This picture was taken only a few weeks ago.
Hubble took this picture (above) of the Bubble Nebula. It looks tiny in this photo but actually it's immense. The bubble you see is 10 light years in diameter and was ejected from a giant star that's visible inside the nebula.
Here's (above) a galaxy that's visible with the naked eye. It's a little galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. It's in the process of colliding with our own galaxy, as is its namesake, The Large Magellanic Cloud (not visible here). Our galaxy is larger and older than many and has likely absorbed other galaxies in the past. Maybe that's how the Milky Way got the bar in the middle of the pinwheel.
I never heard of this (above) til recently but evidently it's something enthususiasts have known about for a long time: the Zodiacal Light. It's dim but you can see it with the naked eye on an unusually clear night. It's a disc of dust that surrounds the sun on the same plane as most planets and asteroids. We see it edgewise because we're on the same plane.
The Milky Way has recently been identified as a member of a cluster of thousands of galaxies called The Laniakea Supercluster. That's a computer generated image of it above. The white dots in the green areas are all galaxies. The wispy white lines track the paths of galaxies toward Laniakea's center.
White dots outside the orange line belong to other super clusters, even though the picture makes it appear that they belong with us. I have a feeling there's an interesting story behind that.
4 comments:
These astronomy posts continue to be some of my favorites when it comes to your blog. I always learn something new and motivates me to continue to want to learn all about these kinds of sciences in depth more.
Roberto: Thanks. We live in an exciting time. When I was a kid space science was relatively static. Now if you've taken no notice of it for only a couple of years your understanding of it is almost obsolete.
I hauled out my telescope this morning before 5 am to have a look at the sky. One of its moons was then emerging from behind Jupiter. I spent some minutes watching the changing arrangement of things and that moon seeming separate itself from and move away from the planet.
Everybody: I don't know what the stars with the balls on the tips are, but that round rock might have been a mineral of some sort.
According to a TV documentary I just saw, certain Martian minerals are likely to be on or near the surface and are likely to form small balls. A field of them might look like overturned barrels of pellets.
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