Space is an enigmatic realm, home to countless galaxies, stars, asteroids, meteoroids, and celestial events. Similarly, our own planet Earth boasts remarkable features that continue to astonish scientists and provoke curiosity about the existence of such wonders.
These spectacular NASA images, from Earth's moon to the nebulas encircling the planet, keep us updated with all the events occurring in space.
NASA released a composite photo of Earth’s Moon, usually seen in shades of gray, made from images captured by Galileo spacecraft. The image is a riot of reds, oranges, and blues.
The unusual colors in this photograph help scientists study what the Moon’s soil is made of. Areas appearing red generally correspond to the lunar highlands, while blue to orange shades indicate the ancient volcanic lava flow of a mare, or lunar sea.
Bluer mare areas contain more titanium than the orange regions do. The deep blue patch on the right is Mare Tranquillitatis, and it’s richer in titanium than Mare Serenitatis, a slightly smaller circular area to the upper left of Mare Tranquillitatis.
Finally, the small purple areas found near the center are deposits formed by explosive volcanic eruptions.
Astronomers, using NASA Chandra X-ray, found a galaxy cluster with two streams of superheated gas crossing one another, which may lead to the creation of new structure.
Researchers discovered an enormous, comet-like tail of hot gas — spanning over 1.6 million light-years long — trailing behind a galaxy within the galaxy cluster called Zwicky 8338 (Z8338 for short). As the galaxy hurtled through space, its tail split into two streams.
This is the second pair of tails trailing behind a galaxy in this system. Previously, astronomers discovered a shorter pair of tails from a different galaxy near this latest one. This newer and longer set of tails was only seen because of a deeper observation with Chandra that revealed the fainter X-rays.
The bright star taking center stage is a Wolf-Rayet star known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Carina (The Keel). Wolf-Rayet stars, named after astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet who discovered the first of these stars, are extremely hot and massive. Some can be around 20 times as massive as the Sun! However, their lifecycle is only a few hundred thousand years. In cosmic terms, that’s like the blink of an eye.
Wolf–Rayet stars typically lose half their mass in less than 100,000 years, and WR 31a is no exception. It will eventually end its life as a spectacular supernova, and the stellar material expelled from its explosion will later nourish a new generation of stars and planets.
The blue bubble that looks like it’s surrounding WR 31a and its unnamed companion is a Wolf-Rayet nebula. These typically round or ring-shaped interstellar clouds of dust and gas are created when speedy winds interact with the outer layers of hydrogen ejected by Wolf–Rayet stars.
Stars are often born in clusters or groups, in giant clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers studied this star cluster using X-ray data from NASA Chandra Xray telescope, seen here in purple, and infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, colored in red, green, and blue.
This composite image shows a cluster in the center of the Flame Nebula, found about 1,400 light-years from Earth. Research suggests that the stars at the center of this cluster are about 200,000 years old, while those on the outskirts are about 1.5 million years of age.
This spiral galaxy, spotted by the orbiting NASA Hubble telescope, is 45 million light-years from Earth. Tucked within its winding spiral arms are patches of glowing pink spots: these represent "H-alpha regions," signs of nebulae where new stars are being formed.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been studying the cosmos from its vantage point in low Earth orbit since it first lifted off in 1990. From determining the atmospheric composition of planets around other stars to discovering dark energy, Hubble has changed humanity's understanding of the universe.
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