Gallery: WIRED Space Photo of the Day 2012
01The core of the Milky Way at a distance of some 26,000 light years from Earth.
Data from NASA's Great Observatories has been combined to produce this unprecedented image of the central region of the Milky Way. Near-infrared light from Hubble (yellow) outlines energetic regions where stars are being born. Infrared data from Spitzer (red) show glowing clouds of dust containing complex structures. And, X-rays from Chandra (blue and violet) reveal gas heated to millions of degrees by stellar explosion and outflows from the Galaxys supermassive black hole.
02dec-31-2012
Great Lakes of Titan -------------------- The existence of oceans or lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan was predicted more than 20 years ago. But with a dense haze preventing a closer look it has not been possible to confirm their presence. Until the Cassini flyby of July 22, 2006, that is. Radar imaging data from the flyby, published this week in the journal Nature, provide convincing evidence for large bodies of liquid. This image, used on the journal's cover, gives a taste of what Cassini saw. Intensity in this colorized image is proportional to how much radar brightness is returned, or more specifically, the logarithm of the radar backscatter cross-section. The colors are not a representation of what the human eye would see. The lakes, darker than the surrounding terrain, are emphasized here by tinting regions of low backscatter in blue. Radar-brighter regions are shown in tan. The strip of radar imagery is foreshortened to simulate an oblique view of the highest latitude region, seen from a point to its west. This radar image was acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in synthetic aperture mode on July 22, 2006. The image is centered near 80 degrees north, 35 degrees west and is about 140 kilometers (84 miles) across. Smallest details in this image are about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across. *Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS \[[high-resolution](http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA09102.jpg)\]* *Caption: [Cassini Solstice Team](http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09102)*
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit03dec-30-2012
Hidden Flames ------------- This VISTA image shows the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings. In views of this evocative object in visible light the core of the nebula is completely hidden behind obscuring dust, but in this VISTA view, taken in infrared light, the cluster of very young stars at the object’s heart is revealed. The wide-field VISTA view also includes the glow of the reflection nebula NGC 2023, just below centre, and the ghostly outline of the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) towards the lower right. The bright bluish star towards the right is one of the three bright stars forming the Belt of Orion. The image was created from VISTA images taken through J, H and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The image shows the full area of the VISTA field and is one degree by 1.5 degrees in extent. The total exposure time was 14 minutes. *Image: ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit \[[high-resolution](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/screen/eso0949n.jpg)\]* *Caption: [ESO](http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0949n/)*
04dec-29-2012
Tri-Color Sun ------------- This composite image combines EIT images from three wavelengths (171Å, 195Å and 284Å) into one that reveals solar features unique to each wavelength. Since the EIT images come to us from the spacecraft in black and white, they are color coded for easy identification. For this image, the nearly simultaneous images from May 1998 were each given a color code (red, yellow and blue) and merged into one. *Image: NASA/SOHO \[[high-resolution](http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/images/large/trico1.jpg)\]* *Caption: [NASA](http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/images/trico1.html)*
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center05dec-28-2012
Sparkling Galaxy Reveals Black Hole ----------------------------------- The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth. This composite image includes X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (yellow). The inset shows the central region, which contains a bright X-ray source that is likely powered by material falling onto a supermassive black hole. Confirming previous Chandra results, this study finds the fraction of galaxies found to be hosting supermassive black holes is much higher than found with optical searches. This shows the ability of X-ray observations to find black holes in galaxies where relatively low-level black hole activity has either been hidden by obscuring material or washed out by the bright optical light of the galaxy. *Image: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./C.Grier et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI, ESO/WFI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech \[[high-resolution](http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/716497main_chandra_sparkle_lg_full.jpg)\]* *Caption: [NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2418.html)*
06dec-27-2012
Hollows on Mercury ------------------ In the well-documented case of Eminescu's hollows, the image above provides some new insight. Though the majority of the hollows are located on and directly around the central peak, if you look closely you'll see that there are small hollows located on top of the knobby texture on the upper right side of the image. Are these hollows younger than the ones on Eminescu's central peak and floor? Are hollows currently forming in Eminescu? This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 200-meter/pixel morphology base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution, but typically several areas of high scientific interest are imaged in this mode each week. *Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington \[[high-resolution](http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/EN0261771341M.map.jpg)\]* *Caption: [Mercury Messenger team](http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=1045)*
07dec-26-2012
Really Hot Stars ---------------- This unique image shows AB7, one of the highest excitation nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), two satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. AB7 is a binary star, consisting of one WR-star — highly evolved massive star - and a mid-age massive companion of spectral type O. These exceptional stars have very strong stellar winds: they continuously eject energetic particles — like the "solar wind" from the Sun — but some 10 to 1,000 million times more intensely than our star! These powerful winds exert an enormous pressure on the surrounding interstellar material and forcefully shape those clouds into "bubbles", well visible in the photos by their blue colour. AB7 is particularly remarkable: the associated huge nebula and HeII region indicate that this star is one of the, if not the, hottest WR-star known so far, with a surface temperature in excess of 120,000 degrees ! Just outside this nebula, a small network of green filaments is visible — they are the remains of another supernova explosion. *Image: ESO \[[high-resolution](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/screen/eso0310a.jpg)\]* *Caption: [ESO](http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0310a/)*
08dec-25-2012
Merry Radio Christmas --------------------- This panorama of a section of the Milky Way in the constellations of Scutum and Aquila illustrates the dynamic interplay between the birth and death of massive stars in our Galaxy. The image is a composite of a radio image constructed from observations taken in several configurations of the Very Large Array at a wavelength of 20 cm for the MAGPIS survey with mid-infrared data taken as part of the GLIMPSE survey conducted by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The radio data are coded red, the long-wavelength infrared data (at 8 micrometers) green, and the shorter wavelength infrared data blue-white; yellow regions in the image show places where both radio and infrared emission is prominent. Normal stars are brightest at the shortest wavelengths, showing up as the myriad of blue-white points. Birthsites of the youngest massive stars show as yellow clumps -- radiation from the newborn stars heats surrounding dust producing infrared emission, while the ultraviolet light from these stars separates electrons from hydrogen atoms giving rise to radio emission. More mature stars have managed to destroy the dust nearby leaving red cores surrounded by yellow, then green, shells as the temperature drops far from the stars. The prominent red arcs mark the sites where massive stars have died in titanic explosions and blasted their gas light years into space at thousands of miles per second; their radio emission is produced as electrons, accelerated to nearly the speed of light by the outward moving blast waves, spiral in the Galactic magnetic field. The diffuse green glow reveals the tiny dust particles that suffuse interstellar space along the band of the Milky Way; dark filaments superposed on this emission show regions where the gas and dust are so thick that no light can get through -- regions in which future generations of stars will form. *Image: Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and (Rick White, STScI) (Bob Becker, IGPP/LLNL & UC-Davis) (David Helfand, Columbia) \[[high-resolution](http://images.nrao.edu/images/birth3_death_milkyway_med.jpg)\]* *Caption: [NRAO](http://images.nrao.edu/597)*
09dec-24-2012
Colorful Large Magellanic Cloud ------------------------------- In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at center, bottom. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen. *Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI) \[[high-resolution](http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/31/image/a/format/xlarge_web/)\]* *Caption: [Hubble Heritage site](http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/31/image/a/)*
10dec-23-2012
Hourglass Nebula Is Watching ---------------------------- This Hubble telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula, reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star. The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter that accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. According to one theory on the formation of planetary nebulae, the hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud, which is denser near its equator than near its poles. *Image: Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, and NASA \[[high-resolution](http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/nebula/pr1996007b/xlarge_web/)\]* *Caption: [Hubble Heritage site](http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/nebula/pr1996007b/)*
11dec-22-2012
Canyon Details on Mars ---------------------- Hydrae Chasma is a deep, circular depression on Mars approximately 50 kilometers across, situated between Juventae Chasma to the north and the large canyon system Valles Marineris to the south. The Chasma has steep walls flanked by numerous landslides and a massive scarp along its southern boundary where the surface has collapsed into this depression. This closeup is of an isolated flat-topped mountain (known as a mesa) rising out of a sea of dunes located in the center of Hydrae Chasma. Darker-toned dunes, likely composed of basaltic sands, form an apron along the base of the mesa's northern margin. The western side of the mesa is gently sloping and is composed of a highly fractured light-toned rubbly base. It is overlaid by alternating light and dark layered cliff-forming units and is covered by a sediment cap containing still more dunes. The layered sequences are present only in the interior deposits and not in the walls of the Chasma. Similar deposits are located on the floors of Valles Marineris and other chasmata and may be the sediment remnants of ancient lakes formed within these canyon systems. *Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona \[[high-resolution](http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/wallpaper/2880/ESP_029516_1730.jpg)\]* *Caption: [Ginny Gulick](http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_029516_1730)*
12dec-21-2012
Star Making Waves ----------------- The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a "shocking" effect on the surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Stellar winds flowing out from this fast-moving star are making ripples in the dust as it approaches, creating a bow shock seen as glowing gossamer threads, which, for this star, are only seen in infrared light. Zeta Ophiuchi is a young, large and hot star located around 370 light-years away. It dwarfs our own sun in many ways -- it is about six times hotter, eight times wider, 20 times more massive, and about 80,000 times as bright. Even at its great distance, it would be one of the brightest stars in the sky were it not largely obscured by foreground dust clouds. This massive star is travelling at a snappy pace of about 54,000 mph (24 kilometers per second), fast enough to break the sound barrier in the surrounding interstellar material. Because of this motion, it creates a spectacular bow shock ahead of its direction of travel (to the left). The structure is analogous to the ripples that precede the bow of a ship as it moves through the water, or the sonic boom of an airplane hitting supersonic speeds. The fine filaments of dust surrounding the star glow primarily at shorter infrared wavelengths, rendered here in green. The area of the shock pops out dramatically at longer infrared wavelengths, creating the red highlights. A bright bow shock like this would normally be seen in visible light as well, but because it is hidden behind a curtain of dust, only the longer infrared wavelengths of light seen by Spitzer can reach us. Bow shocks are commonly seen when two different regions of gas and dust slam into one another. Zeta Ophiuchi, like other massive stars, generates a strong wind of hot gas particles flowing out from its surface. This expanding wind collides with the tenuous clouds of interstellar gas and dust about half a light-year away from the star, which is almost 800 times the distance from the sun to Pluto. The speed of the winds added to the star's supersonic motion result in the spectacular collision seen here. Our own sun has significantly weaker solar winds and is passing much more slowly through our galactic neighborhood so it may not have a bow shock at all. NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft are headed away from the solar system and are currently about three times farther out than Pluto. They will likely pass beyond the influence of the sun into interstellar space in the next few years, though this is a much gentler transition than that seen around Zeta Ophiuchi. For this Spitzer image, infrared light at wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns is rendered in blue, 8.0 microns in green, and 24 microns in red. *Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech \[[high-resolution](http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16604.jpg)\]* *Caption: [NASA/JPL](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16604)*
13dec-20-2012
Cygnus Loop Filaments --------------------- As an end of the year finale, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and WIYN partners offer this new wide-field image of the Cygnus loop. Three degrees on a side, this image covers an area of the sky about 45 times that of the full moon. But it does so without sacrificing high resolution. The image is over 600 million pixels in size, making it one of the largest astronomical images ever made. The Cygnus Loop is a large supernova remnant: the gaseous remains of a massive star that exploded long ago. It is located about 1,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers estimate the supernova explosion that produced the nebula occurred between 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. First noted in 1784 by William Herschel, it is so large that its many parts have been catalogued as separate objects, including NGC 6992, NGC 6995 and IC 1340 along the eastern (left) side of the image, NGC 6974 and NGC 6979 near the top-center, and the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960) and Pickering’s Triangle along the western (right) edge. The bright star near the western edge of the image, known as 52 Cygnus, is not associated with the supernova. The data were obtained with the NOAO Mosaic 1 camera, with observations in the Oxygen \[OIII\] (blue), Sulphur \[S II\] (green) and Hydrogen-Alpha (red) filters. When mounted on the WIYN 0.9 meter telescope the Mosaic camera has a one square degree field of view. The Cygnus Loop was observed with nine separate telescope pointings in a 3x3 grid pattern. The observations were originally obtained in 2003 by Richard Cool, while he was a graduate student at the University of Arizona, as part of a project to precisely measure the distance to the Cygnus Loop. Dr. Cool, now at the MMT Observatory in Arizona, said, “Often, astronomical research reduces images to dry tables of numerical information that we analyze in order to more deeply understand our universe. Images like this are amazing because they can remind you of the big picture and beauty that surrounds us”. In 2003 the computing power available was insufficient to process the data into a single, full-resolution color image. Nine years later, the data were re-reduced and processed by Travis Rector to create the image presented here. Dr. Rector has produced a remarkable series of color images from NOAO telescopes. They can be found at his website and on a dedicated NOAO image gallery page. Images like this demonstrate that even relatively small telescopes when equipped with modern cameras are capable of producing cutting-edge research. The 0.9 meter telescope at Kitt Peak is operated by the WIYN Consortium. It has been in operation since 1960, when the original telescope was first installed at the site now occupied by the WIYN 3.5 meter telescope. Today, the 0.9 meter is regularly used by graduate students and faculty for a variety of research projects. The WIYN 0.9 meter Observatory is a partnership including Austin Peay State University, Haverford College, Indiana University, Rochester Institute of Technology, San Francisco State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Wisconsin Space Grant consortium. NOAO is operated by Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. *Image: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Richard Cool (University of Arizona) and WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF \[[high-resolution](http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/images/d7/cygloop-2000.jpg)\]* *Caption: [NOAO](http://www.noao.edu/news/2012/pr1209.php)*
14dec-19-2012
Back-Lit Saturn --------------- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn's shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are backlit. (The sun is behind the planet, which is shielding the cameras from direct sunlight.) In addition to the visual splendor, this special, very-high-phase viewing geometry lets scientists study ring and atmosphere phenomena not easily seen at a lower phase. Since images like this can only be taken while the sun is behind the planet, this beautiful view is all the more precious for its rarity. The last time Cassini captured a view like this was in Sept. 2006, when it captured a mosaic processed to look like natural color, entitled "In Saturn's Shadow". In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making "In Saturn's Shadow" one of the most popular Cassini images to date. Earth does not appear in this mosaic as it is hidden behind the planet. Also captured in this image are two of Saturn's moons: Enceladus and Tethys. Both appear on the left side of the planet, below the rings. Enceladus is closer to the rings; Tethys is below and to the left. This view looks toward the non-illuminated side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ring plane. Images taken using infrared, red and violet spectral filters were combined to create this enhanced-color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 17, 2012 at a distance of approximately 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale at Saturn is about 30 miles per pixel (50 kilometers per pixel). *Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute \[[high-resolution](http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA14934.jpg)\]* *Caption: [Cassini Solstice team](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA14934)*
