Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: Pluto Gets a Little Psychedelic
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/psychedelic-pluto">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>01Pluto-Rainbow-01
New Horizons scientists use a technique called “principal component analysis” to transform Pluto into a rainbow of false color. The image shows off the planet’s many and distinctive regions.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasas-fermi-satellite-detects-first-gamma-ray-pulsar-in-another-galaxy">NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; background: ESO/R. Fosbury (ST-ECF)</a>02Nov8-15-06
The first extragalactic gamma-ray pulsar, PSR J0540-6919 (pictured bottom left), is discovered by NASA’s Fermi Telescope. Another, PSR J0537−6910 (upper right), was also detected. Pulsars sometimes occur after a supernova, when a neutron star becomes magnetized and starts spinning rapidly, sending out beams of radio waves, visible light, X-rays and gamma rays. PSR J0540-6919 rotates at record speed ---almost 62 times a second.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/hubble-views-a-lonely-galaxy">ESA/Hubble & NASA and N. Gorin (STScI), Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt</a>03The loneliest of galaxies
MCG+01-02-015 is an incredibly lonely galaxy. Most galaxies are spread out along thread-like formations called filaments, but between these stretch shallow but immense voids known as the universe’s wastelands with only about one atom per 3 square feet. MCG+01-02-15 is located in one of these voids, a galaxy lost in the wasteland of the cosmos.
<a href="https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1545a/">ESO/A. Plunkett</a>04Infant Star’s First Steps
CARMA-7 is a protostar. Immense jets emanate from the center, caused by periodic outbursts of gas. As the jets speed away from their infant star, they collide with interstellar material causing them to slow and spread out. One day, that material may collapse and form yet another generation of stars
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandramore-than-meets-the-eye-delta-orionis-in-orions-belt.html">X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC/M. Corcoran et al.; Optical: Eckhard Slawik</a>05Nov8-15-07
There are five stars that make up the complex system Delta Orionis. Two of these stars are in close orbit where one passes in front of another and can be seen from Earth. The pair are so bright their radiation blows powerful winds of stellar material away, affecting the chemical and physical properties of the gas in their host galaxies.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/phobos-is-falling-apart"> NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona</a>06Nov8-15-02
Mars has two moons, and one, Phobos, looks like its on its last leg. New modeling indicates the groves on the surface could be produced by tidal forces– the mutual gravitational pull of the planet and the moon. Scientists expect the moon to be pulled apart in 30 to 50 million years.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/cassini/pia18342/epimetheus-above-the-rings">NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute</a>07Nov8-15-04
Although Epimetheus appears to be lurking above Saturn’s rings, it's actually just an illusion resulting from the angle. In reality, Epimetheus and the rings both orbit in Saturn's equatorial plane. Inner moons and rings orbit very near the equatorial plane of each of the four giant planets in our solar system, but more distant moons can have orbits wildly out of the equatorial plane. It has been theorized that the highly inclined orbits of the outer, distant moons are remnants of the random directions from which they approached the planets they orbit.
