Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: A Beautiful Blue Nebula Says Good Night
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/hubble-sees-an-aging-star-wave-goodbye"> ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Serge MeunierESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Serge Meunier</a>01SPOW-Oct8-09
This is planetary nebula called PK 329-02.2 (sometimes referred to as Menzel 2, or Mz 2). A planetary nebula is formed when a star around the mass of the sun reaches the end of its life. They shed outer layers which appear as glowing clouds of gas. While not usually symmetrical, the Menzel 2 has blue clouds that perfectly align with two stars at its center. The nebula will continue this display for tens of thousands of years, but will eventually fade away and become a white dwarf.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/nh/nh-finds-blue-skies-and-water-ice-on-pluto"> NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>02SPoW-Oct8-01
New Horizons give us the first color photos of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes, which was a beautiful blue. The haze is likely from chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane cause by the sun, leading to small, soot-like particles (or tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1540a/"> ESO</a>03SPoW-Oct8-05
In this starry field contains the globular cluster NGC 6553 which has a mysterious microlensing event. Microlensing is where the light from a background source is bent by the gravitational field of a fore ground object, creating an amplified image of the background object The object causing the microlensing in NGC 6553 bent the light of a red giant star in the background (marked with an arrow). If this object lies in the cluster — something the scientists believe might only have a 50/50 chance of being correct — the object could be a black hole with a mass twice that of the Sun, making it the first of its kind to be discovered in a globular cluster. It would also be the oldest known stellar-mass black hole ever discovered. However, further observations are needed to determine the true nature of this lensing object for sure.
04SPOW-Oct8-10
A collection of new images has been released by the Chandra X-ray Observatory archive. They include SN 1987A, the brightest supernova and nearest one to Earth in the last century and galaxy cluster MS 0735.6+7421, home to one of the most powerful eruptions ever observed.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/all-along-the-fractures"> NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona</a>05SPoW-Oct8-03
A photo of martian sand dunes from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images provide information about erosion and movement of surface material, about wind and weather patterns, even about the soil grains and grain sizes. However, looking past the dunes, these images also reveal the nature of the substrate beneath. Within the spaces between the dunes, a resistant and highly fractured surface is revealed. The fractured ground is resistant to erosion by the wind, and suggests the material is bedrock that is now shattered by a history of bending stresses or temperature changes, such as cooling.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1538c/"> ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2</a>06SPoW-Oct8-02
This image shows the sky around the nearby young star AU Microscopii. It was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. AU Mic appears just below the centre of the image as an orangish star of moderate brightness. Because the photographs through different coloured filters that were used to make this picture were taken many years apart, AU Mic appears double, as the star’s own proper motion has moved it a small distance across the sky in the intervening time.
<a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19839"> NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS</a>07SPoW-Oct8-04
A view from the "Kimberley" formation on Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed. The colors are adjusted so that rocks look approximately as they would if they were on Earth, to help geologists interpret the rocks. This "white balancing" to adjust for the lighting on Mars overly compensates for the absence of blue on Mars, making the sky appear light blue and sometimes giving dark, black rocks a blue cast.
