Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: These Galaxies Got a Warped POV
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-hubble-looks-to-the-final-frontier"> NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)</a>01SPoW-July22-01.jpg
The Hubble image unveils a very cluttered-looking universe filled with galaxies near and far. Some are distorted like a funhouse mirror through a warping-of-space phenomenon first predicted by Einstein a century ago. In the center of the image is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, and surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther. The cluster contains approximately 100 million-million solar masses, and contains 51 confirmed galaxies and perhaps over 400 more.
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/07/Mars_Express_spies_a_nameless_and_ancient_impact_crater"> ESA</a>02SPoW-July22-03.jpg
This photo from Mars Express captures an unnamed but eye-catching impact crater on Mars, located south-west of Mare Serpentis, a dark plain located in Noachis Terra. Visible in the top right corner of this image, the crater is around 2.5 miles deep and 31 miles in diameter. At its very center is a small depression known as a central pit. These are common in craters on rocky worlds throughout the solar system, especially on Mars, and are thought to form as icy material explosively vaporizes and turns to gas in the heat of the initial crater-forming collision.
<a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA20489"> NASA/JPL</a>03SPoW-July22-04.jpg
Saturn's main rings, along with its moons, are much brighter than most stars. As a result, much shorter exposure times are required to produce an image and not saturate the detectors of the imaging cameras on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. A longer exposure would be required to capture the stars as well. Dione (698 miles across) and Epimetheus (70 miles across) are seen in this view, above the rings at left and right respectively. The image looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 3 degrees above the ring plane.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/melt-water-over-arctic-sea-ice"> NASA/Operation IceBridge</a>04SPoW-July22-02.jpg
Sea ice across the Arctic Ocean is shrinking to below-average levels this summer. NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, just completed its first flights studying the aquamarine pools of melt water on the ice surface that may be accelerating the overall sea ice retreat. This large pool of melt water over sea ice was seen from an Operation IceBridge flight over the Beaufort Sea.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-mars-rover-can-choose-laser-targets-on-its-own"> NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>05SPoW-July22-05.jpg
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover autonomously selects some targets for the laser and telescopic camera of its ChemCam instrument. For example, on-board software analyzed the Navcam image at left, chose the target indicated with a yellow dot, and pointed ChemCam for laser shots and the image at right.
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/07/Tonga"> ESA</a>06SPoW-July22-07.jpg
The island of Tongatapu and the nearby smaller islands – all part of the Kingdom of Tonga archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean – are pictured in this Sentinel-2A image. Built on limestone, the island has fertile soil of volcanic ash from neighboring volcanoes, and you can see how agricultural structures cover most of the island. Crops include root crops such as sweet potato and cassava, as well as coconuts, bananas and coffee beans.
