Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: Pluto's Stunning Icy Mountains
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/shrinking-moon-tides">NASA/LRO/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution</a>01SPoW-Sept13-19-06
A prominent lobate fault scarp in the Vitello Cluster is one of thousands discovered in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images (LROC). Topography derived from the LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images shows a degraded crater has been uplift as the fault scarp has formed (blues are lower elevations and reds are higher elevations).
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1536a/">ESO</a>02SPoW-Sept13-19-01
The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy, pictured in a new image from the Wide Field Imager camera, installed on the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, is a close neighbor of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Despite their proximity, both galaxies have very distinct histories and characters. This galaxy is much smaller, fainter and older than the Milky Way and appears here as a cloud of faint stars filling most of the picture.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-wows-in-spectacular-new-backlit-panorama">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>03SPoW-Sept13-19-05
Majestic Mountains and Frozen Plains: Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/hubble-observes-galaxies-evolution-in-slow-motion">ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt</a>04SPoW-Sept13-19-03
NGC 3921 — found in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) — is an interacting pair of disk galaxies in the late stages of its merger. Observations show that both of the galaxies involved were about the same mass and collided about 700 million years ago. You can see clearly in this image the disturbed morphology, tails and loops characteristic of a post-merger.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/clear-skies-over-the-united-states">NASA</a>05SPoW-Sept13-19-04
On Sept. 17, 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured images and video from the International Space Station during an early morning flyover of the United States.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1536c/">ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2</a>06SPoW-Sept13-19-02
This image of the sky around the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy was created from pictures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The galaxy appears as a small faint cloud close to the centre of the picture.
