1. Huge Eruptive Prominence Seen on Sun
The STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft caught this spectacular eruptive
prominence in extreme UV light as it blasted away from the Sun (Apr.
12-13, 2010). This was certainly among the largest prominence eruptions
seen by either the STEREO or SOHO missions. The length of the prominence
appears to stretch almost halfway across the sun, about 500,000 miles.
Prominences are cooler clouds of plasma that hover above the Sun’s
surface, tethered by magnetic forces. They are notoriously unstable and
commonly erupt as this one did in a dramatic fashion. [
Source]
2. The Crab Nebula
This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA’s
Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide
expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese
astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054,
as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.
The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist
mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the
center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula’s eerie interior
bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the
speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The
neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that
appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star’s rotation. A
neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star.
The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing
made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope.
When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such
as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the Crab
Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the
spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away.
The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field
and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000,
and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different
elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments
in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is
singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen. [
Source]
3. Planet Earth
This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color
image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based
observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of
observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a
seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile)
of our planet.
Much of the information contained in this image came from a single
remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard
the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a
variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth.
The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface
observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined,
or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might
block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day.
Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow
water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data.
Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled
by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of
polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite
of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a
third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles. Global city
lights, derived from 9 months of observations from the Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program, are superimposed on a darkened land
surface map. [
Source]
4. Typhoon Nabi
(3 September 2005) — Typhoon Nabi is featured in this image
photographed by an Expedition 11 crewmember on the International Space
Station, as it swirls in the Pacific Ocean, heading toward southern
Korea and Japan. At the time this image was taken Typhoon Nabi was ~23N
133E with sustained winds ~100 knots, gusting to 120 knots. [
Source]
5. Manam Volcano, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea’s Manam Volcano released a thin, faint plume on June
16, 2010, as clouds clustered at the volcano’s summit. The Advanced
Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite took this
picture the same day. Rivulets of brown rock interrupt the carpet of
green vegetation on the volcano’s slopes. Opaque white clouds partially
obscure the satellite’s view of Manam. The clouds may result from water
vapor from the volcano, but may also have formed independent of volcanic
activity. The volcanic plume appears as a thin, blue-gray veil
extending toward the northwest over the Bismarck Sea.
Located 13 kilometers (8 miles) off the coast of mainland Papua New
Guinea, Manam forms an island 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide. It is a
stratovolcano. The volcano has two summit craters, and although both are
active, most historical eruptions have arisen from the southern crater.
NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI
data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team. Caption by Michon Scott.
Instrument: EO-1 – ALI [
Source]
6. Phytoplankton Bloom in the Barents Sea
In this natural-color image from August 31, 2010, the ocean’s canvas
swirls with turquoise, teal, navy, and green, the abstract art of the
natural world. The colors were painted by a massive phytoplankton bloom
made up of millions of tiny, light-reflecting organisms growing in the
sunlit surface waters of the Barents Sea. Such blooms peak every August
in the Barents Sea.
The variations in color are caused by different species and
concentrations of phytoplankton. The bright blue colors are probably
from coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton that is coated in a
chalky shell that reflects light, turning the ocean a milky turquoise.
Coccolithophores dominate the Barents Sea in August. Shades of green are
likely from diatoms, another type of phytoplankton. Diatoms usually
dominate the Barents Sea earlier in the year, giving way to
coccolithophores in the late summer. However, field measurements of
previous August blooms have also turned up high concentrations of
diatoms.
The Barents Sea is a shallow sea sandwiched between the coastline of
northern Russia and Scandinavia and the islands of Svalbard, Franz Josef
Land, and Novaya Zemlya. Within the shallow basin, currents carrying
warm, salty water from the Atlantic collide with currents carrying cold,
fresher water from the Arctic. During the winter, strong winds drive
the currents and mix the waters. When winter’s sea ice retreats and
light returns in the spring, diatoms thrive, typically peaking in a
large bloom in late May.
The shift between diatoms and coccolithophores occurs as the Barents
Sea changes during the summer months. Throughout summer, perpetual light
falls on the waters, gradually warming the surface. Eventually, the
ocean stratifies into layers, with warm water sitting on top of cooler
water. The diatoms deplete most of the nutrients in the surface waters
and stop growing. Coccolithophores, on the other hand, do well in warm,
nutrient-depleted water with a lot of light. In the Barents Sea, these
conditions are strongest in August.
The shifting conditions and corresponding change in species lead to
strikingly beautiful multicolored blooms such as this one. The Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite
acquired this image. [
Source]
7. The Tarantula Nebula
A blue-hot star, 90 times more massive than our Sun, is hurtling
across space fast enough to make a round trip from Earth to the Moon in
merely two hours. Though the speed is not a record-breaker, it is unique
to find a homeless star that has traveled so far from its nest. The
only way the star could have been ejected from the star cluster where it
was born is through a tussle with a rogue star that entered the binary
system where the star lived, which ejected the star through a dynamical
game of stellar pinball.
This is strong circumstantial evidence for stars as massive as 150
times our Sun’s mass living in the cluster. Only a very massive star
would have the gravitational energy to eject something weighing 90 solar
masses. The runaway star is on the outskirts of the 30 Doradus nebula, a
raucous stellar breeding ground in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud.
The finding bolsters evidence that the most massive stars in the local
universe reside in 30 Doradus, making it a unique laboratory for
studying heavyweight stars. 30 Doradus, also called the Tarantula
Nebula, is roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth. [
Source]
8. Saturn’s Death Star/Pac-Man Moon
The highest-resolution-yet temperature map and images of Saturn’s icy
moon Mimas obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveal surprising
patterns on the surface of the small moon, including unexpected hot
regions that resemble “Pac-Man” eating a dot, and striking bands of
light and dark in crater walls.
The left portion of this image shows Mimas in visible light, an image
that has drawn comparisons to the “Star Wars” Death Star. The right
portion shows the new temperature map, which resembles 1980s video game
icon “Pac Man.” [
Source]
9. Detail of the Kamchatka Peninsula
Detail view of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. This is a false-color
satellite image, acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission
and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on March 10, 2010.
10. Iceberg Collision at Mertz Glacier Tongue, Antarctica
At 94 kilometers (58 miles) by 39 kilometers (24 miles) in size, the
B-09B iceberg is comparable to the state of Rhode Island, which is wider
but not quite so long. After lingering near the Mertz Glacier in
Eastern Antarctica for several years, the massive iceberg collided with
the glacier tongue on February 12 or 13, breaking it away from the rest
of the glacier. The former glacier tongue formed a new iceberg nearly as
large as B-09B. These images, all from the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite, show the
iceberg and glacier tongue immediately before and after the collision.
The iceberg formed from the Mertz Glacier Tongue is 78 kilometers (48
miles) long by 39 kilometers (24 miles) wide and has a mass of 700-800
billion tons, reported BBC News. The glacier tongue had previously
contributed to keeping a section of the ocean free of ice, a condition
known as a polynya. The polynya provided a significant feeding site for
wildlife like penguins. The shorter tongue may not protect the area from
sea ice, reducing or even eliminating the polynya and the access to
food it provided. [
Source]
11. The Messier 66 Spiral Galaxy
Hubble has snapped a spectacular view of M 66, the largest “player”
of the Leo Triplet, and a galaxy with an unusual anatomy: it displays
asymmetric spiral arms and an apparently displaced core. The peculiar
anatomy is most likely caused by the gravitational pull of the other two
members of the trio.
The unusual spiral galaxy, Messier 66, is located at a distance of
about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo. Together with
Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is the member of the Leo Triplet, a
trio of interacting spiral galaxies, part of the larger Messier 66
group. Messier 66 wins in size over its fellow triplets — it is about
100 000 light-years across.
This is a composite of images obtained through the following filters:
814W (near infrared), 555W (green) and H-alpha (showing the glowing of
the hydrogen gas). They have been combined so to represent the real
colours of the galaxy. [
Source]
12. The Great Lakes, No Clouds
Late August 2010 provided a rare satellite view of a cloudless summer
day over the entire Great Lakes region. North Americans trying to sneak
in a Labor Day weekend getaway on the lakes were hoping for more of the
same.
The Great Lakes comprise the largest collective body of fresh water
on the planet, containing roughly 18 percent of Earth’s supply. Only the
polar ice caps contain more fresh water. The region around the Great
Lakes basin is home to more than 10 percent of the population of the
United States and 25 percent of the population of Canada.
The image was gathered by the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite at 1:30 p.m. Central
Daylight Time (18:30 UTC) on August 28. Open water appears blue or
nearly black. The pale blue and green swirls near the coasts are likely
caused by algae or phytoplankton blooms, or by calcium carbonate (chalk)
from the lake floor. The sweltering summer temperatures have produced
an unprecedented bloom of toxic blue-green algae in western Lake Erie,
according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. [
Source]
13. Two Colliding Galaxies
A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by
NASA’s Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62
million light-years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from
the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold
and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies
take their name from the long antenna-like “arms,” seen in wide-angle
views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces
generated in the collision.
The collision, which began more than 100 million years ago and is
still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in
clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young
stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years
and exploded as supernovas.
The X-ray image from Chandra shows huge clouds of hot, interstellar
gas that have been injected with rich deposits of elements from
supernova explosions. This enriched gas, which includes elements such as
oxygen, iron, magnesium, and silicon, will be incorporated into new
generations of stars and planets. The bright, point-like sources in the
image are produced by material falling onto black holes and neutron
stars that are remnants of the massive stars. Some of these black holes
may have masses that are almost one hundred times that of the Sun.
The Spitzer data show infrared light from warm dust clouds that have
been heated by newborn stars, with the brightest clouds lying in the
overlapping region between the two galaxies. The Hubble data reveal old
stars and star-forming regions in gold and white, while filaments of
dust appear in brown. Many of the fainter objects in the optical image
are clusters containing thousands of stars.
The Chandra image was taken in December 1999. The Spitzer image was
taken in December 2003. The Hubble image was taken in July 2004, and
February 2005. [
Source]
14. Permanent Light on Earth’s Surface
This image of Earth’s city lights was created with data from the
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan
System (OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS
is also used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth’s
surface.
The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not
necessarily the most populated. (Compare western Europe with China and
India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation
networks. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many
continents would still be visible. The United States interstate highway
system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city
centers. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line
stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The
Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another
bright thread through an otherwise dark region.
Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light,
some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. Antarctica is entirely
dark. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark,
but lights are beginning to appear there. Deserts in Africa, Arabia,
Australia, Mongolia, and the United States are poorly lit as well
(except along the coast), along with the boreal forests of Canada and
Russia, and the great mountains of the Himalaya. [
Source]
15. Earth: The Water Planet
Viewed from space, the most striking feature of our planet is the
water. In both liquid and frozen form, it covers 75% of the Earth’s
surface. It fills the sky with clouds. Water is practically everywhere
on Earth, from inside the rocky crust to inside our cells.
This detailed, photo-like view of Earth is based largely on
observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. It is one of many images of our
watery world featured in a new story examining water in all of its forms
and functions. Here is an excerpt: “In all, the Earth’s water content
is about 1.39 billion cubic kilometers (331 million cubic miles), with
the bulk of it, about 96.5%, being in the global oceans. As for the
rest, approximately 1.7% is stored in the polar icecaps, glaciers, and
permanent snow, and another 1.7% is stored in groundwater, lakes,
rivers, streams, and soil.
Only a thousandth of 1% of the water on Earth exists as water vapor
in the atmosphere. Despite its small amount, this water vapor has a huge
influence on the planet. Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, and
it is a major driver of the Earth’s weather and climate as it travels
around the globe, transporting heat with it.
For human needs, the amount of freshwater for drinking and
agriculture is particularly important. Freshwater exists in lakes,
rivers, groundwater, and frozen as snow and ice. Estimates of
groundwater are particularly difficult to make, and they vary widely.
Groundwater may constitute anywhere from approximately 22 to 30% of
fresh water, with ice accounting for most of the remaining 78 to 70%.” [
Source]
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