Images Archives

November 21, 2024November 21, 2024 by Evan Gough

The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way

WOH G64 is a massive red supergiant star in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Thanks to the ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, this is the first close-up picture of a star in another galaxy. Image Credit: ESO/K. Ohnaka et al.

Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer layers and preparing to explode as a supernova.

Astronomers have been observing the huge star, named WOH G64, since its discovery in the 1970s. It’s one of the largest known stars, and also one of the most luminous and massive red supergiants (RSGs). The star is surrounded by an envelope of expelled star-stuff, which could indicate it’s getting ready to explode.

November 21, 2024November 21, 2024 by Evan Gough

Gaze at New Pictures of the Sun from Solar Orbiter

The Solar Orbiter has captured the highest resolution images of the Sun ever during a recent close encounter. The detail is extraordinary. Image Credit: ESA - European Space Agency

74 million kilometres is a huge distance from which to observe something. But 74 million km isn’t such a big deal when the object is the Sun.

That’s how far away from the Sun the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter was when it captured these new images.

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024 by Evan Gough

It Takes Very Special Conditions to Create This Bizarre Stellar Spectacle

A binary star system called R Aquarii undergoes violent eruptions that blast out huge filaments of glowing gas in this Hubble Space Telescope image. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Matthias Stute , Margarita Karovska , Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Hubble)

A stellar odd couple 700 light-years away is creating a chaotically beautiful display of colourful, gaseous filaments. The Hubble captured the pair, named R Aquarii, and their symbiotic interactions. Every 44 years the system’s violent eruptions blast out filaments of gas at over 1.6 million kilometers per hour.

November 12, 2024November 12, 2024 by Evan Gough

An Otherworldly Cloud Over New Zealand

Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager captured this unique lenticular cloud that forms over the Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island. Image Credit: NASA/Lauren Dauphin; USGS

Filmmakers love New Zealand. Its landscapes evoke other worlds, which explains why so much of The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. The country has everything from long, subtropical sandy beaches to active volcanoes.

The country’s otherworldliness extends into its atmosphere, where a cloud nicknamed the “Taieri Pet” forms when conditions are right.

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024 by Evan Gough

BepiColombo’s New Images of Mercury are Cool

BepiColombo captured this image of Mercury with its Monitoring Camera 3 when it was about 555 km above the surface. It shows the newly-named Stoddart Crater. Image Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft made another flyby of its eventual target, Mercury. This is one of a series of Mercury flybys, as the spacecraft completes a complex set of maneuvers designed to deliver it to the innermost planet’s orbit. Its cameras captured some fantastic images of Mercury.

August 26, 2024August 26, 2024 by Evan Gough

After a Boost from Earth and the Moon, Juice is On its Way to Venus and Beyond

The ESA's Juice spacecraft is on a long journey to the Jovian system. It's the first spacecraft to perform an Earth-lunar flyby for a gravity assist. Image Credit: ESA

The first spacecraft to use gravity assist was NASA’s Mariner 10 in 1974. It used a gravity assist from Venus to reach Mercury. Now, the gravity assist maneuver is a crucial part of modern space travel.

The latest spacecraft to use gravity assist is the ESA’s JUICE spacecraft.

July 3, 2024July 3, 2024 by Evan Gough

A New View of Olympus Mons

100,000 orbits requires some sort of recognition. NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured this single image of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, on March 11, 2024. Besides providing an unprecedented view of the volcano, the image helps scientists study different layers of material in the atmosphere, including clouds and dust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

After 100,000 orbits and almost 23 years on Mars, NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter has seen a lot. The spacecraft was sent to map ice and study its geology, but along the way, it’s captured more than 1.4 million images of the planet.

A recent image captured the Solar System’s tallest mountain and volcano, Olympus Mons.

June 28, 2024June 28, 2024 by Evan Gough

Take a Look at These Stunning New Exoplanet Infographics

"Icy and Rocky Worlds" is a new exoplanet infographic from Martin Vargic, an artist and space enthusiast from Slovakia. It's available as a wall poster on his website. Image Credit and Copyright: Martin Vargic.

Martin Vargic is a space enthusiast, author, and graphic artist from Slovakia. He created two new infographic posters that show almost 1600 exoplanets of different types and sizes. One is called Icy and Rocky Worlds, and the other is called The Exoplanet Zoo.

June 20, 2024June 20, 2024 by Evan Gough

Here’s Hubble’s First Image in its New Pointing Mode

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the galaxy NGC 1546 while in single gyro mode. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, David Thilker (JHU)

This is probably what the demise of the Hubble Space Telescope was always going to look like: components failing one by one, with no way to replace them. In the last few months, the Hubble has repeatedly gone into safe mode as one of its remaining three gyros keeps giving faulty readings. But the Hubble and the people operating it are resilient and resourceful. The telescope is back to science operations now, though in single gyro mode.

NASA has released the first image the Hubble captured in this mode, and it’s clear that the Hubble is performing well.

June 4, 2024June 4, 2024 by Evan Gough

How Mars’ Moon Phobos Captures Our Imaginations

This is a colourized version of a black and white image captured by the ESA's Mars Express in 2010. Andrea Luck, a skilled image processor from Glasgow, improved the original image. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY. Original Image: https://www.planetary.org/space-images/20130714_phobosnd_img

For a small, lumpy chunk of rock that barely reflects any light, Mars’ Moon Phobos draws a lot of attention. Maybe because it’s one of only two moons to orbit the planet, and its origins are unclear. But some of the attention is probably because we have such great images of it.