Interspace News

High-Phase Plumes

Saturn's moon Enceladus, imaged at high phase, shows off its spectacular water ice plumes emanating from its south polar region. This image was captured at a phase, or sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, angle of 159 degrees so that sunlight would reveal the backlit plumes. Sunlight brightly illuminates terrain on the left. Light reflected off Saturn illuminates the rest of the moon more dimly. This view looks toward the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across). North is up. Background stars, elongated by the movement of the spacecraft during the exposure, are also visible. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 13, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 431,000 kilometers (268,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Smooth Telesto

The smooth surface of Saturn's moon Telesto is documented in this image captured during the Cassini spacecraft's Aug. 27, 2009, flyby. This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Telesto (25 kilometers, or 16 miles across). North on the moon is up and rotated 3 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) from Telesto and at a sun-Telesto-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 48 degrees. Image scale is 214 meters (702 feet) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

30 years of Asteroid Discovery

This image shows the number of asteroids discovered in the inner solar system over just the last 30 years. It does not inclde the 20,000 plus asteroids reciently discovered by NASA's WISE spacecraft. British astronomer Scott Manley created a fascinating color-coded video, which shows the discovery of every new asteroid over the past three decades and charts it on an increasingly congested map of the solar system the video can be found at: http://wn.com/Asteroid_Discovery_From_1980__2010_HD

Galaxy at the Edge

Spiral galaxy NGC 4921 presently is estimated to be 320 million light years distant. This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is being used to identify key stellar distance markers known as Cepheid variable stars. The magnificent spiral NGC 4921 has been informally dubbed anemic because of its low rate of star formation and low surface brightness. Visible in the image are, from the center, a bright nucleus, a bright central bar, a prominent ring of dark dust, blue clusters of recently formed stars, several smaller companion galaxies, unrelated galaxies in the far distant universe, and unrelated stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Cook (LLNL)

North Polar Crater on Mars

This photo from NASAs MRO spacecraft shows an impact crater on the north pole of the planet Mars. Impact craters on the North polar cap of Mars are rare which tells us that the landscape is being actively resurfaced. We know how often impact craters are formed and so we can deduce how fast they are being removed by looking at the size of the crater population. Craters are removed here when they fill up with fresh ice so information on how fast this ice forms can tell us about the climate of Mars both today and in the recent past. The stereo topography allows us to calculate how much time the floor is in shadow, which determines its temperature and how fast ice accumulates there. The crater pictured here will likely last about 10,000 years before being completely filled with ice. Written by: Shane Byrne Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/USGS

Dry Ice and Dunes On Mars

Mars has a vast sea of sand dunes in the high latitude region encircling its North polar cap, known as the North polar erg. These dunes are made up of basalt and gypsum sand grains. In some regions of the North polar erg where the sand supply is limited they take on an elongated crescent shape (see PSP_009324_2650). The icy ground that the dunes are on top of has irregular polygonal patterns. In other areas with an abundant supply of sand the dunes are continuous. The entire North polar erg is covered in the winter with a seasonal polar cap composed of carbon dioxide (dry ice). In the springtime this seasonal polar cap evaporates. This image shows the dunes mostly still covered with dry ice, but the dark spots are places where the ice has evaporated and the dark sand of the dune is visible. Written by: Candy Hansen Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Narrow Band

The shadows of Saturn's rings cast onto the planet appear as a thin band at the equator in this image taken as the planet approached its August 2009 equinox. The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun's angle to the ringplane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. Before and after equinox, Cassini's cameras have spotted not only the predictable shadows of some of Saturn's moons , but also the shadows of newly revealed vertical structures in the rings themselves . For an earlier view of the rings' wide shadows draped high on the northern hemisphere, see Sliding Shadows. The planet's southern hemisphere can be seen through the transparent D ring in the lower right of the image. The rings have been brightened by a factor of 9.5 relative to the planet to enhance visibility. This view looks toward the northern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 30 degrees above the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 18, 2009 at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 122 kilometers (76 miles) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Mars’s mysterious elongated crater

This stunning immage of Orcus Patera on Mars was returned by ESa'S Mars Express spacecraft. Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons. This well-defined depression extends approximately 380 km by 140 km in a NNE–SSW direction. It has a rim that rises up to 1800 m above the surrounding plains, while the floor of the depression lies 400–600 m below the surroundings. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Martian Atmosphere Profiles

The Mars Climate Sounder instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter maps the vertical distribution of temperatures, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere as the orbiter flies a near-polar orbit. This example of data from the instrument shows 13 orbits of nighttime temperatures at altitudes of zero to 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the surface, presented as curtains along the orbital track. Temperatures range from 120 Kelvin (minus 244 degrees Fahrenheit), coded purple, to 200 Kelvin (minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit), coded green. The data are from March 1, 2008, which was during early spring on northern Mars. The globe of Mars depicted under the curtains is a Google Earth product using elevation data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. The ExoMars Climate Sounder, selected in August 2010 as part of the science payload for the 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission, will resemble the Mars Climate Sounder and provide similar types of data sets. The 2016 mission is a collaboration of the European Space Agency and NASA. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., supplied and operates the Mars Climate Sounder for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and will supply and operate the ExoMars Climate Sounder for the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. JPL also manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate and manages NASA's roles in the 2016 mission. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Islands of Four Mountains

The picturesque, but snow-capped volcanoes, composing the Islands of the Four Mountains in Alaska's Aleutian Island chain look suspiciously like an alien world in this August 2010 image from the ASTER camera aboard NASA's orbiting Terra satellite. The islands contain restless Mt. Cleveland, an active volcano currently being watched to see if it emits an ash cloud that could affect air travel over parts of North America. A close look at Mt. Cleveland, seen near the image center, shows red vegetation (false color), a white snow-covered peak, a light plume of gas and ash, and dark lanes where ash and debris fell or flowed. Millions of volcanoes have likely been active over the turbulent history of the Earth's surface, while about 20 volcanoes are erupting even today, at any given time. Image Credit: NASA

WISE Captures the Unicorn's Rose

Unicorns and roses are usually the stuff of fairy tales, but a new cosmic image taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE) shows the Rosette nebula located within the constellation Monoceros, or the Unicorn. This flower-shaped nebula, also known by the less romantic name NGC 2237, is a huge star-forming cloud of dust and gas in our Milky Way galaxy. Estimates of the nebula's distance vary from 4,500 to 5,000 light-years away. At the center of the flower is a cluster of young stars called NGC 2244. The most massive stars produce huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and blow strong winds that erode away the nearby gas and dust, creating a large, central hole. The radiation also strips electrons from the surrounding hydrogen gas, ionizing it and creating what astronomers call an HII region. Although the Rosette nebula is too faint to see with the naked eye, NGC 2244 is beloved by amateur astronomers because it is visible through a small telescope or good pair of binoculars. The English astronomer John Flamsteed discovered the star cluster NGC 2244 with a telescope around 1690, but the nebula itself was not identified until John Herschel (son of William Herschel, discoverer of infrared light) observed it almost 150 years later. The streak seen at lower left is the trail of a satellite, captured as WISE snapped the multiple frames that make up this view. This image is a four-color composite created by all four of WISE's infrared detectors. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust. JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA Credit: JPL/NASA

A Molten Flood

A flood of impact melt swept away from the rim of Necho crater. NAC image M119041553; scene width is 540 m. Large impacts are catastrophic events for the local area. Besides the huge craters they leave behind (this one is 30 km or 19 miles across), impacts heat portions of the crust to such high temperatures that rocks melt and flow like lava, as seen in today's featured image. These melts run downhill, cool and solidify, leaving behind beautiful flow features also highlighted in several past featured images. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

The Moon Is Shrinking!

Newly discovered cliffs in the lunar crust indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today, according to a team analyzing new images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The results provide important clues to the moon's recent geologic and tectonic evolution. Over recent geologic time, as the lunar interior cooled and contracted, the moon's radius shrank by about 100 m. As a result its brittle crust ruptured and thrust faults (compression) formed distinctive landforms known as lobate scarps. In a particularly dramatic example, a thrust fault pushed crustal materials (arrows) up the side of the farside impact crater named Gregory (2.1°N, 128.1°E). By mapping the distribution and determining the size of all lobate scarps, the tectonic and thermal history of the moon can be reconstructed over the past billion years. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian

NASA Images Show Anatomy of Pakistan Flood Disaster

In late July 2010, flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains began in several regions of Pakistan, including the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and parts of Baluchistan. According to the Associated Press, the floods have affected about one-fifth of the country. Tens of thousands of villages have been flooded, more than 1,500 people have been killed, and millions have been left homeless. The floodwaters are not expected to fully recede before late August. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft captured this cloud-free image over the city of Sukkur, Pakistan, on Aug. 18, 2010. Sukkur, a city of a half-million residents located in southeastern Pakistan's Sindh Province, is visible as the grey, urbanized area in the lower left center of the image. It lies along the Indus River, Pakistan's longest, which snakes vertically from north to south through the image and is the basis for the world's largest canal-based irrigation system. As reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation, Sukkur is one of the few urban areas in the region that has thus far escaped widespread destruction from the flooding, which has affected an estimated 4,000,000 people in the province. Relief camps have sprung up across the city to house some of these displaced people. The land along the Indus River in this region is largely agricultural, and the flooding has taken a heavy toll on the region's crops and fruit trees. The ASTER image is located at 27.8 degrees north latitude, 68.9 degrees east longitude, and covers an area of 62.4 by 77.6 kilometers (38.7 by 48.3 miles). With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. More information about ASTER is available at http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Galactic Super Volcano Eruption!

This image shows the eruption of a galactic “super-volcano” in the massive galaxy M87, as witnessed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NSF's Very Large Array (VLA). At a distance of about 50 million light years, M87 is relatively close to Earth and lies at the center of the Virgo cluster, which contains thousands of galaxies. The cluster surrounding M87 is filled with hot gas glowing in X-ray light (and shown in blue) that is detected by Chandra. As this gas cools, it can fall toward the galaxy's center where it should continue to cool even faster and form new stars. However, radio observations with the VLA (red) suggest that in M87 jets of very energetic particles produced by the black hole interrupt this process. These jets lift up the relatively cool gas near the center of the galaxy and produce shock waves in the galaxy's atmosphere because of their supersonic speed. The interaction of this cosmic “eruption” with the galaxy's environment is very similar to that of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland that occurred in 2010. With Eyjafjallajokull, pockets of hot gas blasted through the surface of the lava, generating shock waves that can be seen passing through the grey smoke of the volcano. This hot gas then rises up in the atmosphere, dragging the dark ash with it. This process can be seen in a movie of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano where the shock waves propagating in the smoke are followed by the rise of dark ash clouds into the atmosphere. In the analogy with Eyjafjallajokull, the energetic particles produced in the vicinity of the black hole rise through the X-ray emitting atmosphere of the cluster, lifting up the coolest gas near the center of M87 in their wake. This is similar to the hot volcanic gases drag up the clouds of dark ash. And just like the volcano here on Earth, shockwaves can be seen when the black hole pumps energetic particles into the cluster gas. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/N. Werner et al Radio: NSF/NRAO/AUI/W. Cotton

Enceladus Tiger Stripes

This increadable photo shows "Tiger Stripes" on Saturn's moon Enceladus up close and personal. Tiger stripes are a tern used to describe huge fissurs in the moons southern hemisphere. Many of these fissures are erupting water guisers betraying the presence of a warm underground water source (an ocean or a lake). The photo was taken on August 15th from a distance of about 2,671 kilometers away. Photo Credit: NASA JPL

Epimetheus Close-Up

The Cassini spacecraft snapped this high-resolution image of Saturn's small moon Epimetheus during the spacecraft's non-targeted flyby on April 7, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 107,000 kilometers (66,500 miles) from Epimetheus and at a sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 62 degrees. Lit terrain seen here is mostly on the Saturn-facing side of Epimetheus (113 kilometers, or 70 miles across). North on Epimetheus is up and rotated 26 degrees to the left. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. Image scale is 641 meters (2,103 feet) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Tiger Stripes!

This image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on August 13, 2010 from a distance of approximately 2,673 kilometers away from the planets enagmatic moon Enceladus. The image shows a tiger stripe. This particular "tiger stripe" -- which is the nickname for the fissures spewing water vapor and organic particles out into space - is called Damascus Sulcus. It was also the subject of a heat scan by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer. Scientists are still analyzing the results. Note how there appears to be a haze over the fissure. This is because the fissure is erupting liguid water. Individual velts can be seen as small holes that run along the bottom of the fissure. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL