Rocky diamond planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star, Earth-size planet found in neighboring solar system and the true color image of Titan's colorful south polar vortex are among the top picks for this weeks most amazing space photos. Enjoy these artistic sampling of the far-away worlds.
A photo provided by NASA shows a Spitzer Space Telescope view of the North American nebula in the visiible light spectrum. The shape of North America is a result of clouds of dust obscuring light.
This handout illustration obtained by Reuters October 11, 2012, shows the interior of the planet 55 Cancri e - an extremely hot planet with a surface of mostly graphite surrounding a thick layer of diamond, below which is a layer of silicon-based minerals and a molten iron core at the center.
This artist's impression shows the planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth in this image released on October 17, 2012. Alpha Centauri B is the most brilliant object in the sky and the other dazzling object is Alpha Centauri A. Our own Sun is visible to the upper right. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO...s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
This WISE images shows IC 443, also known as the jellyfish nebula, which is located 5,000 light-years away from Earth inside the Gemini constellation. About 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, a massive star at the center exploded, forming a jellyfish-shaped shell around its remains.
This WISE image shows off the flower-shaped nebula, NGC 2237, also known as the rosette nebula. The nebula is a massive, star-forming cloud of gas and dust located within the constellation Monoceres, or the Unicorn.
Photo by: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team
In this image released on Sept. 21, 2010, the WISE telescope captured an infrared view of nebula DG 129, gripped in the claw of the constellation Scorpius. The bright, greenish star on the right is Pi Scorpii, which marks one of the claws of the scorpion in the constellation Scorpius. DG 129 was first catalogued in 1963 by two German astronomers named Johann Dorschner and Josef Gürtler.
A true color image of Titan's colorful south polar vortex captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft before a distant flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on June 27, 2012, shows a south polar vortex, or a mass of swirling gas, around the pole in the atmosphere of the moon. The south pole of Titan which is 3,200 miles (5,150 km) across is near the center of the view. The formation of the vortex at Titan's south pole may be related to the coming southern winter and the start of what will be a south polar hood. These new, more detailed images are only possible because of Cassini's newly inclined orbits, which are the next phase of Cassini Solstice Mission. Previously, Cassini was orbiting in the equatorial plane of the planet, and the imaging team's images of the polar vortex between late March and mid-May were taken from over Titan's equator. Scientists think these new images show open cell convection. In open cells, air sinks in the center of the cell and rises at the edge, forming clouds at cell edges.
This NASA image released July 11, 2012 shows a computer-simulated image of gas from a star that is ripped apart by tidal forces as it falls into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space. Using observations from telescopes in space and on the ground, astronomers gathered the most direct evidence yet for this violent process: a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA's orbiting Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii were used to help to identify the stellar remains. A flare in ultraviolet and optical light revealed gas falling into the black hole as well as helium-rich gas that was expelled from the system. When the star is torn apart, some of the material falls into the black hole, while the rest is ejected at high speeds. The flare and its properties provide a signature of this scenario and give unprecedented details about the stellar victim.To completely rule out the possibility of an active nucleus flaring up in the galaxy instead of a star being torn apart, the team used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the hot gas. Chandra showed that the characteristics of the gas didn't match those from an active galactic nucleus.The galaxy where the supermassive black hole ripped apart the passing star in known as PS1-10jh and is located about 2.7 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers estimate the black hole in PS1-10jh has a mass of several
This NASA image obtained July 11, 2012 shows an artist's rendering which illustrates the evaporation of HD 189733b's atmosphere in response to a powerful eruption from its host star. The exoplanet is a gas giant similar to Jupiter, but about 14 percent larger and more massive. The planet circles its star at a distance of only 3 million miles, or about 30 times closer than Earth's distance from the sun. Its star, named HD 189733A, is about 80 percent the size and mass of our sun. Exoplanet HD 189733b lies so near its star that it completes an orbit every 2.2 days. In late 2011, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found that the planet's upper atmosphere was streaming away at speeds exceeding 300,000 mph. Just before the Hubble observation, NASA's Swift detected the star blasting out a strong X-ray flare, one powerful enough to blow away part of the planet's atmosphere.
A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image released on July 7, 2012 shows U Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, a star nearing the end of its life located in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe), near the North Celestial Pole. As it begins to run low on fuel, it is becoming unstable. Every few thousand years, it coughs out a nearly spherical shell of gas as a layer of helium around its core begins to fuse. The gas ejected in the star's latest eruption is clearly visible in this picture as a faint bubble of gas surrounding the star. The shell of gas, which is both much larger and much fainter than its parent star, is visible in intricate detail in Hubble's portrait. While phenomena that occur at the ends of stars' lives are often quite irregular and unstable, the shell of gas expelled from U Cam is almost perfectly spherical. The image was produced with the High Resolution Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
An alien world just two-thirds the size of Earth - one of the smallest on record - detected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is seen in this NASA artist's illustration released by NASA on July 18, 2012. The exoplanet candidate, known as UCF-1.01, orbits a star called GJ 436, which is located a mere 33 light-years away. UCF-1.01 might be the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet. Evidence for UCF-1.01 turned up when astronomers were studying a known, Neptune-sized exoplanet, called GJ 436b, seen in the background in this image. The identification of nearby small planets may lead to their characterization using future instruments. In this way, worlds like UCF-1.01 might serve as stepping stones to one day finding a habitable, Earth-like exoplanet.
This composite handout image from data taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2004 and 2005 and the Wide Field Camera 3 in April 2011 shows Herbig-Haro 110 is a geyser of hot gas from a newborn star that splashes up against and ricochets off the dense core of a cloud of molecular hydrogen, released by NASA on July 3, 2012. Although the plumes of gas look like whiffs of smoke, they are actually billions of times less dense than the smoke from a July 4 firework. This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows the integrated light from plumes, which are light-years across. Astronomers now believe that the nearby HH 270 jet grazes an immovable obstacle, a much denser, colder cloud core, and gets diverted off at about a 60-degree angle. The jet goes dark and then reemerges, having reinvented itself as HH 110.
This handout composite image by NASA/ESA from the Hubble telescope, taken between February 1-2, 2010 and obtained on April 23, 2010 shows an image of a pillar of star birth, three light-years high, depicting how scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-hot newborn stars in the nebula are shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. This pinnacle lies within a stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and deployment into an orbit around the Earth. The colours correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulphur (red).
This NASA handout image received 28 August 2007 shows a newly expanded image of the Helix nebula on the the fourth anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This spectacular object, a dying star unraveling into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike. Spitzer has mapped the expansive outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula, and probed the inner region around the central dead star to reveal what appears to be a planetary system that survived the star's chaotic death throes. The minimum expected lifetime of Spitzer was only two-and-one-half years. Now, Spitzer's cryogen is expected to last much longer, giving the mission a lifetime of more than five-and-one-half years.
This NASA handout image obtained February 1, 2010 shows the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog, perhaps the original spiral nebula--a large galaxy with a well defined spiral structure also cataloged as NGC 5194. Over 60,000 light-years across, M51's spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy, NGC 5195. Image data from the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was reprocessed to produce this alternative portrait of the well-known interacting galaxy pair. The processing sharpened details and enhanced color and contrast in otherwise faint areas, bringing out dust lanes and extended streams that cross the small companion, along with features in the surroundings and core of M51 itself. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant. Not far on the sky from the handle of the Big Dipper, they officially lie within the boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. AFP PHOTO/Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI). Additional Processing:
This artists concept released October 6, 2011 of the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula, with a Hubble Space Telescope photo of the nebula in the background. Researchers using the Veritas telescope array have discovered pulses of high-energy gamma rays coming from this object.
This infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) showcases the Tadpole Nebula, a star-forming hub in the Auriga constellation about 12,000 light-years from Earth. As WISE scanned the sky, capturing this mosaic of stitched-together frames, it caught an asteroid in our solar system passing by. The asteroid, called 1719 Jens, left tracks across the image. A second asteroid was also observed cruising by.
NASA handout image dated February 2011 shows a swirling landscape of stars known as the North America Nebula. In visible light, the region resembles North America, but in this image infrared view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the continent disappears. The reason you don't see it in Spitzer's view has to do, in part, with the fact that infrared light can penetrate dust whereas visible light cannot. Dusty, dark clouds in the visible image become transparent in Spitzer's view. In addition, Spitzer's infrared detectors pick up the glow of dusty cocoons enveloping baby stars. Clusters of young stars (about one million years old) can be found throughout the image. Some areas of this nebula are still very thick with dust and appear dark even in Spitzer's view. The Spitzer image contains data from both its infrared array camera and multi-band imaging photometer. Light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns has been color-coded blue; 4.5-micron light is blue-green; 5.8-micron and 8.0-micron light are green; and 24-micron light is red.
GJ1214b, shown in this artist’s view, is a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show that it is a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. GJ 1214b represents a new type of planet, like nothing seen in the Solar System or any other planetary system currently known.
This artist's impression shows a red giant engulfing a Jupiter-like planet as it expands.
This artist's impression shows a red giant engulfing a Jupiter-like planet as it expands.
This glowing emerald nebula seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is named RCW 120; it is about 4,300 light-years away in the tail of the constellation Scorpius. The false-color image was created by assigning brilliant colors to wavelengths that are usually invisible to the human eye.
An artist rendering illustrates the newly discovered world (HAT-P-1) that has baffled astronomers, since the planet is much larger than theory predicts, scientists said September 14, 2006. HAT-P-1 has a radius about 1.38 times Jupiter's but contains only half Jupiter's mass.
An artist rendering illustrates the newly discovered world (HAT-P-1) that has baffled astronomers, since the planet is much larger than theory predicts, scientists said September 14, 2006. HAT-P-1 has a radius about 1.38 times Jupiter's but contains only half Jupiter's mass.
An artist's impression shows a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. The planet is so close it to its star that it completes an orbit in 10.5 hours. The planet is only 750,000 miles from the star, or 1/130th the distance between Earth and the Sun. The Jupiter-sized planet orbits an unnamed red dwarf star that lies in the direction of the Galactic Centre; the exact stellar distance is unknown.
NASA handout image shows an artist's concept of the planet Kepler-16b with its two stars. The cold planet, with its gaseous surface, is not thought to be habitable. The largest of the two stars, a K dwarf, is about 69 percent the mass of our sun, and the smallest, a red dwarf, is about 20 percent the sun's mass. These star pairs are called eclipsing binaries.
NASA handout image shows an artist's concept of the circumbinary planet Kepler-16b - the first planet known to definitively orbit two stars. The cold planet, with its gaseous surface, is not thought to be habitable. The largest of the two stars, a K dwarf, is about 69 percent the mass of our sun, and the smallest, a red dwarf, is about 20 percent the sun's mass. These star pairs are called eclipsing binaries.
This artist's impression shows a sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc. The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system. The other two more distant stars, Gliese 667 A and B appear in the sky also to the right. Astronomers have estimated that there are tens of billions of such rocky worlds orbiting faint red dwarf stars in the Milky Way alone.
A handout photo from the European Space Agency released December 10, 2008 shows an artist's impression of the Jupiter-size extrasolar planet, HD 189733b, being eclipsed by its parent star. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have measured carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the planet's atmosphere. The planet is a ?hot Jupiter?, so close to its parent star that it completes an orbit in only 2.2 days. This type of observation is best carried out when the planet's orbit takes it behind the star (as seen from Earth), allowing for an opportunity to subtract the light of the star alone (when the planet is hidden behind it) from that of the star and planet together before an eclipse. This allows astronomers to isolate the infrared emission of the planet and carry out spectroscopic observations that chemically analyse the dayside atmosphere.
Handout picture released June 14, 2005 shows an artist's conception of a newly discovered planet being shown as a hot, rocky, geologically active world glowing in the deep red light of its nearby parent star, the M dwarf Gliese 876. The heat and the reddish light are among the few things about the new planet that are certain, depending on the thickness and composition of its atmosphere - if any - it could range from being a barren, cratered ball of rock like Mercury or the Moon, to being a featureless, cloud-shrouded cue-ball like Venus.