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Looking back from a quarter million miles past closest approach, New Horizons captured this image of Pluto’s atmosphere backlit by our sun at midnight last Wednesday (Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI).
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute This is the highest-resolution color image of Charon and Pluto returned to Earth by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. New Horizons imaged the two worlds in a single shot with its RALPH instrument on July 14, 150,000 miles from closest approach. The natural colors of Charon and Pluto have been enhanced to bring out subtle variations in surface materials (image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute).
(Source: photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov)
The sun recorded on June 20th, an inverted Calcium K-line portrait featuring active sunspot regions 2371 and 2367.
The Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer aboard the European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft returned this view of the swirling vortex at the Venusian south pole in April of 2007. This swirling long-term storm is constantly changing shape, but has been imaged as far back as 1979 by orbiting spacecraft. Venus Express concluded its mission last last year by dipping into the atmosphere of Venus and presumably breaking up on re-entry (image credit: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA/Univ. Oxford).
This was the five-mile high view of Titan returned from the ESA’s Huygens probe ten years ago today, as it descended through the moon’s atmosphere on its way to a landing on a crusty surface strewn with pebbles of water ice. On January 14, 2005 Huygens reported back from the surface of Saturn’s largest moon with a report of light winds, temperatures around -274°F, and atmospheric pressure just a bit higher than our own (image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory provided this look at 2015’s “first notable flare” last last night on the sun’s limb (image credit: NASA/SDO).
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko backlit by the sun, as imaged by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft from less than 20 miles off the comet’s surface on Sunday (image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM).
This best-ever image of a proto-planetary disc was captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), orbiting the star HL Tau, 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. What’s especially amazing about this image is that the star is thought to be only a million years old, and already distinct gaps are forming in the dust and gas of its disc (image credit: ALMA/NRAO/ESO/NAOJ/AUI/NSF/C. Brogan/B. Saxton).
Ganymede’s shadow is cast across the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, in this view of the gas giant from the Hubble Space Telescope in April (image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon/Goddard Space Flight Center)
This is what our world looks like from just beyond our Moon, today. This image was returned by the Chinese Chang'e 5 T1 vehicle as it swung around the Moon on its test flight, to return to Earth on November 1st (source: Xinhua/Defense Science and Industry Bureau).
Amazing shot of 78,000 mile-wide sunspot group AR 2192 by alanfriedman. 2192 is currently pointed toward the Earth, and is nearly as large as the planet Jupiter.
The cliffs and boulder-strewn surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as imaged by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft from 38 miles off the surface last Friday. Although the comet’s nucleus appears bright in this view against the blackness of space, its surface albedo is so low that it’s more comparable in brightness to a charcoal briquette (image credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA).
True-color image of Mars taken during a February, 2007 pass by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta was about 150,000 miles from the red planet at the time (image credit: ESA/OSIRIS).
Twenty five years ago, this was Voyager 2’s three million mile view of the receding ice giant Neptune and its largest moon Triton, three days after the spacecraft completed the first (and only) flyby of the most distant planet in our solar system (image credit: NASA).
Dust and scattered boulders accumulate in the “neck” connecting the two lobes of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as seen by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft from orbit around the comet’s nucleus on August 7th. Rosetta caught up with the comet this month after a ten year journey, and will accompany it on its plummet toward our Sun in the months ahead. The European Space Agency’s earthbound team is currently surveying the object to locate the ideal landing spot for its onboard Philae lander, set to deploy in November (image credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA).
