Week's Best Space Pictures: Sun Flares, Webb Prepares, and Fogo Scares
By Dan Vergano, National Geographic News, 2 January 2015.
By Dan Vergano, National Geographic News, 2 January 2015.
A battered moon shows its age, while the sun acts up and a volcano erupts, in the week's best space pictures.
1. Mimas Brandishes Battle Scars
A flyby of Saturn's scarred moon Mimas reveals the ravages of time and of meteor impacts, seen in this December 29 view from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.
Circling the ringed planet for just over a decade, Cassini has snapped unparalleled pictures of Saturn's many moons. This one comes from 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometres) above the northern side of the moon's trailing face.
Counting craters tells scientists the age of the terrain on moons such as Mimas. Older moon surfaces look much more pockmarked than younger ones.
2. O Christmas Tree
Capped by the Cone Nebula, the Christmas Tree star cluster gleams with festive lights in this view from Iran's Elburz Mountains.
Discovered by famed astronomer William Herschel in 1784, the star cluster lies some 2,600 light-years away in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation.
3. Vacuum Test for Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope faces its fiercest test inside a gigantic vacuum chamber, seen in this December 22 snapshot from NASA's Johnson Space Centre.
Once launched in 2018, the US$8.5 billion space observatory will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope in offering the deepest peeks into the cosmos. But first it needs to undergo extensive testing in the vacuum chamber, which simulates the harshness of space.
4. Fogo Is Angry
Evacuations marked the recent eruption of Fogo island, seen from space in this Christmas Eve view taken by NASA's Earth Observing-1 orbiter.
The eruption slammed into two villages located within the bowl-shaped caldera atop the island off the coast of West Africa, causing thousands to evacuate. The Cabo Verde island last erupted in 1995.
5. Christmas Eve Lights Gleam
The northern lights fire the evening skies above a Swedish cabin on Christmas Eve.
6. Glacier Dips to Drink
Middle school students asked for this December 30 look at a glacier, and space station astronauts delivered. The special delivery from space shows Argentina's Viedma Glacier, which feeds a lake after descending along a valley in the Patagonian highlands.
The students from Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California, requested the images for a project looking at the effects of a changing climate on glaciers.
7. Sun Flashes Extreme Flare
A giant solar flare flashes bright in ultraviolet light, seen in this December image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
A solar flare unleashes an intense burst of radiation into space. This one measured X1.8 on NASA's flare rating system, where X stands for "extreme," the most powerful flashes.
Photo gallery by Sherry L. Brukbacher.
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