Space Pictures This Week: Retro Mars, Psychedelic Sun, More
By Kastalia Medrano, National Geographic News, 20 July 2012.
By Kastalia Medrano, National Geographic News, 20 July 2012.
1. Double Take
This psychedelic image of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is actually two pictures combined, both taken on July 12. It's also one of National Geographic News's favourite recent space images.
By superimposing an extreme-ultraviolet image of arcing solar material on a "magnetogram" showing magnetic fields, scientists created a complex picture of an active region just before it unleashed a powerful solar flare.
According to NASA, such composite images help scientists better understand the origins and causes of the flares.
2. Green Day
The International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm holds steady above a green aurora australis - the southern lights - in an image taken July 15 from the space station.
The 56-foot-long (17-meter-long) arm, active since 2001, is essential to the station's construction and operations, according to the Canadian Space Agency.
3. Dark Side of the Moon
Photograph by Tunç Tezel, TWAN
As seen from Turkey, the crescent moon nearly eclipses Jupiter - with Venus soon to follow - during a July 15 conjunction, when celestial objects appear to get close to each other in the sky.
Conjunctions exist only in our heads. Celestial bodies appear to fall in line due to our location in the solar system - they're not actually any closer, or farther, from each other than at any other time.
4. Infrared
The chipped-paint quality of this photograph - snapped by NASA's Terra satellite on July 18 - was achieved by combining 14 spectral light bands, from infrared to red to green.
The result is a false-colour image of Canada's Kitikmeot region and scars it accumulated during the last ice age - deep glacial gouges now filled with water, forming lakes and streams.
The vast red swaths indicate vegetated land, while the cooler shades - blue, green, tan, and black - show water of varying sediment concentrations.
5. Green Lantern
On July 18 auroras illuminate the French-Italian Concordia station in Antarctica - one of the most remote outposts on Earth.
Though the station looks worlds away, scientists Alexander Kumar and Erick Bondoux took the photograph from only about 0.62 mile (1 kilometre) away.
6. Martian Winter
Crater walls in Mars's Southern Hemisphere take on a claylike texture due to carbon dioxide frost, as seen in a July 18 picture captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera.
Gullies such as the one pictured are common around Mars's middle latitudes. Frost (tinted blue above) tends to form in the alcoves within the depressions.
7. Stairway to Heaven
Photograph by Tunç Tezel, TWAN
Seeming to trace a celestial highway, Mars progresses along a retrograde loop in a composite picture made of more than 40 shots taken between October 2011, and July 2012. A retrograde loop occurs when a planet's orbit reverses direction.
Photographer Tunç Tezel created the image from photos he took in Turkey. With his brother's help, Tezel has photographed each of Mars's retrograde paths since 1994.
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