Space Pictures This Week: Sun Dragon, Celestial Seagull
By Jane J. Lee and Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News, 8 February 2013.
By Jane J. Lee and Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News, 8 February 2013.
A sun "dragon" roars, London glitters from space, and a cosmic seagull spreads its "wings" in this week's best space photos.
1. Solar Dragon
Resembling a dragon's tail, remnants of a solar filament strain to escape the sun's gravity in an image released this week by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Most of the electrically charged gas, imaged in extreme ultraviolet light, was unsuccessful in its escape attempt and fell back into the sun.
Filaments form when magnetic field lines push out of the sun in loops, holding dense gas above the surface of the sun. (Read about a huge solar filament that erupted in August 2012.)
2. Aurora On The Road
Northern lights writhe behind a thin cloud layer above a road on Ringvassoya Island, Norway, in this picture submitted to National Geographic's My Shot photography community on January 31.
Born of violent eruptions of plasma from the sun's surface, auroras occur when the ejected gas slams into the protective bubble of Earth's magnetic field. (Watch a video about the birth of auroras.)
3. Celestial Seagull
Like a parrot perched on a pirate's arm, the Seagull Nebula resides in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
This new image, released by the European Southern Observatory on February 6, shows a close-up of one of the "wings" of the Seagull Nebula. Red clouds of hydrogen gas glow from the intense ultraviolet radiation given off with the birth of stars.
The entire nebula is actually comprised of three large gas clouds arranged in the shape of a bird. (See pictures of other nebulae.)
4. Saturn's North Pole
Saturn's hexagon-shaped north pole is lit by the sun now that spring has come to the planet's northern hemisphere, as seen in a NASA picture released this week.
The 15,000-mile-wide (25,000-kilometre-wide) cloud formation, captured by the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera in November, was initially spied during the Voyager missions in the 1980s. (See another Cassini picture of the hexagon.)
5. Martian Avalanches
A 2011 frost avalanche kicks up dust on Mars in a picture released this week by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera team.
Frost avalanches usually occur at the onset of the Martian spring, when layers of carbon dioxide frost warm, causing ice and dust to cascade off of cliffs.
"While HiRISE has captured other frost avalanches before, they never cease to amaze, since it demonstrates that there are indeed active processes on the red planet," according to the HiRISE website. (Related: "First Mars Avalanches Seen In Action.")
6. Luminous London
Expedition 34 Flight Engineer Chris Hadfield captured the English city while flying about 240 miles (400 kilometres) above Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please adhere to proper blog etiquette when posting your comments. This blog owner will exercise his absolution discretion in allowing or rejecting any comments that are deemed seditious, defamatory, libelous, racist, vulgar, insulting, and other remarks that exhibit similar characteristics. If you insist on using anonymous comments, please write your name or other IDs at the end of your message.