Best Space Pictures: A Hurricane Simmers, the Milky Way Glimmers, and a New Rocket Is in the Works
By Jane J. Lee, National Geographic News, 4 July 2014.
By Jane J. Lee, National Geographic News, 4 July 2014.
A satellite spies a reservoir, a hurricane portrait is snapped, and part of a new rocket passes design review in this week's space gallery.
1. Purple Haze
A spiral galaxy shines in blues, purples, and reds in this composite image of NGC 4258 released July 2. The various colours denote X-rays (blue), radio waves (purple), visible light (blue and yellow), and infrared light (red) blasting from this cosmic swirl.
NGC 4258 is also famous for two of its arms, which are not in the same plane as the rest of the galaxy. Instead, they intersect it. Researchers think they're formed when the shock waves produced by a supermassive black hole heat huge clouds of gas that bubble up from the galaxy.
2. Arthur
A crew member on board the International Space Station snapped an image of a developing hurricane, named Arthur, off the eastern U.S. on July 2.
3. Closer to Flight
NASA is one step closer to sending astronauts back into space. The dome above, one of the components of NASA's new rocket - the Space Launch System - passed a critical design review July 1. This means that parts of the rocket are ready to go into production.
4. Cosmic Lint
NASA is sending the Hubble Space Telescope to search for suitable targets for a flyby of the New Horizons spacecraft in fall 2015. New Horizons will survey the surface and atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto and, hopefully, some objects (circled in the photographs) in the Kuiper Belt - a disk-shaped region of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. Pluto is one of the better known objects in the belt.
5. Desert Oasis
A Landsat 8 image, released July 1, shows a splash of turquoise that is the Hanhowuz Reservoir, surrounded by the Garagum Desert in Turkmenistan. The Garagum Canal snakes into the upper right corner of the reservoir.
Tiny plants called phytoplankton and fish, including catfish and Arab barbel, thrive in the reservoir's warm waters.
6. Galaxy at Night
The Milky Way galaxy hangs in the night sky in an image submitted to Your Shot on June 26. The galaxy, which includes our solar system, stretches above the desert in An Nūmānīyah, Al Qasim, Saudi Arabia.
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