Week's Best Space Pictures: Hercules Poses, California Gleams, and a Pulsar Puzzles
By Dan Vergano, National Geographic News, 24 October 2014.
By Dan Vergano, National Geographic News, 24 October 2014.
Purple robes swath a galaxy, shepherds dance above Saturn's rings, and fishing fleets outshine cities in this week's best space pictures.
1. Purple Robes for Hercules
The Hercules A galaxy reveals its superpowered core in an image captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope. Lavender and blue superheated gas clouds, meanwhile, swath its centre.
In visible light, the galaxy some two billion light-years away looks like an ellipse. Researchers can only see the luminous core at the heart of Hercules A with x-rays.
Astronomers suspect that the galaxy holds a supermassive black hole that is actively devouring stars and other stellar material. (See: "Black Hole: Star Eater" in National Geographic magazine.)
2. Bright Lights, Big Cities
The bright lights of Hollywood (right) blaze on the Pacific coast in this October scene shot from the International Space Station.
The night-time panorama displays San Francisco (centre) and Los Angeles backed by the Sierra Nevada. In the distance, Salt Lake City, in Utah, shines beneath a curved horizon tinted green with the glimmer of the northern lights.
3. Mr. Sun Is Angry
A powerful solar flare (bottom, left) bursts from the sun in this October 19 image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. (Related: "Monster Sunspot Threatens Earth With Solar Storms.")
The "X class" flare - the extreme category of these radiation bursts - appears clearly in this ultraviolet-light view from the spacecraft.
4. Night Lights
High above the ocean strait separating Korea and Japan, the International Space Station spies the bright lights of squid fishing boats in this October view.
The fleet burns bright blue with xenon bulbs in order to lure Japanese flying squid (Todarodes pacificus) to the surface.
South Korean cities (left) glimmer in the orange light of sodium lamps, while Japanese cities (right) use mercury vapour lamps that cast a ghostly green light.
5. Tiny Dancers
A pair of moonlets dance between Saturn's rings in this October scene from the international Cassini spacecraft.
Pandora, the pinpoint moon farthest outside the rings, measures only 50 miles (81 kilometres) across. Atlas, tucked above the planet's massive A ring and the rest of Saturn's circlets, is 25 miles (40 kilometres) at its widest.
Astronomers think both tiny moons act as shepherds of sorts, with their gravity keeping the rings' shapes intact.
6. A Pulsar in Hand
An exotic star famous for a hidden "Hand of God" shape is seen in x-rays and infrared light in this image of its emissions from NASA's Chandra and WISE spacecraft.
The view of this pulsar star - called PSR B1509-58 - offers a good example of pareidolia, where people imagine seeing meaningful shapes, usually in things like clouds or rocks. (Related: " 'Doughnut Rock' Added to Mars' Mystery Object Hall of Fame")
A pulsar is actually a kind of collapsed neutron star that's spinning rapidly and firing blasts of charged particles from its poles. The blasts illuminate the dust clouds surrounding the star.
7. Spin
The galaxy, NGC 4526, has a broad central gas disk that rotates at 560,000 miles an hour (250 kilometres a second). The speed of its spin and the mass of the galaxy are clues to the size of the jumbo black hole thought to hide at its centre.
Photo gallery by Mallory Benedict.
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