Two galaxies join each other in a gravitational dance, a cosmic jellyfish floats in space and India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission snaps its first picture of the moon. These are just some of the top space photos this week on Space.com.
1. Chandrayaan-2 snaps its first picture of the moon
Image credit: ISRO
India’s Chandrayaan-2 entered lunar orbit around a month after it launched and snapped its first picture of the moon’s surface on Wednesday (Aug. 21). The mission aims to land near the moon’s south pole by Sept. 6, however, the image shows the far side of the moon - the area that contains the Apollo crater and Mare Orientalis.
2. Two galaxies caught in a dance
Image credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA/A. Evans
The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of two galaxies caught in a cosmic dance, as the mutual gravitational attraction pulls them closer to each other. The slow-motion galaxy collision, which scientists call UGC 2369, is about 424 million light-years away.
3. Seagull nebula flies across the night sky
Image credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team//N.J. Wright (Keele University)
This purple-and-orange hued image from the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope shows the Seagull Nebula, made up of three gas clouds, a region of starbirth some 3,700 light-years away from Earth. The nebula appears like a flying seagull, spreading its wings across the sky.
4. Astronaut rocks Artemis logo during spacewalk
Image credit: NASA
Astronaut Nick Hague sported the mission patch for the Artemis moon program during a spacewalk on August 21. NASA unveiled the logo for Artemis last month, ahead of the planned mission to the moon by 2024. The patch shows a dramatic white "A" floating in black space above a blue horizon that represents Earth.
5. Cosmic jellyfish floats in space
Image credit: Jeff Berkes
This image captured by Hubble Space Telescope shows what happens when an old star, similar in size to the sun, grows old and casts off layers of gas. The red giant star, known as NGC 2022, appears like a cosmic jellyfish floating in space.
6. Fires ravage Amazon rainforest
NASA captures satellite images of the fires raging through the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. The fires have been ablaze for weeks now, and have so far reached a number of Brazilian states, including Amazonas, Para, Mato Grosso and Rondonia, and the tropical forests of Bolivia.
7. A closeup of Jupiter
Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon-Miller (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
Jupiter's Great Red Spot and several smaller storms are revealed in intricate detail in this new close-up image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers used imagery from the telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 to stitch together this flat, stretched-out map of the entire planet.
8. Earth’s glowing, red skin
Astronaut Luca Parmitano captured this stunning view of the African continent from the International Space Station, as he marveled at the 'skin of Earth.' The image shows off Africa's red soil, a type of clay enriched with iron and aluminum, which covers large areas of the continent. (However, Parmitano did not specify which part of Africa he was flying over.)
9. A tiny meteor spotted in the Milky Way
Image credit: Tony Corso
Astrophotographer Tony Corso found a tiny trail of a meteor near the center of this image after snapping this photo of the night sky over Mount Rainier in Washington state. The meteor was likely a member of either the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower or the Alpha Capricornids, both of which peaked at the end of July. It could have also been a Perseid meteor, although that shower didn't peak until about two weeks later.
10. Solar eclipse throwback
Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
Two years ago on August 21, a rare coast-to-coast total solar eclipse swept across the continental United States, briefly turning day into night for millions of spectators from Oregon to South Carolina. ESO photographer Petr Horálek created this stunning composite of the moon and the sun's corona during totality by combining many exposures of varying duration.
Top image: Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of two interacting galaxies commonly labeled as UGC 2369. Credit: Stuart Rankin/Flickr//CC BY-NC 2.0.
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