Space Photos This Week: Star Blob, Perseids, More

Stellar Blob

Image courtesy NASA

A halo of warm dust (green) surrounds the globular star cluster known as Omega Centauri (blue) in a picture released August 16 and taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, space telescope.

Omega Centauri is visible to the naked eye and has been known of since ancient times. Originally thought to be a star, astronomers in the 1800s identified the object as a blob made of millions of stars bound together by gravity.

More recent studies have suggested that there's a black hole at the center of the cluster. Since it's thought all galaxies have black holes at their hearts, it's possible Omega Centauri should be once again reclassified, this time as a stripped-down dwarf galaxy, according to NASA.

Published August 18, 2010

Space Simulator

Photograph courtesy ESA

A new weather satellite known as MetOp-B has passed a critical test proving it can withstand the cold vacuum of space, the European Space Agency announced August 3. Above, the satellite's payload module is lifted out of the Large Space Simulator in the Netherlands.

MetOp-B is the second of three European meteorological satellites being launched to provide continuous data on Earth's temperature, humidity, cloud cover, and atmospheric gases. MetOp-A launched in 2006, and MetOp-B is due to launch in 2012, followed by MetOp-C in 2016.

Published August 18, 2010

"Tiger" Tail

Image courtesy NASA

Caught between light and dark, a "tiger stripe" fissure on Saturn's moon Enceladus comes into stark relief in a picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during an August 13 flyby.

The tiger stripes near Enceladus's south pole are the sources of the moon's icy geysers, which spew water vapor and organic particles into space.

This particular fissure, dubbed Damascus Sulcus, was among several tiger stripes thermally scanned during a previous flyby (picture) as part of efforts to tell whether the geysers are produced by underground reservoirs of liquid water.

Published August 18, 2010

Rare Perseid

Photograph courtesy Stéphane Guisard, ESO

A Perseid meteor shoots across the night sky over the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile, which appears bathed in the reddish glow of the setting moon in a long-exposure picture taken the night of August 13-14.

The annual Perseid meteor shower is best visible in the Northern Hemisphere, because the meteors seem to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northern sky. But the exceptionally dark nights in Paranal allowed photographer Stéphane Guisard to capture a few bright streaks from the platform of the observatory's Very Large Telescope.

(See more Perseid meteor shower pictures.)

Published August 18, 2010

Broken Glacier

Image courtesy NASA

Thin clouds partially veil a chunk of ice four times bigger than Manhattan, which broke off the Petermann glacier along the northwest coast of Greenland on August 5. NASA's Terra satellite spied the newborn iceberg on August 12.

Although it's not unusual for icebergs to calve off Petermann glacier, scientists are watching this massive ice chunk closely to see if it creates a sea ice pileup in Baffin Bay or poses any danger to Arctic shipping lanes.

(Also see: "Why Antarctic Sea Ice Is Growing in a Warmer World.")

Published August 18, 2010

You Are There

Photograph courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

At a distance of 114 million miles (183 million kilometers), Earth and the moon appear as bright dots against a background of stars, as seen in a picture taken by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft and released August 17.

MESSENGER is currently maneuvering toward a stable orbit around Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. Along the way, the probe has been searching for vulcanoids, small rocky objects theorized to exist in orbits between Mercury and the sun.

No vulcanoids have been detected so far, but MESSENGER will be the first NASA craft to orbit Mercury—putting it in a unique position to look for small, faint objects.

Published August 18, 2010