Space Pictures This Week: Ring of Fire, Rare Moon, More

Star Search

Images courtesy NASA/ESA (left, center); DLR/NASA/SOFIA (right)

Housed in a modified 747, NASA's new SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) telescope detects a range of infrared wavelengths that current land- and space-based observatories cannot.

For example, SOFIA's mid-infrared images (right) of the region around the Messier 42 nebula uncovers a bright star cluster (upper right) that's hidden by dust clouds in images from the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

With their rare access to mid-infrared wavelengths, the SOFIA team hopes to shed new light on "how stars and planets are formed, how organic materials necessary for life form and evolve, and the nature of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy," according to NASA.

(SOFIA Pictures: NASA Guts 747, Adds 17-Ton Telescope.)

Published January 14, 2011

Pitted-Prune Moon

Image courtesy NASA

The nooks and crannies of Saturn's largest irregularly-shaped moon, Hyperion, come into sharp focus in a picture taken by NASA's Cassini orbiter on November 28, 2010, and released on Monday.

Past Cassini data have led scientists to speculate that Hyperion's craters contain molecules of hydrocarbon.

"These molecules, when embedded in ice and exposed to ultraviolet light, form new molecules of biological significance," planetary scientist Dale Cruikshank said in a 2007 statement. "This doesn't mean that we have found life, but it is a further indication that the basic chemistry needed for life is widespread in the universe."

Published January 14, 2011

Ultraviolet Lights

Image courtesy NASA

This 2008 picture from NASA's SWIFT satellite—"the most detailed ultraviolet image of an entire galaxy ever taken," according to NASA's Stefan Immler—captures the Triangulum galaxy.

Located three million light-years from Earth, the Triangulum has recently been "fingerprinted" for mystery molecules that leave behind invisible "diffuse interstellar bands," NASA announced Monday.

Scientists are slowly cataloging the bands, in hopes of determining the molecules responsible for each pattern. That information, they say, could shed light on how planets, stars, and life arise.

Published January 14, 2011

Jet Set

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

Spicules (center right)—solar gas jets that can be as tall as the entire Earth—shoot from the sun's surface in a picture taken by NASA's orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory and released January 6.

A new study has found that these towering flares carry much hotter gas than previously detected. The discovery may help solve the mystery of why the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona—which can reach a million degrees Fahrenheit (560,000 degrees Celsius)—is so much hotter than its surface, researchers say.

Published January 14, 2011

Parting Clouds

Image courtesy NASA/UCLA

The Lagoon Nebula, aka Messier 8—the large circular cloud at center above—bursting with color in a composite image  made with data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, and released January 6.

About a hundred light-years across, the Lagoon is among the few stellar nurseries visible to the naked eye. It boasts a number of huge, hot stars that are sculpting the clouds with their strong radiation.

Published January 14, 2011