Space Pictures This Week: Shuttle, Strange Clouds, More

Strange Skies

Photograph courtesy David Hughes, NASA

Noctilucent, or "night shining," clouds glow over Edmonton, Canada, on July 2.

The electric blue clouds are showing up at ever more southerly latitudes, and astronomers aren't sure why, according to NASA. Their beauty, however, is no mystery, and Northern Hemisphere sky-watchers are advised to scan the heavens for night-shiners between mid-May and late August, when the phenomenon is most common.

Published July 7, 2011

Arc of an Eclipse

Photographs by Kwon O Chul, TWAN

In a multiple-exposure picture, the full moon emerges from near darkness as a lunar eclipse slowly ends over Seoul, South Korea, during the early morning of June 16. (See more pictures of the June lunar eclipse.)

Because the moon passed almost directly through the center of Earth's shadow, the event was the longest and deepest total lunar eclipse in more than a decade, according to Ben Burress, staff astronomer at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California.

Published July 7, 2011

Ring Around the Ringed Planet

Image courtesy Caltech/SSI/NASA

Like a dog chasing its tail, a giant storm on Saturn encircles the ringed planet in a picture taken by NASA's Cassini orbiter on February 25 and released July 6.

Cassini detected lightning strikes emitting radio waves about 10,000 times more powerful than those from Earth lightning, according to a new study in the journal Nature—likely due in part to the fact that Saturn, for reasons unknown, saves its electrical energy for decades before releasing it in massive storms.

(Related: "Saturn Lightning Breaks Solar System Record.")

Published July 7, 2011

Both Ends Burning

Illustration courtesy Lynette Cook, AURA/Gemini

A black hole two billion times as massive as the sun spits out jets of radiation in an artist's impression of ULAS J1120 0641, the most distant quasar yet discovered. The object was described in the June 30 issue of the journal Nature. (See another picture of the quasar.)

Quasars are very bright, distant galaxies that are believed to have actively feeding supermassive black holes at their hearts. Because of the time it takes light to travel over such vast reaches of space, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory calculate that they're seeing this quasar as it existed just 770 million years after the big bang, which is thought to have occurred about 13.7 billion years ago.

Published July 7, 2011

Sad Eyes?

Photograph courtesy Kim Shiflett, NASA

As Atlantis is readied for the final NASA space shuttle launch of all time, sister ship Endeavour (cockpit pictured on June 29) is coming apart. Workers are dismantling parts of Endeavour in preparation for public display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.  (See "Space Shuttle 'Retirement Homes' Announced.")

On its 25th, and last, mission this May, Endeavour ferried a six-member crew commanded by astronaut Mark Kelly. Its payload included a U.S. $1.5-billion cosmic ray detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station.

(See pictures of the shuttle Endeavour's final mission.)

Published July 7, 2011

Once More Into the Bleach

Image courtesy S. Guisard, ESO

The Rho Ophiuchi star-formation region, about 400 light-years from Earth, beguiles with its candy colors in this false-color image, but it's the relatively dim domain circled in red that excited scientists this week. Astronomers using the APEX telescope found the first known traces of hydrogen peroxide in interstellar space here, the European Southern Observatory announced Wednesday.

In addition to bleaching hair, hydrogen peroxide can produce water when it reacts with hydrogen under certain circumstances—so the new discovery could help explain how Earth's earliest water came to be, according to CBC News.

Published July 7, 2011