Space Pictures This Week: Mars Volcano, Eagle Nebula, More

Eagle's Claw

Photograph by Richard Walker, Your Shot

Dense pillars of gas and dust rise from the Eagle Nebula, an active star-forming region in the constellation Serpens, in a long-exposure picture recently submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot. (See a closeup of one of the Eagle's pillars from the Hubble Space Telescope.)

The picture was taken from Rapid City, South Dakota, using a camera mounted to a telescope and fitted with special filters for blocking light pollution. Capturing this shot of the nebula from 6,500 light-years away required an exposure time of ten hours.

Published November 11, 2011

Date With Destiny

Photograph courtesy NASA

Robonaut 2, the first dexterous humanoid robot in space, is seen being put through its paces in the Destiny lab aboard the International Space Station in early November.

Crew members recently had Robonaut 2 move its arm joints for the first time in the almost zero-gravity environment aboard the station. The tests will help engineers develop tasks that the robotic helper can perform in space.

(Related pictures: "Five Forerunners of NASA's Robot Astronaut.")

Published November 11, 2011

Hollowed Crater

Image courtesy JHUAPL/CIW/NASA

A newly released picture from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft shows an unnamed crater in the small planet's Caloris Basin, which is itself one of the largest impact craters in the solar system.

The floor of the smaller crater shows more of the unusual pits dubbed hollows recently discovered on Mercury. Scientists aren't yet sure what forms the shallow, rimless depressions, but it's possible the hollows are being created by currently active geologic processes.

Published November 11, 2011

Along Came a Nebula

Image courtesy L. Townsley et al, PSU/CXC/NASA

Multimillion-degree gas is carving bubbles in the Tarantula Nebula, as seen in a new composite picture from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The hot gas is seen in x-rays (blue) while the surrounding cooler gas and dust of the nebula appears in infrared (orange).

More than 2,400 stars in the nebula are producing intense radiation and powerful stellar winds, creating shock fronts in the nebula that drive the superheated gas.

(Related pictures: "Ten Spooky Objects in Outer Space.")

Published November 11, 2011