Space Pictures This Week: Blue Moon, Wreath Nebula, More

Hazy Moon

Image courtesy Caltech/SSI/NASA

A new picture of Saturn's moon Titan shows a high-altitude layer of blue haze tracing the edge of the orange globe. NASA's Cassini spacecraft snapped this natural-color shot of the moon's south polar region from a distance of about 83,000 miles (134,000 kilometers).

Scientists think the higher layer appears blue because its haze particles are smaller than the particles in the moon's lower atmosphere.

(See more new Cassini pictures of Titan and its neighbors.)

Published December 28, 2011

Wreath Nebula

Image courtesy WISE/Caltech/NASA

A bright red dust cloud marks the center of a "wreath" of green interstellar material in a new picture from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, space telescope. Officially known as Barnard 3, the festive-looking nebula is a star-forming region about a thousand light-years away.

A bright star in the center of the red cloud likely shaped the nebula and now causes it to glow in infrared. Bluish dots scattered throughout the frame are stars in front of or behind the nebula.

Published December 28, 2011

Island Birth

Image courtesy Jesse Allen, EO-1/NASA

A white plume rises from the Red Sea during a volcanic eruption that's likely forming a new island, as seen in a recent picture from NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite. The volcanic activity is happening within the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands off the west coast of Yemen.

The Zubairs are in the Red Sea rift zone, a region where new ocean crust forms as the African and Arabian tectonic plates are pulled apart.

Published December 28, 2011

Winter Wonderland

Photograph by Carla Cioffi, NASA

Blocked by a tangle of barbed wire, a Soyuz spacecraft sits ready for liftoff at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on December 21.

Astronauts Don Pettit, Oleg Konenko, and Andre Kuipers launched last Wednesday and successfully docked with the International Space Station on Friday morning, eastern time.

The trio joined three crew members already aboard the station—Daniel Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov, and Anatoly Ivanishin—to round out the station's Expedition 30 crew, who are expected to return to Earth in stages in March and May.

Published December 28, 2011