Space Pictures This Week: Sun Loops, Blue Marble, More

New Blue Marble

Image courtesy Norman Kuring, Suomi NPP/NASA/NOAA

North and Central America star in a new "blue marble" picture of Earth. The high-resolution composite was made with data collected January 4 by a NASA satellite.

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, launched on October 28, 2011, to become NASA's next-generation Earth-monitoring probe. The satellite was designed to help improve short-term weather forecasts and increase our understanding of long-term climate change.

The 2012 blue marble was released this week to mark the announcement of the probe's new name—Suomi NPP—in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin, a pioneer in satellite meteorology.

Published January 27, 2012

Sands of Mars

Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA

Dunes and ripples in a variety of shapes and sizes add texture to an impact crater in the Noachis Terra region of southern Mars. The enhanced-color picture was recently released by scientists using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The distribution and shapes of Martian dunes are determined by changes in wind direction and strength. Pictures such as the one above therefore help scientists study the ongoing geologic processes that are affecting modern Mars.

Published January 27, 2012

Lunar Corona

Photograph by Dennis Mammana, TWAN

Multihued halos surround the nearly full moon over Borrego Springs, California, in a newly released picture of a lunar corona.

The faint rings of color are an optical effect caused when moonlight interacts with wispy clouds and ice crystals high in the night sky. The width of such coronas can shrink or swell as different clouds move past the moon.

Published January 27, 2012

Salty Curves

Image courtesy EUSI/ESA

Sand dunes curve across northern Iran's salt desert, Dasht-e Kavir, in a newly released picture from the Ikonos-2 satellite.

The mostly arid region hosts a scattering of shallow lakes, mudflats, and salt marshes. Scorching summer temperatures cause high rates of evaporation, leaving concentrated salt crusts that become part of the desert sands.

Published January 27, 2012

Galaxies Far, Far Away

Image courtesy A. Weiss et al, Spitzer/APEX/ESO

Red drops on a cosmic field mark "starburst" galaxies, which are undergoing the most intense known rates of star formation. Seen in a newly released composite picture from the European Southern Observatory's Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope, these galaxies lie ten billion light-years from Earth.

Astronomers studying the distant objects found that the starbursts last for only a hundred million years, during which time the galaxies double their quantities of stars. But this early frenzy of star formation comes to an abrupt end, and now astronomers think they know why: the emergence of supermassive black holes at the centers of the huge galaxies.

The actively feeding black holes not only consume vast amounts of galactic material, their radiation blows away much of the dense gases that are the raw materials for stars.

Published January 27, 2012

Crater Fan

Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA

A fan-shaped deposit decorates the floor of a Martian impact crater in a new picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The ancient fan looks similar to modern deltas on Earth, which form when water in a channel flows into a larger body of water, as with the Nile Delta in Egypt. As the water spreads out, it moves slower and drops any sediment it's carrying, creating the fan-like structure.

Published January 27, 2012