Space Pictures This Week: Trippy Stars, Spooky Moon, More

Ghostly Eye

Image courtesy Caltech/NASA

A newly released image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) shows the ultraviolet glow of the Helix nebula, also called NGC 7293.

The object is what's known as a planetary nebula, which is made from the gas and dust left over after a sunlike star dies. The dense core of the star, called a white dwarf, sits at the center of this eerie cosmic "eye."

Published May 18, 2012

Glacial Tapestry

Image courtesy Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, USGS/NASA

Seen in a false-color NASA satellite picture snapped in 2011, the Columbia glacier (deep blue) flows into a narrow inlet, which leads into Prince William Sound in southeastern Alaska. The region is rimmed by vegetation (green) and exposed bedrock (brown).

The glacier has been rapidly retreating since 1980, according to NASA. Satellite images of the region—including this one—show that between 1986 and 2011, the extent of the ice shrunk by more than 12 miles (20 kilometers).

Published May 18, 2012

Rings of Andromeda

Image courtesy Caltech/NASA

Blue-white rings create a cosmic bull's eye in this new ultraviolet picture of the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Way's largest galactic neighbor, which sits about 2.5 million light-years away.

Although the galaxy appears like a familiar spiral in visible light, the ultraviolet view—from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX)—shows the ring-like shapes also seen in infrared images.

Astronomers think the rings are evidence that Andromeda collided with another neighbor, the galaxy M32, more than 200 million years ago.

Published May 18, 2012

Lifting the Veil

Photograph by Erick Montero, Your Shot

Dark clouds drift across a waning gibbous moon on May 10, as seen in a picture snapped from San Jose, California and submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot.

According to photographer Erick Montero, the region was too cloudy for people to see the previous week's supermoon—when the full moon coincided with the lunar orb's closest approach to Earth. But later views of the partially full moon were still "mysterious and surreal," he wrote with his submission.

Published May 18, 2012

Aurora Falls

Photograph by Fan Meng, My Shot

A "waterfall" of soft green light drops from the heavens, as seen in a picture taken from the Aurora Sky Station in Abisko, Sweden, that was recently submitted to National Geographic's My Shot.

Published May 18, 2012

Asteroid Slices

Image courtesy University of Tennessee/NASA

Seen under a polarizing microscope, different minerals appear in a variety of hues in three slices from meteorites—all of which were recently confirmed as parts of the giant asteroid Vesta.

Two of the three space rocks fell to Earth in Antarctica, while the third landed in North Carolina. Their origins were determined based on new data from NASA's Dawn mission, which has been orbiting Vesta since July 2011.

Published May 18, 2012

Birth Right?

Image courtesy Gemini Observatory/NASA

The dusty golden glow of the planetary nebula known as Sharpless 2-71 is seen in a newly released picture from the Gemini North observatory in Hawaii.

Although the nebula was discovered in 1946, astronomers are still debating which star created the complex cloud of dust and gas. Some hold that the bright star at the center of the object is the one that shed shells of material as it swelled and died, forming the nebula.

But the central star doesn't appear to radiate the right amounts of high-energy light to cause the surrounding gas to glow as intensely as we see today. This led other experts to suspect that a dimmer, bluer star—which does pump out enough high-energy radiation—might be the nebula's true parent.

Published May 18, 2012

More of Our Favorite Space Pictures >>

Photograph by Greg Parker, My Shot

Published May 18, 2012