From photos that show a beautiful view of new Zealand from above, to a potential eclipse that conquered the Sun, these photos show the amazing side of the Universe. Click through to see all the photos!
Jupiter Jet and Brown Barge
The southern edge of Jupiter’s north polar region is captured in this view from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The scene prominently displays a long, brown oval known as a “brown barge” located within a polar jet stream, called “Jet N4.”
This image was taken at 9:25 a.m. PST on Feb. 12, 2019 (12:25 p.m. EST), as the spacecraft performed its 18th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, above a latitude of approximately 44 degrees north.
Criss-Crossing Lunar Transit
On Mar. 6, 2019, SDO observed a long lunar transit – with a twist. The shadow of the Moon in SDO’s images first touched the limb of the Sun at 2200 UTC (5pm EST) on Mar. 6, making its way across and finally left the solar disk at 0209 UTC on Mar. 7 (9:09 pm EST, Mar. 6).
The moon’s apparent reversal is caused by SDO first overtaking the moon in its orbit, then the moon catching up as SDO swings around Earth’s dusk side. During the transit the Sun moves in the frame as the telescopes cool and flex in the lunar shadow. Note that the edge of the Moon is very sharp because it has no atmosphere.
New Zealand From Above
The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over New Zealand, with the image centered over Cook Strait between the North and South Islands.
Captured on August 22, 2018, this true-color image shows the snow-covered Southern Alps stretching across the west coast of the South Island.
On the island’s east coast, bright turquoise colours in the Pacific Ocean suggest the presence of sediment being carried into the ocean by river discharge as well as algal blooms.
Rollout to the Launch Pad
The Soyuz rocket is transported by train to the launch pad on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of its launch on March 14.
InSight’s Deck Camera Observes Phobos Eclipse
NASA’s InSight lander took this series of images on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, capturing the moment when Phobos, one of Mars’ moons, crossed in front of the Sun and darkened the ground around the lander. These images were taken by InSight’s Instrument Context Camera (ICC), located under the lander’s deck.
The images were taken at intervals of about 50 seconds in order to capture the eclipse, which on this day lasted 26.7 seconds. The shadow of the lander can be seen moving to the right before the entire scene darkened during the moment of the eclipse.
From the Moon to Mars
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is seen inside the Super Guppy aircraft on Monday, March 11, 2019, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Super guppy will carry the flight frame with the Orion crew module and service module inside to a testing facility in Sandusky, Ohio, for full thermal vacuum testing.
Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry humans to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain astronauts during their missions and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. Orion missions will launch from NASA’s modernized spaceport at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the agency’s new, powerful heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System.
On the first integrated mission, Exploration Mission-1, an uncrewed Orion will venture thousands of miles beyond the Moon over the course of about three weeks. The mission will pave the way for flights with astronauts beginning in the early 2020s.
As NASA ventures to the Moon and on to Mars, the agency will work with U.S. companies and international partners to push the boundaries of human exploration forward and is working to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon within the next decade.
ExoMars locomotion tests
Before Rosalind Franklin, the ExoMars rover, can search for signs of life on Mars, it must learn how to maneuver the landscape. Scientists and engineers are putting the rover through a series of locomotion tests to fine tune how it will respond to a challenging martian terrain.
The ExoMars mission will see Rosalind the rover and its surface platform land on Mars in 2021. There, the rover will move across many types of terrain, from fine-grained soil to large boulders and slopes to collect samples with a drill and analyse them with instruments in its onboard laboratory.
Engineers must ensure Rosalind does not get stuck in sand or topple over and that it is able to climb steep slopes and overcome rocks.
Lift Off
A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for Demo-1, the first uncrewed mission of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Liftoff was at 2:49 a.m. EST, March 2, 2019.
Crossing Our Sun
Humankind’s most distant outpost was recently captured crossing the face of our enormous and gleaming Sun. The fleeting transit of the International Space Station was over in the blink of an eye, but Ian Griffin, Director at the Otago Museum of New Zealand, made sure he was in the right place to capture it.
Potential Eclipse
This clear-weather simulation shows how the eclipsed Sun could look like in the sky above La Silla on 2 July 2019 if there are no clouds.
A Strong Start
If you had a brand new state-of-the-art telescope facility, what would you look at first? Researchers at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory chose to view the Lagoon Nebula. This magnificent picture is the result, and is one of the SPECULOOS’ first ever observations.
The nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in our galaxy where new stars are being born, and is found roughly 5,000 light-years from us.
SPECULOOS is located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, taking full advantage of the location’s dark skies, ideal atmospheric conditions, and the support systems ESO has there, from telescope infrastructure to staff accommodation.
‘Go’ for Launch
Two days remain until the planned liftoff of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket—the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans.
Liftoff is targeted for 2:49 a.m. EST on Saturday, March 2, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Demo-1 mission to the International Space Station serves as an end-to-end test of the system’s capabilities. This photo of Crew Dragon was shared by SpaceX on Feb. 6, 2019.
The Cigar Galaxy’s Magnetic Field
A composite image of the Cigar Galaxy (also called M82), a starburst galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.
The magnetic field detected by the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus instrument (known as HAWC+) on SOFIA (the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), shown as streamlines, appears to follow the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst.
The image combines visible starlight (gray) and a tracing of hydrogen gas (red) observed from the Kitt Peak Observatory, with near-infrared and mid-infrared starlight and dust (yellow) observed by SOFIA and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Dawn of a New Era
Astronaut Anne McClain had an unparalleled view from orbit of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station on Sunday, March 3, 2019.
The Crew Dragon docked autonomously to the orbiting laboratory, a historic first for a commercially built and operated American crew spacecraft.
This uncrewed test flight is providing valuable information to help verify that Crew Dragon will provide astronauts a safe, comfortable and enjoyable ride to space.
Gullies in Galle
This image was taken of the hills that resulted from uplifted rocks due to an impact that formed the Galle Crater.
These hills form a segment of a circle known as a “peak ring” and this particular formation makes Galle Crater look like a “smiley face” from orbit.
Small gullies, visible in the center of this image, have formed on the flanks of these hills and they have eroded back into the bedrock.
The crater itself is probably billions of years old, yet these gullies are likely only hundreds of thousands of years old and may even be active today.