1. Beauty born in a blast, Cassiopeia A is the hot remnant of a supernova. The light from this gas cloud, revealed by data from NASA's Spitzer, Hubble, and Chandra observatories, echoes the first moments of a star's explosion some 11,000 years ago. The supernova was a hundred billion times brighter than the sun. Chandra's X-rays (green and blue) reveal ten-million-degree Celsius gasses created when ejecta collided with surrounding dust and gas at ten million miles per hour.
2. In this composite image, the Hubble Space Telescope captures a celestial landscape with colorful hills and valleys of interstellar gas and dust fronting a glittering region of star creation--the Carina Nebula. Young, hot stars are producing UV radiation and stellar winds that erode the nebula in the lower image. The dark towers are cool, dense columns of dust and gas that have better resisted erosion from flowing energy and point in the direction of that energy's source.
౩. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has completed a close encounter with the planet nearest to the sun. This October 6 image shows the surface of Mercury from an altitude of some 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers). The image offers a first look at most of the area east of Kuiper, a bright crater visible just south of (below) the image center. MESSENGER offers NASA's best look at Mercury since the Mariner 10 mission of 1974-75.
4. Our galaxy's growing pains appear in a composite image of data from the Chandra (blue, X-ray) and Spitzer (red and orange, infrared) orbiting observatories. The Milky Way's RCW 108 region, 4,000 light-years away, houses young star clusters (left of image center) embedded in a cloud of molecular hydrogen. Astronomers believe that radiation from massive young stars nearby drives star formation in this region by compressing RCW 108's gas clouds, triggering gravitational collapse and giving rise to new stars.
5. IBEX, set to explore the very edge of our solar system, takes flight in an artist's impression. The NASA spacecraft launches October 19 on a mission to map and image the interstellar boundary. Though space is mind-bogglingly vast, our solar system has a distinct, if invisible, frontier. IBEX will explore the turbulent boundary where the solar system's protective heliosphere--a bubble filled by warm particles of solar wind--meets the cold void of space and its dangerous cosmic rays.
1. Beauty born in a blast, Cassiopeia A is the hot remnant of a supernova. The light from this gas cloud, revealed by data from NASA's Spitzer, Hubble, and Chandra observatories, echoes the first moments of a star's explosion some 11,000 years ago. The supernova was a hundred billion times brighter than the sun. Chandra's X-rays (green and blue) reveal ten-million-degree Celsius gasses created when ejecta collided with surrounding dust and gas at ten million miles per hour.
2. In this composite image, the Hubble Space Telescope captures a celestial landscape with colorful hills and valleys of interstellar gas and dust fronting a glittering region of star creation--the Carina Nebula. Young, hot stars are producing UV radiation and stellar winds that erode the nebula in the lower image. The dark towers are cool, dense columns of dust and gas that have better resisted erosion from flowing energy and point in the direction of that energy's source.
౩. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has completed a close encounter with the planet nearest to the sun. This October 6 image shows the surface of Mercury from an altitude of some 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers). The image offers a first look at most of the area east of Kuiper, a bright crater visible just south of (below) the image center. MESSENGER offers NASA's best look at Mercury since the Mariner 10 mission of 1974-75.
4. Our galaxy's growing pains appear in a composite image of data from the Chandra (blue, X-ray) and Spitzer (red and orange, infrared) orbiting observatories. The Milky Way's RCW 108 region, 4,000 light-years away, houses young star clusters (left of image center) embedded in a cloud of molecular hydrogen. Astronomers believe that radiation from massive young stars nearby drives star formation in this region by compressing RCW 108's gas clouds, triggering gravitational collapse and giving rise to new stars.
5. IBEX, set to explore the very edge of our solar system, takes flight in an artist's impression. The NASA spacecraft launches October 19 on a mission to map and image the interstellar boundary. Though space is mind-bogglingly vast, our solar system has a distinct, if invisible, frontier. IBEX will explore the turbulent boundary where the solar system's protective heliosphere--a bubble filled by warm particles of solar wind--meets the cold void of space and its dangerous cosmic rays.
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