July’s Celebratory Space Pictures
This celestial explosion resembling an exploding peanut is the Eta Carinae star system, imaged by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
NASA/ESA/N. Smith/J. Morse
(Inside Science) -- July 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 missions, one of the landmark events in astronomical history when a man first walked on the moon. We invite you to enjoy a picture from that iconic mission, as well as illustrations from some of the latest discoveries in astronomy.
Fifty years ago this month, humans landed on the moon for the first time (Inside Science’s coverage of the anniversary is available here ). Impressively, some of the experiments started by the Apollo missions still yield results today. Pictured above is Buzz Aldrin, walking on the moon to deploy two components of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70 mm lunar surface camera. (NASA )
This exploding firework in the shape of a peanut is actually the Eta Carinae star system, captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet light. Looking at the nebula through this special wavelength of light, astronomers have discovered new locations of magnesium embedded in warm gas, here colored in blue, framed by nitrogen-rich filaments colored in red. Telescopes have been surveying this nebula, located 7,500 light-years away, for more than two decades. (NASA/ESA/N. Smith/J. Morse )
NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson), and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute, New York)
Astronomers once again explored the limits of Einstein’s general theory of relativity this month. Illustrated here is a star named S0-2, shown as a glowing aquamarine orb. Astronomers observed as the star closely approached the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way and found that Einstein’s theory cannot fully explain the gravity responsible for the observed trajectory of S0-2. (Nicolle Fuller/NSF )
This artist’s impression dramatizes the resulting burst of gravitational waves cascading from a superdense neutron star collision. By measuring these waves using radio observations and theoretical modeling, astronomers can better estimate the expansion rate of the universe. (NRAO/AUI/NSF )
This eclipsing binary is a rare celestial find -- a pair of white dwarfs that orbit each other, eclipsing one another roughly every seven minutes. From our point of view, the stars appear to dim in brightness for about 30 seconds during the eclipsing phase of their orbit. During one cycle of this phase, the larger, dimmer star eclipses the smaller, brighter star. Then, they rotate through their orbit and the small bright star eclipses the dim star. Located 8,000 light-years away, this duo known as ZTY J1539+5027 was found using Caltech’s Zwicky Transient Facility. (Caltech/IPAC/ R. Hurt )
