September’s Stunning Space Pictures
Cassini’s final image, taken by the spacecraft as it looks towards Saturn’s night side.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
(Inside Science) -- This month, we journey the universe through illustrations of astronomy discoveries from across September. We also salute the Cassini space probe after it completed its final mission.
Earlier this month, astronomers announced that galaxies may be able to change their shape without colliding with other galaxies. The process was illustrated in this glittering artist’s impression of a disk galaxy transforming into an elliptical galaxy. In the center sits a massive pool of gas and dust, out of which new stars are born. As these stars accumulate, they spin out from the center, slowly changing the galaxy’s shape into its ultimate elliptical form. (NAOJ )
An international team of astronomers presented new information on exoplanet WASP-12b, a strange hot Jupiter-like gas giant as illustrated here. Instead of being roughly spherical like a typical planet, WASP-12b is stretched into an egg shape due to the gravitational pull of its close orbit to the parent star. More strikingly, the planet is so dark that it actually absorbs light instead of reflecting it -- giving it a pitch-black appearance. This planet is located 1,400 light-years away from our solar system. (NASA/ESA/G. Bacon )
Space Telescope Science Institut/NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Astronomers generated this 3-D model of the V745 Sco explosion, located 25,000 light years from Earth. This binary star system contains a red giant star and a white dwarf star that orbit each other so closely that they trigger massive thermonuclear explosions. In the simulation above, each color represents a different facet of the explosion: the ejected mass from the explosion is depicted in purple, followed by the blast wave in yellow, and finally the cooler material surrounding the event in blue. (NASA/CXC/M.Weiss )
The MUSE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope captured this image that mapped the dust inside nebula NGC 7009 for the first time. Depicted in pale hues of blue and pink, this nebula is also known as the Saturn Nebula for its striking visual similarity to the appearance of Saturn and its rings. With this image, astronomers discovered that the nebula had a wave-like feature in its distribution of gas that is not yet fully understood. (ESO/J. Walsh )
ESO/J. Walsh
Finally, we present an animated selection of four images taken during Cassini’s final hours. The first image is Cassini’s last look at Saturn’s moon Titan in a hazy yellow. The spacecraft then turns its camera to Saturn’s rings for one last time, and then to the gaseous planet’s profile. In sequence, the images transmit the viewpoint of a spacecraft hurtling through space as it spins towards its ultimate resting place, shown in the last photo. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute /A. Malate)
