Category Astronomy/Space

This X-ray image of the hot gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster was made from 16 days of Chandra observations. Researchers then filtered the data in a way that brightened the contrast of edges in order to make subtle details more obvious. An oval highlights the location of an enormous wave found to be rolling through the gas. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Stephen Walker et al

This is an artist’s illustration of the epsilon Eridani system showing Epsilon Eridani b, right foreground, a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting its parent star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our solar system’s Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our solar system is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our sun. SOFIA observations confirmed the existence of the asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of the Jovian planet. Credit: Illustration by NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook

An excess of gamma-rays coming from the center of the Milky Way is likely due to a population of rapidly spinning, very dense and highly magnetized neutron stars, called pulsars. Credit: NASA/CXC/University of Massachusetts/D. Wang et al.; Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is shown diving through the gap between Saturn and its rings in this artist’s depiction. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech